Equality Bill

I shall be brief. I personally support the amendment, provided that it is confined to employment. Treating someone in employment less favourably because they are widowed, divorced or unmarried seems to me to be as unfair as doing so l4-cobecause they are married or a woman. We had all this out more than 30 years ago when we were considering the original Sex Discrimination Bill. Reluctantly, we then came to the conclusion that we would not make the change. The problem about doing so is political—that the right honourable William Hague and the Conservative Party have decided to pin their colours to marriage to the exclusion of non-marriage. Many of the right reverend Prelates may also feel that they have to defend marriage as an institution. I am in favour of marriage and defend it as an institution, but I introduced a cohabitation Bill last year to give some protection to those who are not married—unmarried, widowed, divorced and so on. The one very good reason to be in favour of the amendment which has not so far been mentioned is children. The fact is that if employment discrimination is permitted against single parents, whether they are unmarried, widowed or divorced, the people who really suffer in the end are the children. The major social problem of children living with a single parent, or with an unmarried non-civil partner, is a very serious social problem for which we all pay as taxpayers. It leads ultimately to going on social security and so forth. Therefore, there are compelling arguments in favour of the amendment. The main argument against it is that, if it is taken seriously, it will probably lead to hours of debate subsequently. If that were so, I would not be in favour. However, personally, I strongly favour the idea behind the amendment, provided that it is confined to employment. Finally, there is one problem and I do not know whether the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, has thought about it. It is that you do not want to pit married women against single women; married women against widows; or married women against divorced women. The problem about the concept of indirect discrimination is that you have to work out which group you are talking about. If you are talking about, say, single women, you have to ask whether it is right that they should be treated better or worse than married women. This is a mistake that we made in the original Sex Discrimination Bill without thinking about it, by including marriage discrimination in the first place. No one has noticed it for the past 30 years, but it is true that there are some situations in which married women might seek to have greater rights than single women. That may be an argument for not extending this to indirect discrimination, but it is not an argument for not extending it to direct discrimination.