Queen’s Speech

My Lords, I have been keen to speak on this dimension of the gracious Speech. In particular, I shall focus my remarks on the proposed equality Bill, which has some aspects I celebrate and others on which I wish to raise a slightly dissonant note. After all, who can disagree with the need for fairness and equality of opportunity? One would have to be out of one’s mind to disagree with the need to tackle discrimination and disadvantage. Some provisions in the Bill—particularly those relating to age discrimination and gender equality—owe much to the work of Members of this House, in particular the noble Baronesses, Lady Greengross and Lady Young of Hornsey, and many others who have fought for these dimensions of equality provision for a very long time. However, my note of dissonance is a reflection of my many years serving on the Commission for Racial Equality, where we struggled with the modernisation of the law and battled with how to make the existing law work in practice. It is a noble and laudable aim that the Bill should seek to amalgamate existing legislation, provisions and regulations and simplify the process. I turned to the Women and Equality Unit for a description of the proposed legislation and what I found caused me great concern. I shall draw the Minister’s attention to a few of the unit’s reflections that I found on the internet and ask for clarity. We have now, I hope, an increasingly excellent Equality and Human Rights Commission, which is in its early days of bedding-in under the able leadership of my good friend Trevor Phillips. I discovered from the guidance notes on the department’s website that the Government have subsequently set up a cross-party task force, chaired by the very able noble Baroness, Lady Uddin, to look into increasing the number of women councillors across the UK. Surely that work could have been undertaken by the Equality and Human Rights Commission. I discovered in the next paragraph that we also now have a Speaker’s Commission, which is to consider and make recommendations on how to improve the representation of women, disabled people and people from ethnic minority communities in the House of Commons. So we already have two other bureaucracies in addition to the Equality and Human Rights Commission, which was meant to end all other discriminatory bureaucracies. In a further paragraph I discovered that there has been recently established a National Equalities Panel, which is chaired by Professor John Hills of the London School of Economics, and, bizarrely, this new organisation is to look into the interconnected factors associated with family background, educational attainment, where you live, the sort of job you can have and its influence upon your life chances, as well as gender, ethnic background and whether or not you have a disability. What, then, is the role of the Equality and Human Rights Commission? The Government are passionate about the need to legislate and cannot let go of the quill pen. As these examples prove, they seem to feel that there is an increasing necessity to bureaucratise and duplicate existing provisions. This concerns me deeply. If we are meant to amalgamate regulations and provisions into a new Act, how many supplementary bodies and dimensions of public money will go into supporting these additional activities? These new bodies will not necessarily advance the causes of freedom, equality, better democracy or fairer opportunity; they will simply allow greater inquiry. This leads me to my next concern. While supporting as a whole the necessity for better equalities provision, I must sound a dissonant note. I read carefully the Government’s response to the consultation on the equality Bill and came across important paragraph 17 entitled, ““Simplifying the law””. At this point I thought that everything would become easier but I then discovered that the Government intend to abolish the existing two-tier levels of definitions and tests in the Race Relations Act and standardise the definition of ““indirect discrimination””. This will lead to a lawyers’ field day. What a feast they will have when trying to define ““indirect discrimination”” and standardising the definition. The Commission for Racial Equality failed to manage that in the improvements to the regulations and law in 2000; I struggle to see how that will be achieved here. I am sure the Minister will elucidate further. I find the next statement in the paragraph deeply disturbing and, of necessity, it needs to be strongly opposed. It says: "““We will align the approach to victimisation with the approach taken in employment law and extend protection to children in schools whose parents””—" fine— "““or siblings complain about discrimination””." If enacted, this will provide a charter for fiddling and meddling based on playground antics. It would give to certain authorities—and sometimes, even, to the police—the opportunity to spin with delight and to go round proving pathetic and pointless complaints. It will be meat and drink to those who want to harass people who already feel under pressure in life. It would empower a joyless system which, instead of protecting freedom and promoting responsibility, would be pernickety and pursue idle points. If this measure is to be pursued into the equality Bill, I hope it will be fiercely rejected. The opportunity provided by this legislation is profound. What lies behind it? As the Minister said in her introduction, it is to enhance the opportunity for everyone to have a fair chance. That is absolutely right; no one would disagree with that. But the Minister went on to say that these are exceptional circumstances—she was referring of course to the current economic squeeze, the pressure that business is feeling and the fight for survival in some cases—and she referred also to the need for the sustainability of our economy. That brings me back to the guidance note on the Women and Equality Unit’s website which encourages the Equality and Human Rights Commission to lead an inquiry into the financial and construction sectors. The inquiry will look at the underlying causes of inequality and consider measures to address discrimination and increase diversity in these sectors. I cannot comment easily on the construction sector but it may be that many who work in it have time at the moment to be inquired into. I strongly suggest, however, that it would be idle and unhelpful to lead an inquiry into the financial sector during this period and to consider these measures when those in that sector need to pursue more critical operations to secure our economy, provide for sound and basic financing for ordinary people to survive in business and in their homes and ensure that our economy is brought back to life. This is the kind of unnecessary activity that I am sure Trevor Phillips will find that his commission does not have time for. I want to support the Bill as long as it is sensible, rounded and based on common sense. I do not wish to be churlish but I encourage the Government to ensure that there is no opportunity in the Bill to duplicate existing processes, set up additional bodies and continue to have inquiries that simply add process rather than pursue opportunity.