Equality Bill [HL]

Amendment No. 200A raises again the difficult balancing act between protecting individuals from discrimination and continuing to allow the legitimate activities of faith groups to continue, as the noble Baroness made clear in her remarks. Clause 59 provides exceptions for religion or belief organisations to enable them to limit their membership, participation in activities, the provision of goods, facilities and services and the use of their premises. That is the whole purpose. The exemptions do not apply to organisations whose sole or main purpose is commercial. Indeed, it is difficult to see how some of these exemptions, for example on restricting membership, might be relevant to commercial organisations because of course they will want to sell as many things to as many people as possible. The amendment would, however, allow organisations whose main, but not sole, purpose is commercial to benefit from the exemption. The effect of that would be that some commercial organisations, which have a religious or belief element, could claim the benefit of the exception and could therefore lawfully discriminate in the way set out in Clause 59, for example by limiting access to their activities. Although we are sympathetic to the idea that religious groups, in particular, need to be able to express their faith through a range of activities, we believe that this amendment could alter the balance of our provisions too far and that it could be open to abuse by commercial organisations who might seek to discriminate against certain religions. Our current provisions would not prevent Christian groups, for example, from restricting access requiring payment, such as concerts or church lunches, if they decided to do that. Nor would we wish to interfere with activities in that way. But where an organisation is offering a commercial service open to the general public, that should be done without discrimination, whether that service is offered by a religious or secular service. Under our current proposals, if the main purpose of the organisation is to support a particular religious community and the commercial purpose is ancillary to that, it will be covered by our exception. Furthermore, where a commercial organisation occasionally undertakes charitable work—for example, where a Christian firm of solicitors provides pro bono work to the local church—we do not believe that its activities would fall within Part 2, because it would not be its main purpose. However, we do not accept that a commercial organisation that, as a by-product, supports a particular community, should benefit from the exemption in Clause 59. Were we to accept the amendment, any organisation that had a belief or religion element could claim the   benefit of the exception for a service that was overwhelmingly commercial. There will be a number of areas where the court ends up having to determine whether that is the main or subsidiary purpose. In the generality of cases, it is relatively easy to say which is the main purpose and which is the subsidiary purpose. We do not claim all wisdom in this area, but we do not believe that the amendment would improve the balance of the Bill. That is why I must resist it. I hope that the explanation that I have given has enabled the noble Baroness better to understand why we have struck the balance that we have and think that it is about right.