Equality Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 171:"Page 25, line 35, leave out ““requirement, condition”” and insert ““provision, criterion””" The noble Lord said: This is another amendment from a lawyer, I am afraid—in this case about the definition of indirect discrimination. It is my attempt to make the law user-friendly, to simplify it, and not to create work for lawyers or have to pay for judges to deal with inconsistent definitions but to have a single user-friendly definition of what constitutes indirect discrimination—in other words, the equal rule with unequal effect. Here we are dealing with indirect discrimination in relation to religion or belief in access to goods, facilities or services. Clause 46(3) applies when a ““requirement, condition or practice”” would put someone at a disadvantage. That is narrower than the Race Relations Act 1976, as amended by the Race Relations Act 1976 (Amendment) Regulations 2003, and the Employment Equality (Religion or Belief) Regulations 2003, which refer to ““provision, criterion or practice””. That suggests that different standards apply to religious discrimination in employment and in goods, facilities or services. The Joint Committee on Human Rights said that,"““it appears to us desirable in the interests of clear and effective protection against discrimination that the terms of the Bill should be consistent with existing legislation””." Justice—and I should declare an interest as a member of that body’s counsel—is concerned that institutional discrimination on the grounds of religion or belief may arise from unwritten procedures and practice which may be insufficiently fixed to be caught by the definition of a requirement or condition. There is really no justification that I can think of for using different words in different statutes. That could result in the position of a court seeking to distinguish between indirect discrimination in relation to Jews and Sikhs and those relating to Muslims and Hindus, to which different definitions would apply. When I had the privilege of working on the Sex Discrimination and Race Relations Bills with the late Lord Jenkins of Hillhead, we saw immediately that the definition that parliamentary counsel had written into those Bills would lead to acres of litigation. We tried unsuccessfully to get a user-friendly definition—and sure enough, the provisions led to acres of pointless litigation. The result is that the law on indirect discrimination is in a real mess, because there are different definitions, and the case law differs according to whether British or European standards are being considered. Even if I do not persuade the Government to accept this amendment, I beg them, with regard to the discrimination law review and creating a single equality Bill which is fit for human use, to get a consistent definition of discrimination that applies to all strands. I beg to move.