Equality Bill

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the wonderful speech made by the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy. I believe that she is one of the great heroes of this Chamber, as indeed are many who have contributed tonight. I am astonished by the wealth of experience that Members bring not only to this issue but to all issues that come before this House. The Equality Bill offers an opportunity to pay tribute to the thousands of people who over many decades have fought, challenged and sought to help their fellow citizens to achieve greater opportunity, equality, fair treatment and justice. The Government have brought forward a worthy Bill. I praise and thank those who have fought to bring it to this House in its present form. It offers the basis for us to consider what is good and to reflect on all the contributions made by Members of this House in order to enable the Government to consider those and, I hope, to offer some amendments that will reduce the scope for lengthy debate and discussion that might hold up this Bill. Certainly, we will have to take account of all comments that have been made from a wide variety of experiences by Members to enable us to improve this Bill to the point at which it is enacted. This is long overdue consolidating legislation and I welcome it. If it is enacted with improvement and, if implemented, enforced effectively, it will help us as a nation to bridge and reduce the widening gap in inequalities. However, in its present form, the Bill is hugely disappointing. It is defective in many respects and unlikely to remove some of the structural barriers blocking the path towards universal equality for all our people. Having ignored the advice of many experienced individuals and organisations when they introduced the Equality Bill in 2005, the Government put the proverbial cart before the horse and created the enforcement machinery of the Equality and Human Rights Commission ahead of the consolidated Bill we have before us. That was a serious misjudgement, as the past few years have proved. But we are where we are. Perhaps light-touch regulation is now dead, in which case we can all celebrate. I believe that it is shameful that this Bill with its deficiencies is being rushed through in the dying days of this Parliament and it is almost being offered to us on a take-it-or-lose-it basis, which is not acceptable. Some people have suggested that this Bill is better than what we have and that therefore we must not lose it. But they have also suggested that if they were drafting it, they would do it differently. Unfortunately, we do not have that luxury. There are many positive provisions in the Bill. I welcome the extended protection against discrimination on additional grounds, although from what I have heard from colleagues, such as the noble Lord, Lord Warner, there are some difficulties that we have to consider and seek to overcome. It is flawed by some unreasonable and unduly narrow definitions, such as some in the case of marriage and civil partnerships which are to the detriment of cohabitees and those involved as couples in common law unions. I would extend the same welcome and support to protection from age discrimination, even though there are flaws in the restriction of protection for young people, and to the comments made about special provision for goods and services for those aged over 50. We heard from the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, earlier about Saga. I will not repeat what has been said but there are matters that have to be addressed there regarding specific needs. Those are promised in secondary legislation and it is hoped that we will see some of those in the Bill before it is enacted. The importance of positive action warrants its inclusion in the Bill, but the provision and its likely effects in terms of outcome are totally exaggerated. It adds nothing to what exists now and is more likely to be counterproductive than beneficial. The provisions to deal with multiple discrimination are essential but why are they not applicable to indirect discrimination and harassment? That seems to me a ludicrous oversight and requires addressing. It is not for want of trying over the past decades that we have failed to narrow the pay gap between men and women. The requirement for firms employing more than 250 employees to publish gender statistics will contribute to greater transparency, but it will neither resolve this dilemma nor tackle the root causes of gender inequality in the workplace. A combination of light-touch regulation and political timidity are the main contributory causes of this lamentable scenario. I am delighted to welcome and support the provision for the employment tribunals to be able to make recommendations in individual cases which will be applicable to the workforce as a whole. It is hoped that this provision would be utilised by a body like the Equality and Human Rights Commission to use individual casework to push industries and sectors towards a broader application of best equality practices, using the power of enforcement in the way it is intended. My concerns about this Bill are numerous but I shall focus on three which I feel can be addressed. Not surprisingly they relate to performance, implementation and enforcement relating to equality. I say those are the important underlying principles because I believe we are what we do and my experience has been right at the frontline of seeking to change institutional practice and eradicate the discriminatory impact on people from all backgrounds. The first is the public sector duty regarding socio-economic equalities. I see it as mere exaltation and posturing. It will make absolutely no difference to poverty and inequalities unless there are specified requirements on actions, outcomes and monitoring. I welcome it because I think it is symbolic, as was said by the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, and that is very important. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Warner, about the way it is presented at present and its likely impact, but I disagree with him that we should get rid of it. I think we should keep it and build on it. I believe that what we have been doing in this era, and continue to do, is palliative at best and devastatingly destructive at worst. In 1997 the Government inherited one of the most unequal societies in western democracies and since then, the gulf has widened in spite of all the efforts made to narrow it. Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett in their recent publication, The Spirit Level, as quoted also by the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, pointed to the fact that income inequality in the UK is now 40 per cent greater than it was in the 1970s. How will this Bill contribute to a turnaround in the fortunes of the poor? The newly formed Resolution Foundation highlighted that 14.3 million people are currently living in households earning less than the median income but above the level for state support. They literally are on the edge of serious debt all the time. How will the Bill help them? Our economy has been carefully regulated to concentrate wealth in the hands of the people who are already seriously rich and to make sure that the cost of the risks that they take as well as the cost of the rescue plans when things go wrong are borne by society as a whole. Such disproportionality is not acceptable in the context of equality. How will the Bill address this huge inequality? The second of the three main concerns I want to deal with is that of the expanded public sector duty, which still falls short of what is required. On the point about public bodies, I think there should be only exceptional exemptions from compliance. All public bodies should be in no doubt about what actions are required to achieve measurable outcomes and the consequences of non-compliance. The continuing specification for public authorities to apply the discredited requirement "to have due regard" is no longer acceptable. "Having due regard" is interpreted as thinking about the need to tackle discrimination and equality, but having to do nothing to achieve it. That is how, in my experience, a lot of local authorities—many of which I have worked with or for—have interpreted or semi-interpreted Section 71 of the Race Relations Act 1976. They were required to make appropriate arrangements and did. They said, "We’ve made appropriate arrangements, and those appropriate arrangements are to do nothing". Many local authorities today, even with new, enhanced equality duties and public duties, still pay due regard but do very little or nothing, which the law allows. We cannot continue to allow the law to be so feeble. This is a very important part of the Bill. If not amended, it will continue to be a blunt instrument to push forward meaningful activity to achieve equality outcomes and eliminate persistent, deep seated institutional discrimination. The third and related issue is procurement. We have failed over several decades to ensure that contractors and suppliers who supply goods and services through procurement by public authorities comply with the public sector equality duty. What is proposed in the Bill is welcome but falls short of what is necessary to make meaningful impact. Much of the Bill relies heavily on secondary legislation, thus leaving many uncertainties. We need answers from government in each of those areas to know what outcomes are expected, how they are to be achieved and what the consequences of non-compliance are. We have to use this opportunity to get the Bill right. We owe it to all those who are disadvantaged and disaffected, as well as to those who have worked tirelessly with commitment and passion over many decades in support of the goals of equality, justice and fair treatment for all our citizens. I have every confidence that our Leader of the House will guide us through the difficulties and the long journey that we have to take in steering this Bill through the House towards becoming an Act of which we can be proud and which does justice to the people who have given their lives and great commitment to serving their fellow citizens in the name of equality.