Equality Bill [Lords]

I wish to welcome the principle of a unified commission and I congratulate Ministers on introducing this important legislation. I also wish to congratulate those groups in the black and minority ethnic communities—Operation Black Vote, the 1990 Trust and the race advisers to the Mayor of London—who have worked so hard to put race on the agenda in the context of these debates. On Second Reading, there was little discussion about race, and this evening we have managed to put that right. I welcome the unified commission in principle, and I think that the Bill—and the thinking behind it—represents an advance for all our communities. However, I remain concerned about the position of issues of race in the new commission, the finances available for work on race in the new commission, the law enforcement work of the new commission and, perhaps above all, the support that will be available for local race equality councils. As I said on Report, some of the most valuable work funded by the CRE was carried out by local and regional equalities committees. With those caveats, I welcome the Bill. We have listened carefully to what Ministers said about race and we shall follow how things unfold as we build the new commission, but it would be a mistake for Ministers to believe that the debate about race and the commission is over: for my hon. Friends and I, that debate, and the debate on how the commission does not simply do what the CRE did but improves on it, has only just begun.