Equality Bill

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell). I do not agree with him about many things, but he is a great parliamentarian who always makes his case particularly well. May I start by thanking Mr. Speaker for his generous allocation of amendments for debate? His selection allows for a broad range of views to be heard, and we should all be grateful for that. I am aware that my views tend to be in a small minority in this place, but I have always believed that for a parliamentary democracy to work, everybody in the country should feel that someone in the House is speaking up for them. My views might have very little support in this place, but there is an argument that they have slightly more support out in the country as a whole. I am very grateful to Mr. Speaker for allowing the amendments in this group, about 20 of which are mine, to be debated. I want to reiterate the point made by the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington about the time scale set out for the debate. There are many important issues further down the line that I would like us to debate, so, although I have tabled a large number of the amendments in this group, I shall endeavour to go through them as quickly as possible to allow some of those other important matters to be debated as well. It is a sad state of affairs when hon. Members who want to debate issues that they feel strongly about have to apologise at the start of their speech about not being able to express their views clearly because of the lack of time allowed for debate. The first amendment in the group that I have tabled is new clause 36, which states simply that the Bill would""not apply to any employer who has fewer than 250 employees."" When I was framing the amendment, I intended to have a number far smaller than 250, which I thought quite high. I thought perhaps 25 or 50, but I eventually plumped for 250 because clause 75 on the gender pay gap—I shall come back to that clause later because I wish to delete it from the Bill—says that measures on gender pay gap information will not apply to""an employer who has fewer than 250 employees"." Given that the Government feel that businesses of fewer than 250 employees are so small that they should not have to abide by all these measures, I thought that, in the spirit of co-operation, I would go along with their figures.