Equality Bill [HL]

For that reason, I shall speak to Amendments Nos. 133 to 136, which have been grouped with Amendment No. 132 in the name of the noble Baroness. They all deal with questions about the integration of human rights. The promotion and protection of human rights is an essential element of the mandate of the new commission. It is important that those duties are not sidelined. Human rights will provide an important tool in achieving the right balance between the different grounds for discrimination. As the Committee will appreciate, there are, for example, built-in conflicts between sexual orientation discrimination and religious discrimination that may arise in certain contexts. There are questions of privacy that must be taken into account in the context of equality. The Government White Paper Fairness for All, published in May 2004, specifically asked whether the commission should be enabled to continue supporting cases with both discrimination and human rights dimensions after the discrimination arguments fall. The government response to the consultation, published in November 2004, noted:"““A majority of respondents felt the legitimacy of the CEHR would be undermined if it were not able to continue to support cases on the grounds of human rights, even if the discrimination element (under which the case would originally have been taken by the CEHR) falls away””." Despite the extensive consultation and the clear and   overwhelming response from the consultees, we are disappointed to note that the Bill provides, in Clause 30(6), that such cases can continue only if the Secretary of State so orders. We therefore propose amendments to enable the commission to continue to support such cases when the equality element of the case falls away, without requiring that the Secretary of State makes such an order. I should add that the Joint Committee on Human Rights believes that the order-making power in Clause   30(5)(a) is too restrictive. The order-making power would only apply when the claimant had originally relied in part on Section 7(1) of the Human Rights Act 1998. The Joint Committee believes that this,"““would not accommodate the situation where, for example, the court, in fulfilment of its own obligations as a public authority under section 6 of the Human Rights Act, brings a Convention right into consideration in the case””." That is from page 11, paragraph 20 of the 16th Report of the JCHR. I hope that the substance of the amendments will be accepted, so that we will not have the artificial dividing of equality and human rights into watertight compartments in a way that will not serve the interests of justice or the intended beneficiaries of the human rights legislation.