Equality Bill

My Lords, what a pleasure it is to stand up today and welcome this Bill to your Lordships’ House. On a personal level, it is a privilege to be leading these Benches, supported on the Front Bench by the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Bolton, and the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Wirral. I am proud that we have a better gender balance on our team than the Government have. This is an area of law which I have been involved in for most of my life, and around the Chamber I see noble Lords with much experience and expertise which should ensure a detailed and lively debate. I am sure I am not the only one who feels that the Bill has been a long time coming. We first heard of the Government’s intentions to bring in a single Equality Bill in their 2005 manifesto. We then waited until June 2008 for Harriet Harman to outline the Bill in the Commons, and until March 2009 for the Bill to be published. It will only be in 2010, at the sad end of a Government on their last legs, that we can hope to see a single Equality Act. Nevertheless, let us hope that this long period of delay has served only to whet the appetites of noble Lords for the scrutiny and debate which such a large and complex Bill will necessarily require, and in which your Lordships’ House is so effective. I hope that the waiting has increased the anticipation and enthusiasm for the positive provisions which the Bill brings forward. We are pleased, in particular, with the fact that the Bill will be used to consolidate the existing large amount of equality legislation. At the moment there are nine pieces of equality legislation, more than 100 regulations and more than 2,500 pages of guidance and codes of practice. It is of the utmost importance that if these pieces of legislation are to work and help improve the situation, both employers and employees understand their rights and responsibilities. Legislation on the statute book is all very well but good intentions will come to nothing if they cannot be translated into action and protection in the wider world. We therefore support the simplification and consolidation, which is the main thrust and purpose of the Bill. It is sadly the case that, even today, many people in Britain face discrimination because of their race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, age and background. Let me give a few short examples. According to figures from the Office for National Statistics on 12 November 2009, the mean pay gap between men’s and women’s average hourly wage for full-time work was still 12.2 per cent. We acknowledge that a lot of work has been done to reduce the gap but it remains far too high. Another example is shown by a recent survey by Rethink, the leading national mental health membership charity, carried out on more than 3,000 mental health service users. They found that half of respondents felt they had to hide their mental health problems and 41 per cent were put off even applying for jobs because of fear of discrimination from employers. There must be real action to bring this and other forms of inequality prevalent in our society to an end. We therefore look forward, as we have for some time, to working closely with the Government to help the Bill on to the statute book. I have already spoken about our support for the consolidation that the Bill will effect. We also support the major extension that the Bill introduces; namely, outlawing age discrimination. We support those clauses so long as—I am sure that the Minister will agree with us—legitimate businesses are still protected. As we move forward into Committee we shall look for reassurances which I hope the Minister will be able to give. There are parts of the Bill, however, with which we are disappointed. Despite the extremely long time that the Government have had to hone and perfect it, we are still looking at a piece of legislation that represents, for many who were hoping for a great Equality Act, a missed opportunity. Despite the fanfare from the Government, who claim to want true equality, meritocracy and fairness, we are concerned that the Bill will not address the real issues and root causes of these problems. The Minister for Women and Equality trumpeted the Bill’s arrival in another place by saying that it was, ""a good, timely and strong Bill that will make our country a fairer and more prosperous place for all its people".—[Official Report, Commons, 11/5/09; col. 564.]" All would, I think, agree with her here. However, it is unfortunately true that this is very easily said but less easily carried out. We on these Benches think that it is important to ensure that there are real outcomes. We are not satisfied with impressive rhetoric and good intentions backed up only with empty promises. One cannot simply legislate for equality; the merits of a responsible Government's intentions can only really stand on their results. We are worried that some of the Bill’s proposals will once again merely represent expensive box-ticking and bureaucratic processes that, however well intentioned, will cost much but achieve little. The Government’s proposals to deal with the gender pay gap, for example, would enable Ministers to make regulations requiring all private and voluntary sector firms employing more than 250 people to report their gender pay gap figures and to face possible fines of £5,000 for failing to do so. We are worried that this blanket approach, restricted not just to businesses found guilty at a tribunal, will place a large burden of cost and bureaucracy on businesses at a time when they need the most help. Furthermore, we are concerned that it will not do enough to address the problems at the heart of the issue. We