Equality Act (Sexual Orientation) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2006

My Lords, it seems extraordinary to me that we are now debating secondary legislation that is so flawed that the High Court has granted permission for a judicial review on the question of whether this secondary legislation breaches the Human Rights Act. Surely it would have been better to await the outcome of that review, fixed for 1 and 2 March, instead of charging blindly on. I am also surprised that we have been required to debate these regulations today before the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments has been able to produce its report. Given that it clearly has questions about the regulations, surely it would have been better if we had waited a couple of weeks for that report. The Merits Committee has expressed a certain amount of doubt, and the Joint Committee could have shed further light on the comments of the Merits Committee, but we have been deprived of that lightby the Government’s indecent haste to get thisdebate out of the way. One of the members of that committee, Mr David Simpson MP, has said publicly: "““The Government’s timetabling makes a mockery of the parliamentary process. How are MPs supposed to make an informed decision about Sexual Orientation Regulations before the committee has had a chance to report? We have serious questions about how the regulations could interfere with religious liberty under the Human Rights Act. Peter Hain is rushing these regulations onto the statute book and seems prepared to sideline the parliamentary process in order to do so””." It is quite clear that throughout this whole process the Government have been prepared to ride roughshod over everybody. As the noble and most reverend Lord, Lord Eames, and others have noted, the consultation timetable was quite unacceptable—a period of eight weeks which included the entire month of August, the main holiday season in Northern Ireland, therefore in effect four weeks. The Government’s own guidelines state that public consultation should be held over a standard minimum period of 12 weeks—not four weeks. In the rest of the United Kingdom, the consultation lasted 12 weeks, from 13 March to 5 June 2006. Why was Northern Ireland’s consultation in effect one third of that? The regulations were made on 8 November 2006, just six weeks and two days after the public consultation closed on 25 September. Do the Government really expect us to believe that sixweeks and two days is long enough to consider the 373 responses and to address the complex issues raised? In the rest of the United Kingdom, the making of the regulations has been postponed while issues raised during the public consultation are being addressed. The Government have postponed the implementation of the regulations on the mainland until April 2007. Their consultation ended three and a half months before that of Northern Ireland. Let us presume that the regulations will be made around mid-February. That constitutes 250 days between the end of the consultation and the making of the regulations, compared with 44 days in Northern Ireland. How does that stack up? It is an insult to Northern Ireland that the time between the end of the consultation and the making of the regulations is around one-fifth of that in the rest of the United Kingdom. The right honourable Ruth Kelly was emphatic that following the Great Britain consultation and the concerns raised, it was important to, "““make sure that there is effective protection from discrimination while ensuring that people have the right to religious freedom””." Were the issues raised by the Great Britain regulations much more complex than those raised in Northern Ireland? Or is this yet another case of ““Northern Ireland—so what””?