Equality Bill

The hon. Gentleman raises an extremely interesting point. There is no doubt that there are occasions when there are competing rights. I dealt with that as Minister for Women when we were considering, for instance, the introduction of laws against religious discrimination and laws against discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation in employment. We arrived at, I believe, the right compromise in those two separate strands of legislation. I assume, although I have not checked the detail, that that is reflected in the new Bill. That was one of the reasons I came to the view that we needed a single Equality and Human Rights Commission in place of the three predecessor bodies. Where there are conflicting rights—and sometimes there will be—a body is needed that can work within a broader framework, including the broader human rights framework, to help society as a whole, as well as the courts and the House, to resolve those conflicts. To illustrate how far we have come, I recall, as another young campaigner for equality legislation 35 years ago, just how dismal the situation was. This morning I had the pleasure of joining an excellent organisation, Working Families. We were looking at which employers to include in our top 20 list of organisations that are helping families to balance work and caring responsibilities. What I found would have been unthinkable 35 years ago, and pretty extraordinary even 15 or 20 years ago—over and over again, organisations saying that more than 90 per cent. of women who take maternity leave, which is much longer than it was, say, 20 years ago, are returning to work, often with a change in their working arrangements. Over and over again, organisations were saying that the right to request different working hours was not limited to those covered by our current laws, but had been extended to everybody, and even on that basis more than 90 per cent. of requests were granted. Those are just a few examples of the huge strides we have made.