Equality Bill

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. In a moment I shall draw attention to the information from the ACDA that I received just last week, and then I will listen carefully to the Members who have proposed the relevant new clauses and amendments. I was simply setting out what the Solicitor-General had told us, and I have not seen any evidence that the situation has moved on. It would be helpful if those who have tabled the new clauses and amendments explained how we can deal with the problem. Some have proposed a new protected characteristic and some propose adding caste protection to the race discrimination provisions, and it would help if they explained what other type of discrimination caste discrimination is most akin to. I have looked into it, and it clearly has some similarities with race in the sense that people are born with it and are unable to change it, but its origins are heavily linked to religion and the Hindu faith. I am not sure how well adding it to one of the other protected characteristics would deal with the matter. Equally, I am not terribly keen to start creating a large number of new protected characteristics, given that one of the central purposes of the Bill was to bring together a number of strands of discrimination and simplify legislation on them so that it can be enforced more effectively in practice. It may be that there is a good case for including caste as a protected characteristic, but there may also be a case for including a lot of other things. If we end up having a very large list of protected characteristics, this area of law will become ever more complex. However, I will listen with interest to those making those proposals. I said that I would speak briefly about the letter that Members received from the ACDA, which refers to a scoping study it carried out between August and October. Not being a statistician, I do not know how much weight one should give to that study. The organisation says that 300 people participated in an online questionnaire and that there were nine focus groups in England. It said that from that survey, there was clear evidence that the caste system had been imported into the UK with the Asian diaspora and that caste discrimination affected people in ways beyond personal choices, including in employment, education and the provision of services. ACDA said that based on the survey data, there may be 100,000 people in Britain who are affected by such discrimination. I do not know—I presume the Minister has had professional advice on this—whether an online survey in which 300 people participated and the findings of nine focus groups is sufficiently robust research to draw the conclusion that 100,000 people suffer such discrimination. If that is true, the House will want to look at it very seriously, but on the face of it, I am not sure one can draw that conclusion from the depth of that research. As I said, I am sure the Minister has had advice from officials and statisticians on whether it would be safe for the House to reply on that basis. I am sure she will remark on that when she responds. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe, to whom I was not allowed to respond earlier, tabled amendment 196, which refers to the age discrimination provisions in the Bill. We welcome the introduction of measures to ban age discrimination, but we raised in Committee the fact that the provisions in the clauses on age discrimination, principally clause 192, which amendment 196 attempts to improve, are very wide powers, and that the vast majority of the detail was going to be brought forward by secondary legislation. My right hon. and learned Friend has a company in his constituency that would be affected by the measures, for which he will speak up very effectively later if there is time, but we raised its concerns, and those of a number of other organisations, in Committee. We asked whether the Bill would allow very sensible, worthwhile business models that give older people better terms and conditions, which we termed "good discrimination", for things such as holidays, leisure facilities and insurance products, and whether such models would be sufficiently recognised. We were concerned about that at the beginning of the Committee, but less concerned after the Minister published the Government's consultation on age discrimination, because it adequately recognised the concerns of those business organisations and asked for their responses. The consultation has now closed, but we have not yet seen those responses or the Government's response. The regulations that implement those age discrimination measures will be informed by the consultation and we will be looking closely at whether they accurately reflect the consultation and the concerns of those business organisations. Clearly, our support or otherwise is contingent on that. My right hon. and learned Friend may not have a chance to make these points, but I know he will be looking to the Minister for a clear assurance that the regulations will ensure that businesses that legitimately provide products based on the age of consumers will be able to continue. He and many who are employed in his constituency will welcome a clear response from the Minister on that. The final areas on which I want to touch briefly relate to religion. New clauses 31 and 32, the latter tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidstone and The Weald, will—from the point of view of the Conservative party—be subject to free votes, so what I am about to say will be my personal views. I also have some questions for those who tabled the new clauses, the answers to which I will take into account when I cast my vote later. The two clauses are very similar in their drafting, although new clause 31 refers to care homes for the elderly and new clause 32 refers to adoption or fostering agencies. Both clauses specifically refer to voluntary care homes and voluntary agencies. How would that affect those agencies that take money from public funds? My view is that if a care home or adoption agency takes money from the taxpayer and provides a public service, it should do so in a non-discriminatory way. For example, if a voluntary care home has any clients who are paid for by the taxpayer, does that change the nature of that organisation and would it affect the impact of new clause 31? My second point refers to the drafting of the new clauses. Both specifically say that a care home or adoption agency would be able to restrict the provision of their services or facilities to a person on the grounds of their sexual orientation. If they were to restrict the provision of services, they would have to refer the person seeking them to another organisation that could provide services for them. That restriction could be imposed only if necessary to comply with the doctrine of the organisation or to avoid conflicting with the strongly held religious convictions of a significant number of the religion's followers. I am a little confused about that, because most of the religions—and, given the supporters of the amendments, we are largely talking about Christianity—do not have a problem with someone's sexual orientation, per se, but with the practising of that sexuality. Those religions also have a problem with those who have sex outside marriage, even if they are heterosexual, but the clauses refer only to sexual orientation. It would be helpful to know why they were drafted in that particular way.