Equality Bill

It may or may not still happen. The hon. Lady may have different experiences from me, and I shall not gainsay her opinion. However, the purpose of the new clause is to flag up the fact that, if this House continues to pile regulation after regulation on to businesses of whatever size, the outcome will not be more fair employment but less employment across the board, for everybody. I absolutely accept her belief in racial equality and applaud her work on that over many years, but my fear is that with the Bill's emphasis on positive action and so on, we will end up with discrimination working in reverse. Many hon. Members seem to think that because ethnic minorities and women have been discriminated against in the past, the solution must be to discriminate in favour of them in the future. I do not believe that that is the solution to the problem of discrimination: I believe that we must solve the problem of discrimination by ending discrimination, as I shall explain.