Equality Bill

It is a pleasure to speak in this debate. I welcome the Bill most warmly, and I congratulate my right hon. and learned Friend the Minister for Women and Equality, and her colleagues, on producing this measure after what have clearly been Herculean efforts. Bringing together a lot of the existing equality legislation, with harmonisation, in part, into a comprehensible whole is clearly challenging. There have been debates along the way and many people have expressed reservations from time to time about the direction in which things might be going, such as in respect of public sector duty. It takes time for Ministers to consider comments that have been made, for example after the Green Paper, and return with a good document. This is an excellent Bill, which is why it has been almost universally welcomed. It has been welcomed by the Equality and Human Rights Commission; by a massive number of voluntary organisations such as Age Concern, Carers UK, the Royal Association for Disability and Rehabilitation—RADAR—and so on; by the Royal College of Psychiatrists; by the TUC; and by the British Medical Association. In fact, I could find only one organisation that has not welcomed the Bill: the Conservative Opposition. When I intervened to ask the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs. May), who spoke for the Opposition, whether she could name a single organisation, nay individual, who had expressed concern and opposition to this Bill, no example was forthcoming. Reference has been made to the CBI and its concern about the proposal for gender pay gap reports. In fact, the CBI's document starts by saying:""The CBI supports the clarity and simplification that the Equality Bill should achieve in bringing together forty years' worth of discrimination legislation. Having a single Act as a reference point will help compliance for employers and give them the confidence to address diversity within their companies."" That is exactly what the hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mrs. Laing) wants—she is nodding. The CBI spends half of its submission explaining why""Business welcomes new clarity in discrimination legislation"."