Equality Bill [HL]

I shall be very brief. As the noble Lord, Lord Lester, knows, our concern with the amendment has always been to ensure that human rights cases are brought before our courts only by specific and identifiable people whose rights have been infringed. That was one reason why the victim test was put in the Human Rights Act. It is also why the European Court of Human Rights does not allow pure public interest challenges. The purpose was to enable people who could bring a claim in Strasbourg to bring that claim before the domestic courts. We have always been wary of undermining the commission’s role in promoting awareness and good practice in relation to human rights. However, the noble Lord has made a forceful case for adopting a limited exception allowing the commission to bring cases under the Human Rights Act in the public interest. My noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor and I are reviewing and considering the noble Lord’s arguments to give them the best possible consideration, and we will come back to him before Report. There are a couple of unintended consequences in the way in which the amendment is structured, but I shall not go into them as the noble Lord does not intend to press the amendment this evening. On the basis of what I have said, I hope that he will be able to withdraw it.