Equality Bill [Lords]

Of course, in an ideal world colour, gender, sexuality or physical challenges would not matter, but we are not in an ideal world and all my experience of these issues, which goes back a few years before the hon. Gentleman entered the House, tells me that unless we debate representation, raise the issue and put in place the structures and the law to ensure it—as we are calling for in this case—we will find that the majority of people best placed to empathise with the issues are somehow, magically, always white males. Time after time, that is the practical outcome. I am old enough to remember when the CRE was set up and am the first to acknowledge that although it has had some excellent leaders it has not been as effective in recent years as it might have been. I am the first to acknowledge that the CRE has faced challenges as an institution, but I remind the House that when it was set up in 1977 it embodied the best and most hopeful aspirations of our society for racial equality. In those early years, it attracted the best and brightest members of our black and Asian community. The House should also remember that the CRE is not just a London organisation; in community after community, in town after town, local racial equality committees, often with only one or two paid staff, do incredible work 18 hours a day, as beacons, fighting for equality in their community. As this debate may be our last chance to say anything about the CRE before it goes in two years’ time, we should not just look at where it has failed and where we might disagree with one of its chairs on a particular issue. We should look at the hopes and aspirations that it embodied and at the incredibly brave work of hundreds upon hundreds of individuals for the national body or for their community, long before race and equality were fashionable or acceptable. It would be wrong for the House not to acknowledge the contribution that the CRE has made to ensuring that we do not see in our society what the French saw last summer—community after community in flames. I entirely concede that the CRE may not have achieved all that we hoped. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, East, I do not agree with what Trevor Phillips said about multiculturalism, but we should not forget what the CRE represented, the hopes it embodied and the real achievements of individuals associated with it.