Equality Bill

My Lords, I declare an interest in that the founder of Saga and his son were both very good friends of mine and I worked closely with them. Having run Age Concern’s insurance and travel services, I am jealous of the advertising that Saga has had this afternoon in your Lordships' House. We, too, had specialist services for people over 50, which still go on. The purpose of the Bill is to make it illegal to discriminate in a harmful way against people in the protected categories or because of protected characteristics; it is not to get rid of the benefits. It we took the Bill to its logical conclusion, we could not have boy scouts, girl guides or youth holidays. We could not do all sorts of things that we take for granted and that are of benefit to our society, and bring together groups of people who have common interests. I think not only of state benefits but of all sorts of other activities which people enjoy and which are beneficial to society. The Bill is obviously not just about older people, although we all have a tremendous interest in making sure that older people do not lose out because of it. However, I feel strongly that that is not its intention. As a member of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, I would be very worried if it was going to try to enforce something which harmed older or younger people. We have to distinguish between legitimate exceptions. An exception is legitimate if there are higher actuarial risks in a form of insurance. For example, if you are over 80 and go on holiday to the United States for over a month, the actuarial risks are demonstrated to be greater for certain categories of people than for others, and it is quite justifiable to charge more because of them. That is not the same as saying, "We will not insure you at all, because you have had a certain number of birthdays", or, "We will not allow you to have credit from a bank", or "We will not allow you, however good a driver you are, to hire a car". That is harmful discrimination. We are talking here about getting rid of that but keeping legitimate exceptions which mean that risk has to be paid for. Insurance and holiday companies are not charities but businesses, and they are legitimately able to charge to recover their costs and to cover their risks. We have to get that absolutely right in our minds, but make sure that benefits such as the Freedom Pass, cheaper hairdressing for older people on a certain day and TV licence benefits are not caught by the Bill. I am really worried that people will need to be reassured, and I hope the Minister will reassure me that the guidance and the regulations will clarify the position so that we will not worry that older people, or indeed younger people, are to be less well catered for because of this Bill and that we will be certain that this Bill will improve their quality of life, because that is what we all want. I hope very much the Minister can reassure us completely so that the noble Baroness, Lady Knight, who always makes such a good case for older people, can be as reassured as I am that this Bill is going to do good things, not harmful things, to older people.