Equality Bill [HL]

The note that I have just been given says that if it is open to appeal it is still an equality issue. The noble Lord in a sense makes my point for me. He has just put forward a hypothetical example of what could happen. I am trying to argue that the reason that we have the order-making power is precisely for the commission, when it is up and running, in dialogue with the Secretary of State—which is a straightforward way of approaching this—to look at how best we take forward the cases and address the points raised by the noble Lord. The point is that we do not yet know what position we will be in, and we do not have the commission there to give us advice on how it thinks the order-making power should operate. So, as I have indicated, the order-making power could say that a certain class of cases should continue regardless, and that might cover the point raised by the noble Lord, or it might be that all cases could continue in a particular way if the equality issues were dropped. In other words, we have the power to address the point in the Bill—but not in a hypothetical way—with the commission, based on what we think is going to happen and based on the evidence that we have before us. We are not terribly far apart on this.