Equality Bill [Lords]

The hon. Gentleman has an excellent record on these issues. Even though he represents a constituency such as Buckingham, which must have a small percentage of black and Asian people—it is certainly smaller than the 49 per cent. figure for my constituency—he still speaks passionately about such matters, for which I respect him. I think that it is a bit of both. People need to identify readily with the commissioners who will speak on their behalf. It might well be that all the commissioners decide at the first meeting that they have a common agenda that they need to take forward, but we need specifics. My hon. Friend the Member for Kingswood has tabled an amendment to provide for parity for women, which I fully support. Half the commission should consist of women because they make up just over half the population of this country. If we want to go for crude figures and base representation in some way on numbers, we should look at the population of the black and Asian community—it now makes up about 5 million of the 60 million people in this country—and ensure that it is properly represented.