Equality Bill

We have had a good debate in which many Back Benchers from both sides have spoken. Many drew attention to the fact that the Bill has been a long time coming, and no one in the House would demur from that. We have finally received the Bill in its finished form, although it looks as if quite a bit of it has been rushed to get it finished. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs. May) said in her opening remarks, we support the Government's aim of consolidating and simplifying the current raft of equality legislation, although I fear that if the Bill makes it into law and there is all the secondary legislation, the Equality and Human Rights Commission will have a job of work to make sure that its guidance will be as simple and straightforward as we hope it will be. I am sure that, like me, the Minister for Women and Equality has had conversations with the commission to that effect. I do not think the guidance will be short and snappy, but it will be a huge improvement on the thousands of pages of guidance that have come before, and it should make it easier for business and other organisations to interpret and enact it. "Equality" has become a loaded word in recent years; every year, we hear stories in the media about councils banning Christmas in the name of equality legislation. If the Bill is enacted, a measure of its success will be whether it can put a stop to that sort of nonsense and encourage fairness, which is what equality should be about. As my hon. Friend the Member for Poole (Mr. Syms) said, it should be about success being based on merit and making sure that we have access to the talents of everyone in our country. We should judge people on their merit and not on characteristics that have no bearing on the content of their characters. Other measures in the Bill that we welcome are the extension of the laws to ban age discrimination. However, the Government have not addressed some of the concerns. A number of hon. Members mentioned the concerns of insurance businesses and those with marketing models based on age. There is no detail in the Bill on that, just a very broad power enabling Ministers to amend the primary legislation by order. I do not think the House should support that solution; one of the things that Ministers need to do—it is one of the reasons for our reasoned amendment—is to go away and think again about that element of the Bill. With the parliamentary draftsmen, they should draft a clause that will be of comfort to businesses such as Saga and the others that have been mentioned so that those companies can have confidence in their business models. That clause should also mean that Ministers will not be required to amend primary legislation every time somebody dreams up a new business model. In clauses 190, 191, 56 and 2, Ministers take powers to amend primary legislation by order; they take powers away from the House and place them with the Executive. If the Bill makes it to Committee, we will suggest amendments to all those areas. Many Members have spoken about the gender pay gap. According to the Government's own "Framework for a Fairer Future" White Paper, the gender pay gap is 12.6 per cent. in respect of full-time earnings. However, hon. Members may not be aware that there is also a disability pay gap in many businesses—and, indeed, in the Government. The pay gap between disabled and non-disabled employees in the civil service is larger than the gender pay gap. In some Departments, such as the Home Office, disabled employees are paid 30 per cent. less on average than non-disabled employees. There is a way to go on that issue. In its Second Reading brief, RADAR said that the disability pay gap had been sorely neglected and it demanded that it be given a higher priority. That neglect is not fair, and it backs up the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Poole about being able to hire the best talent and enabling people to be successful in organisations through promotion. Another key test for the Bill will be whether it makes it easier rather than more difficult for the public sector and businesses to promote equality. The single public sector duty in the Bill will replace the three existing ones. It is important that the new duty should focus on outcomes, not processes. We need to see more fairness in the delivery of public services, not just an obligation for them to comply with ever more bureaucracy. We have a difference with the Government on pay audits. We think that their proposal is bureaucratic and burdensome and that there is no guarantee that the issues will be addressed. I also note that the audits are not to apply to the public sector. Ministers have said that they plan to use regulation-making powers in the Bill to impose similar burdens on the public sector, but those specific proposals are not in the Bill. If they are saying that the private sector should have to comply with certain requirements, then exactly the same ones should apply to the public sector: there should not be one law for one and another law for the other. Our proposals for having compulsory pay audits in force when tribunals have found employees guilty of discrimination are a more proportionate solution.