see now that the Government have conceded that implementing these proposals might be costly, bureaucratic and difficult. There is some speculation that we might see proposals limiting the application of the regulations to companies with more than 500 workers rather than the original 250. I look to the Government for clarification. We are delighted that they appear to have taken on board some of our concerns and recognised the potential difficulties in their proposals. Nevertheless, the strategy of simply raising the threshold for gender pay gap audits does not seem the obvious solution. Are the Government suggesting that the size of the company correlates with the size of the gender pay gap? If so, can they produce any evidence of it? Further, we see once again that the date for publication of the metrics has been pushed back. Can the Government confirm that we will see the metrics in January before we enter Committee? In other areas we can see no real proposals for change but just, sadly, political game playing. Part 1 introduces a socio-economic duty on specific public bodies to take into account how their decisions might help reduce the inequalities associated with socio-economic disadvantage. In Committee in another place, the Government defended the fact that this proposal was tacked on to the Bill at the last minute by saying that, ""it is not the solution; of course it is not, because the problem is entrenched and difficult. However, what is the harm of it?".—[Official Report, Commons, Equality Bill Committee, 21/9/09; col. 130.]" Let me repeat that. The Solicitor-General defended this section of the Bill on grounds no stronger than that there would not be any harm in it. This is not the way to create legislation. It creates headlines and little else. We therefore cannot support it. We also feel that the socio-economic duty risks placing potentially onerous duties on public bodies for very little return. The Government have lumped together discrimination on the basis of socio-economic disadvantage and the disadvantage itself as the same problem. They are not the same. For a failing Government nearing the end of a Parliament, that is perhaps unsurprising, as it is far easier to legislate for cutting back the weeds of some forms of socio-economic discrimination than it is to attempt to pull out the root causes of disadvantage. But surely the Minister must acknowledge that it is only through the latter that we can really hope to provide any form of real and lasting solution to this problem. There are also areas within the consolidated sections which we will hope to concentrate on and assess fully. We will hope to look at the Government’s attitude to exemptions for roles within organised religion. Without going into too much detail now, there are concerns that paragraph 2(8) of Schedule 9 does not transfer provisions that were already enacted but narrows them in a way that was never intended. We will seek reassurances, in this area and others, that the Government are not changing the law where it only intended to consolidate. I look forward to leading these Benches as we debate these issues and others in Committee in January, and I hope very much that the Government will approach the Bill in the same spirit as we are. It is crucial that the Bill leaves this House with real improvements that will bring about real improvements in people’s lives. I am concerned by the delay in the Bill to date—while the Government have allegedly been perfecting it—as I am by the lack of adequate time for scrutiny in another place, where only one day was set aside for both Report and Third Reading. The majority of amendments were not debated before the Bill came to your Lordships’ House. The Minister will be aware of the number of complaints regarding procedure. This culminated in Mr Douglas Hogg’s reminder about the suggestion made by the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, that when so much of a Bill has not been debated, a certificate should be sent to the other place identifying the parts that have not been properly debated or even debated at all. Can the Minister inform us whether any such certificate has been received, and if so, whether it will be circulated? We need sufficient time for effective scrutiny, attention to detail and analysis. All are keen to see this Bill on the statute book, but why have the Government left their flagship Bill until the last possible moment? Surely they can see that the way in which they have chosen to bring forward the Bill will make it more difficult to achieve a properly scrutinised Equality Act. I am sure I speak for all of us when I say that we hope that the Government are ready to rise to the challenge and to work closely with us in ensuring that we get an Equality Act in 2010. However, I must say that we cannot support legislation simply for the sake of making the Government feel better or look good. We want to make sure that the Equality Bill lives up to the hype and that it is worth the wait for real people with legitimate concerns. We will therefore have little patience with any parts of the Bill that demonstrate only a political point or the maxim of "where is the harm in it?". Instead we want real, practical and helpful legislation that addresses the root causes of problems and provides solutions for suffering people. There is little appetite for legislation that professes to fix all problems but in reality addresses few. Our role in this House must be to make sure that this legislation lives up to the fanfare and the years of waiting, so that we have an Equality Act of which we can be proud and which is not a missed opportunity. We on these Benches look forward to ensuring that that is the case.