My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Low, for his time and consideration on the important issue of how we maintain our equality protections as and after we leave the EU. I appreciate the discussions on this topic that he has had with the Bill officials and my ministerial colleagues. Before addressing the noble Lord’s Amendments 83A and 83E, the Government have reflected on our conversations with him, and today tabled amendments that will extend the statements regarding the Equality Act under Schedule 7 to SIs made under the consequential power in Clause 17(1).
This and other amendments we debated in Committee have sought to reflect in statute the political commitment that the Government have already made in this area—we will maintain the existing protections in and under the Equality Acts 2006 and 2010 after our exit from the EU. Following requests for assurances on this point in the debate in the other place, we tabled an amendment that will secure transparency in this area by requiring ministerial Statements about the amendment made to the Equality Acts by every piece of secondary legislation made under key delegated powers in this Bill.
The statements will, in effect, flag up any amendments made to the Equality Acts, and secondary legislation made under those Acts, while ensuring that Ministers confirm in developing their draft legislation that they have had due regard for the need to eliminate discrimination and other conduct prohibited under the 2010 Act.
As previously stated, the language of a political commitment does not translate to the statute book. So while our commitment to existing equality protections works perfectly well politically, and indeed in the wider world outside this place, these terms do not and could not have a sufficiently clear and precise meaning for the purposes of statute. These statements as tabled in the other place—