Equality Bill

My Lords, after 10 speeches I do not propose to add to the autobiographical material that has been provided by so many speakers, because I do not think it would help the House to know how bad were the state schools that I went to until the age of 11. What I would like to do is begin with my own cautionary tale. At Second Reading I spoke critically of Part 1, as did, for example, the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Hornsey, and the noble Lord, Lord Warner. During my holiday in west Cork, I found myself among close, left-wing Irish friends and told them about the problem with Part 1. They beat me up and said, "It is completely deplorable that you should be in any way critical of this admirable provision. Do you not understand?", and they then said everything that has now been so eloquently said, especially on the Labour side of the debate. They said, "Do you not realise how important it is to tackle socio-economic inequality?". I said, "Yes, I do, but why do you think it matters so much?". They said, "Well, it is aspirational, true, but it really makes a difference to policy". So I said, in that annoying way that learned friends may sometimes have, "What about Article 45 of the Irish Constitution then?". They said, "Our constitution has no socio-economic rights in it, does it?". I said, "Yes, it does, it has one of the most elaborate sets of socio-economic rights. It then says that they are not to be justiciable. Surely you, Mary Robinson’s biographer, and you, the editor of a radical left-wing social policy thing, know that and surely it is important to you". They said, "You are completely wrong. There is nothing in our constitution that guarantees socio-economic rights". On this occasion I was right and they were wrong. The point about my cautionary tale is that if that is in the written constitution of the Irish Republic, and if two really able left-wing social engineers and reformers do not even know that or the value it would have in their work, it surely must give us pause when we make exaggerated claims for what is in Part 1. Part 1 is certainly not intended to be legally enforceable—it creates no proper enforceable duty—and it is not intended to be funded in any way. The guide which the Government Equalities Office has given us says on page 15: ""The duty will not require public bodies to spend additional resources; nor will they necessarily need to rethink existing projects or programmes, and develop new ones, although they may choose to do that in some cases"."