Equality Bill

My Lords, I ask noble Lords to support Clause 1. I declare an interest as a member of the Equality and Human Rights Commission. Perhaps I may remind Members of the Committee of the duty on, ""strategic public authorities to consider socio-economic disadvantage in the planning and monitoring of the strategic services they provide"." I do not think that there could be a huge number of legal challenges to that. I think that this will be the first time that this has been a duty, and it is an important duty. I go back to what I said at Second Reading, which was very much in agreement with what my noble friend Lady Meacher said. I chair Professor Michael Marmot’s advisory group on the English longitudinal study on ageing. Looking across the life course, we see that factors over which no one has any control whatever—such as, where a person is born or grows up, particularly in their early years—can affect the number of years a person lives by between 10 and 17 years. That is a sort of death sentence on some people for reasons over which they have absolutely no control. We are asking public bodies to look at that when they look at priorities in order to improve the lot of people so that they can lead a healthier life, have more control over their life and can flourish, rather than be totally disadvantaged. We know that if we do not look at young people growing up in such conditions, if they are not in education or employment, they are far more likely to go to prison. Each young person in prison costs between £15,000 and £50,000 a year. If we can stop some of that by reducing some of those inequalities and by prioritising the services that we provide, surely that is good in terms of opportunity and outcome for society as a whole.