Equality Bill

I should just like to utter a few words of caution. Perhaps the Committee will forgive me if I start on a somewhat light note. Many, many years ago, when I was at university, Lady Astor came up. I am not quite sure whether she came to entertain us or to educate us. She said that she had two sons. She said, "I could put one down in darkest Africa and he would come out leading the natives. I could put the other one down in Piccadilly and he would not be able to find his way home, and we live only just around the corner". That was her view of the likelihood of our ever attaining anything like equality. It is also apparent from the efforts of the Government in recent years to further their wider equality agenda that such efforts can cause great mischief and unfairness, however great the intentions of the organiser—great mischief and unfairness particularly when the Government's idea of equality turns out, as it has, to be nothing more than institutional intolerance to those with religious convictions. We need to be assured in this context that this encouragement to local authorities to strive for socio-economic equality will not lead to a great deal of trouble and bring very little gain. There is good reason for uttering those words of caution, because I remind noble Lords that the Solicitor-General in the other place did not claim that Clause 1 would do any good. What in fact she said was that she thought that there was no harm in it. That is what she said in the Commons Equality Bill Committee on 21 September last year at col. 130 of the Official Report. She thought that there was not really much to be gained from it, but that it would not do much harm. I beg to differ. Not so long ago, Brighton and Hove Council, not in pursuit of socio-economic equality, but in furtherance of the Government's wider agenda, cut off a grant to a Christian care home because the managers of the home would not comply with its demand that the elderly residents should be asked every three months what their sexual orientation was. If councils are prepared in the name of equality to act in such a lunatic way, what makes the Solicitor-General think that such a council would not try to implement Clause 1?