Equality Bill

It is a personal pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Cardiff, North (Julie Morgan), for two reasons. First, as she will be aware, I, too, have some interest in Wales. Secondly, I am an officer of the all-party Gypsy and Traveller law reform group to which she has just referred. I strongly confirm her impression that the situation for Gypsies and Travellers in education and health, for example, is deplorable and a clear example of discrimination. It will already be clear from an intervention that I made earlier—I ought perhaps to declare an interest—that I am now safely past the state retirement age and, as the Americans would say, am slated for retirement from this House at the next general election, whenever it might come. This subtle passage of time might have led me to take a progressively greater interest in ageism, although I do not intend to say much about that tonight. I have had the rather sobering thought that, given the way things are going, this could well be the last time that I participate in the Second Reading debate on a major, substantive Bill. I am proud and pleased to be able to do so on this occasion. For a variety of reasons, I have developed an interest in equality issues over the past 10 years, and I hope that I can display what I might call a progressive Conservative position on them across the piece. My main experience has been on disability issues, and I still chair my party's disability group. For other reasons, I have an interest in race relations and community cohesion, and I have a further interest given the gender make-up of my own family. When listening to the speech of the Minister for Women and Equality, I vividly remembered her tabling an amendment to national health service legislation some 20 years ago, in which she called for a gender quota of at least 40 per cent. women in the membership of NHS bodies. I countered at that point by saying that, as I was the only male in my own family, the gender ratio was already 4:1. I found the right hon. and learned Lady's speech interesting, and I am not against the Bill in principle, for reasons that I shall deploy, but I felt that it was a little deficient in historic sensitivity. It required an intervention to get her to concede, somewhat grudgingly, that the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 was Conservative legislation. In my view, that legislation was path-breaking.