Equality Bill [HL]

I am grateful to my noble friend for raising the issues and to the noble Lord, Lord Lester, for his views. The noble Lord has rightly reflected the views of some stakeholders—I know that the noble Lord hates that word; none the less I will use it in this context—who have argued about this. I want to set out the position as the Government see   it. As noble Lords will know from previous discussions, we recognise that the commission cannot support every case that is brought to its door. It needs to select cases strategically. I indicated previously that it was about 400 cases out of 20,000 that the combined commissions sought to support. It is in relation to the equality enactments that the commission can best use its power to add real value. It would not be right to allow the commission to support only the discrimination aspects of cases that, for example, relied on discrimination and unfair dismissal arguments or discrimination and human rights arguments, which are called ““combined cases””. However, we also do not consider it right that the commission should continue to support combined cases once the discrimination arguments fall. Under the legislation, therefore, the commission supports combined cases for as long as they retain their equality elements. If the arguments relating to those elements no longer form part of the case, as noble Lords will know, Clause 30(5)(b) provides that the commission cannot continue to support the case. We are concerned that allowing the support to continue in the absence of the equality core could increase the number of cases seeking support from the commission, something that we would not necessarily want to see. We want to ensure that the commission does not have to spend resources on weeding out cases that it does not want to support. We have long resolved that it should operate only on combined cases with equality issues and that the support would fall away in the circumstances that I have indicated. We have also long resolved that the commission should not support cases solely under the Human Rights Act 1998. Public funding is already available for such cases, and to duplicate that would cause unnecessary confusion. Also, human rights cases can cover a wide range of areas. As the noble Lord, Lord Lester, has indicated, the combined cases power was a response to where the stakeholders felt we might usefully see the commission support cases with its work. We have no way of estimating with any accuracy how many combined cases there will be; how many the commission may choose to support; how many of those would later lose their relation to the equality enactments and trigger Clause 30(5); and how many of those would   retain arguments. That is why we have inserted subsection (6), which is the order-making power. The plan is straightforward. Once the commission is up and running, we will be able to talk to it and take a view on whether an order under subsection (6) should be made. An order would be made that could either allow for all combined cases that become pure human rights cases or for a class of such cases to be taken forward. The Bill enables the Secretary of State to enact the power once the commission is up and running and once we have some clear indication of how best to use the power, to enable us to take a pragmatic approach to the issues that have been raised. It allows us to make a decision on the evidence put before us, rather than on the basis of not yet knowing which cases will continue.