Equality Bill

The usefulness of the case—although it does not extend to the circumstances envisaged by my hon. Friend—lies in the fact that as long as an action is brought within the six-months following the separation of a local authority, for instance, from its employees, equal pay can be guaranteed for all who have been transferred. As for the future and other aspects of fair pay, they are really outside the ambit of the Bill. We ought to seek other mechanisms to ensure that pay is fair. In this instance, we are discussing equality of pay between men and women, and other members with protected characteristics. I must say, with huge respect to my hon. Friend, that although we all mean well and want to ensure that people receive fair pay, he has, in a sense, helped my argument that it is possible to take hypothetical comparators too far and end up a long way away from the issue with which we are dealing. I do not suggest for a moment that there are not other ways in which we must tackle low pay—there certainly are, and we have used them repeatedly—but hypothetical comparators are not the crux. New clause 6 and amendments 1 and 68 concern the material factor defence. It was at this point that the numbering of the clauses was a bit adrift. The new clause and amendment 1 replace clause 66, which provides a defence of "a material factor" to a claim under an equality clause, with an alternative wording intended to achieve an effect similar to that of clause 66. We debated this subject in Committee. We cannot accept the amendment today, but we are considering the issue that was raised by the hon. Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon (Dr. Harris) in Committee, and we think that there will be an opportunity to bring about some movement on it in another place. Clause 66 is intended to replicate the effect of the current law, which says that a material factor that is directly discriminatory simply fails, and one that is indirectly discriminatory must be justified objectively in order to succeed. That is the policy intention behind the amendment, and it is ours as well.