Equality Bill

The noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, has graciously suggested that I precede him in supporting this amendment, which I very strongly do for the reasons that I set out at Second Reading, which I will not repeat now. I simply want to examine some of the Government’s hesitations about including caste discrimination in the Bill in the first place. It is very widely accepted, and accepted by the Government, that the caste system has been imported into this country through the south Asian diaspora. The Government still query whether, although this is very widespread and distressing, it has actually impacted in the fields of employment, education and the provision of public goods and services, with which this Bill is concerned. That is what I want to address. First, however, I should like to emphasise the educational effect of a law such as this. Sadly, racial abuse is still around in our society. However, if we think back 20 or 30 years ago, we can recall the extent of racial abuse and how, if not eliminated, it has at least been damped down by the Race Relations Act. That legislation has had a huge educational effect. Terms of abuse that were previously regarded as acceptable are now regarded as totally unacceptable. The evidence of children from dalit communities—I use that phrase; the old phrase, as we know, is "untouchable"—is that a very high percentage of them are the subject of terms of abuse. Some of their stories are very distressing indeed. What is even more surprising is the evidence from universities. Students from these communities find themselves ganged up against, not only abused but isolated and harassed in various ways. Including the term "caste" in the Bill in one way or another would have a huge educational effect. Secondly, the point has been made to us so strongly that these affected communities do feel deeply discriminated against. That is what they feel and I think that the figures speak for themselves. The survey done by the Anti Caste Discrimination Alliance discovered that 45 per cent of people whom it contacted felt that they had either been treated in a negative way by their co-workers or had dismissive comments made about them because of their caste. Noble Lords may ask, if they are feeling like this, why do they not go to the Equalities and Human Rights Commission and seek a legal case? We put that to some of the dalit community leaders who had met a group of us previously and they pointed out that, for many of them, there is the fear of losing their job. One example given was of someone from Coventry who was badly discriminated against, and in order to draw attention to it they went on hunger strike. Thank goodness it was a sensitive management which saw that something was wrong and managed to ensure that it did not happen any more. However, it should not have to depend on someone going on hunger strike to draw attention to the fact that they are being discriminated against. The second point that was made to us was that members of this community are the product of centuries of marginalisation. Many of them do not feel confident or powerful enough to go to a body such as the EHRC in order to bring a legal case. The third point made to us was that at the moment there is no clear remedy in the law. If there was a clear remedy in the law, they might have that much more confidence to draw these examples of discrimination to the attention of the proper authorities. The Government have said that they do not feel that there is enough evidence of discrimination in these spheres to include this provision in the Bill. They seem to have paid attention to their own report, to which there were only 19 replies gathered over only two weeks. Apparently that is one of the main reasons why they did not include this in the Bill. However, the report Hidden Apartheid—Voice of the Community by the Anti Caste Discrimination Alliance is the result of interviews with more than 300 people over a long period of time. The evidence of discrimination it brought forward simply reinforces the evidence brought forth by other dalit organisations over many years and is very distressing. The Government moved in relation to transgender people, who I suppose number 2,500, on the basis of the stories they had heard. I suggest to the Government that the mass of evidence of real, distressing discrimination now provided by the dalit organisations is far stronger than the evidence upon which they acted in the past. I stress that I support what the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, said about the amendment in this group tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Lester of Herne Hill. There is clearly an argument for including discrimination on the ground of descent in the Bill as an alternative to the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, provided that the word "caste" is clearly mentioned as a major way in which discrimination on grounds of descent might operate. In one way or another, the word "caste" must be included. This is a serious issue in this country. The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, said that about 200,000 people are affected. The figure put to me is that it could be up to about 500,000. There is hidden apartheid here. We all know that internationally this is a vast and distressing problem. The international struggle against caste discrimination is of even larger proportions than the struggle against apartheid. I hope that the Government will be minded either to accept the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, or the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Lester, provided that, if they accept that amendment, they make it clear that they will include the word "caste" one way or another.