Equality Bill

My Lords, my own portfolio is international development. Many men, and especially women and children, around the world would give a great deal to be protected by a Bill such as this. However, this Bill has been a long time in coming, and I pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Lester, whose tireless work and own Bill helped to give birth to this one. The lateness of the Bill means that we have to be very disciplined in dealing with it. Our colleagues in the other place have done a great deal to get the Bill to where it is today, and I commend their efforts. The noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, said that this is a missed opportunity, but she certainly did not spell out how any Conservative Government, should they be elected, would improve on this. Rather, her few points seemed to seek to weaken the Bill. If the Tories welcome this as they say they do, they will need to demonstrate that. Is this Bill needed? We have heard much evidence of inequalities in our society. Let me give you one more example. Let us look at what has become our bank, the RBS. It is 70 per cent owned by us—a figure that is soon to rise to 84 per cent. There are 12 members of the board. Not one of them is a woman. There are 22 people on their executive and management committees, of whom only two are women. How in the 21st century can that be the case? How can anyone doubt the need for an equality Bill when you see this sort of thing? How dare they operate like that? This Bill may not deal with that, but it may help people to get to a position where this is less likely to be the case. As the noble Baroness, Lady Afshar, said, the Bill is necessary, if not sufficient. To the Bill. We still have a number of crucial areas of concern, despite the best efforts of Lynne Featherstone and Evan Harris, my colleagues in the other place. We on these Benches have rigorously and strictly prioritised, given the time constraints. The first area that we wish to address is equal pay. The pay gap between men and women remains wider than 20 per cent. The Bill has not made pay audits mandatory. It surely must. I was the chair of Women Liberal Democrats in the early 1990s, and I remember arguing for mandatory pay audits, drawing on experience from Canada. At that time, my own daughter was a baby. Now she is 16, and it will not be long before she launches into the world of work. Time passes, and this issue has not yet been adequately addressed. Others have worked for many more years on this. One of our absolutely key areas is homophobic bullying in schools, as my noble friend Lord Lester has said. We also wish to address the Bill’s failure to forbid discrimination by religious service providers on the basis of sexual orientation, and the extent to which the public sector duty in Clause 148 includes religion. My noble friend Lord Lester has outlined all these, and I will not add to his remarks here. I also seek clarification of two areas on behalf of my noble colleague Lord Avebury. He has already raised them with Ministers, and when he is fully recovered from his recent ill health he will take them forward, unless we get satisfactory assurances. I am very glad to see him here this evening. The first issue that my noble friend will be raising is on caste, a subject which has been very ably discussed by the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries of Pentregarth, and the noble Baroness, Lady Flather. Discrimination is persistent, as we have heard, and severe in south Asia. It would be a miracle if, in the relevant communities in the UK, those practices had vanished, and the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, indicates that they may well have expanded. The Solicitor-General recognised this and suggested improving the Bill, and she asked the Equality and Human Rights Commission to complete research on this area quickly. Can we be assured that it has been asked to do this? We have heard both replies—that it has not; or that if it has, such research will not be finished while the Bill is before us. Therefore, it is clear that we need to take this forward. My noble friend will also be taking forward the anomaly that Scottish Gypsies are not entitled to the same protection as their counterparts in other parts of the UK. We welcome a letter from the Solicitor-General expressing sympathy on this and saying that a recent employment tribunal judgment has declared that Scottish Gypsy Travellers are a distinct ethnic group and discriminated against and are therefore covered by the Bill. However, as that judgment is being appealed, we must put this into the Bill. On the positive side, I am extremely glad to see that the Bill enables stronger positive action, and I would like to highlight its importance in the political sphere. Personally, I enormously welcomed Labour's women-only shortlists. I fought hard in my own party for the zipping that we implemented for the European elections. We now have six women MEPs and five men. Positive action is compensation for discrimination that exists. I trust that all political parties will seize this opportunity to ensure that their parties are more representative in all respects. It has been extremely striking that the Bill has been pushed forward particularly by women in the Commons. Over 50 per cent of the speakers today are women, even though only 20 per cent of Peers are women. This Bill could help move things forward. The Bill is very welcome and we should not let it fall. Therefore we must be extremely disciplined. To facilitate that, the key areas that I and others have mentioned must be addressed. We appreciate how much work the noble Baroness and the Bill team are putting in to address Peers' concerns. Despite the wishes of the noble Lord, Lord Graham, clearly they will not have a peaceful Christmas. Let us see what can be addressed before we get to Committee so that we can expedite the Bill and get it into law.