Queen’s Speech

My Lords, it is a privilege, and it is rather frightening, to follow that brilliant, humane and thoughtful speech, which was totally different from anything that anyone else has said in the House so far. That is a great recommendation in a debate such as this. I shall concentrate on the equality Bill outlined in the Queen’s Speech, a development that in general I value greatly. However, I have some concerns about the upcoming Bill stemming from a meeting with members of the Bill team during the previous Session, for which I am extremely grateful to the Minister who was involved at that time. We learnt that at that time the Bill already contained about 320 clauses. That is a matter of concern in itself, and I look forward to the Minister’s reply to the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Hastings of Scarisbrick, who was also talking about the complications of the Bill. Meanwhile, I deeply regret the absence of a broad opening clause or clauses explaining the main thrust of the Bill and indicating how the managers or owners of companies could be confident that they were interpreting it correctly. I am sure that we are all aware of the frustration of managers, particularly of small businesses, in this country and how much resentment has built up over time as the barrage of legislation rained down upon them. Guidance is all very well, but a straightforward description of the main purposes of the Bill and how it is supposed to be managed in practice in its opening clauses could be very helpful. After all, managers as well as employees should benefit from a single equality Act. Have the Government decided to include a main purposes clause in the Bill? The briefing prepared for this debate by the equality commission is helpful; the recognition that we need a simpler approach to equality, rather than the current mishmash, is core to the reform of equality law, and I welcome many aspects of what is before us. In particular, the newly defined public sector duty and the obligation that it places on the public sector inspectorates to monitor compliance are very welcome. So is the idea of using public sector procurement to oblige suppliers to improve their own equality practices. This is not a new idea—I remember it from my time in local government—but I welcome the greater emphasis placed on it by the Bill. However, I confess to having some doubts about the commission’s wish to see a general clause, "““addressing the issue of socio-economic inequality””." At first sight, it seems overambitious, to say the least. I will spend the rest of my time on the matter of women’s equality, particularly in the workplace. Women are not a minority group. On the contrary, they are the majority of the population. Laws about the pay and promotion of women have been on the statute book for years. Yet they are routinely evaded by the methods used, for example, in recruitment for promotion, particularly for senior jobs, and by rules which prohibit discussion of pay packets among employees. It comes as no surprise then that the number of women in senior or boardroom positions in major private companies does not reflect the value of their abilities to those companies. At the same time, many companies recognise the need to move in a different direction, if only so as not to lose valuable employees. So the expected inclusion in the Bill of equal pay itself is welcome, as are measures to ban secrecy clauses in contracts. Legislation to enable representative actions—what the Americans call class actions—for equal pay claims is also welcome, if long awaited. It seems that the Government want public sector bodies to report on important issues, such as the gender pay gap, and they may encourage public authorities to achieve this via contract compliance. The equality commission also wishes to use other methods to end pay discrimination, possibly via equal pay audits as recommended by the code of practice on equal pay, approved in 2002. The Government’s framework document on the Equality Bill, published last June, gives an insight into pay gaps between women and men in government departments. In the Treasury, for example, the gap is 26 per cent, whereas in the Government Equalities Office it is minus 4 per cent; in other words, the women are better paid than the men. It reminds me of the comments by a Civil Service union representative who held a session with the women’s parliamentary group some years ago about how difficult it was for women in the Civil Service who had children to get back on to the promotion ladder—and therefore get back their equal pay status—particularly if they had had a period of part-time work following childbirth. The Civil Service used to be an exemplar of good and equal treatment, and I hope that it will continue to play that role. Finally, I welcome the Government’s decision that employers will be able to take positive action by taking into account the under-representation of certain groups when selecting between equally qualified candidates. This will apply to all the under-represented groups, and one of the cheering aspects of the framework for the equality Bill is that both the CBI and the TUC support positive action of this sort. In their different spheres, both organisations can exercise pressure in favour of equal treatment under the law in the very important field of employment, not just for women but for all the other groups excluded from full participation in society. I have but scratched the surface of this very important subject. I am comforted, if that is the right word, by the knowledge that we will spend many hours on the Bill during the coming months.