Equality Bill

My Lords, I strongly support the thrust of the amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Lester, even though, as he points out, they are ineffective today. I also very much hope that he will induce the Government to think again about whether their existing powers could be put to good effect, because if in fact they are not going to be put to good effect by, I assume, another government department, then they ought to be restated in this Bill. I also share the noble Lord’s view that the requirement that further work should be done on the various procedures within the civil courts is quite unnecessary. As a member of the Merits Committee, we dealt with three Crown Court or civil jurisdiction regulations today, without the slightest difficulty, and I do not see the slightest difficulty in having regulations in relation to discrimination quite separate from anything else that comes. It is a perfectly simple thing to do. The wording of the regulations would have to go through the civil courts procedure committee, and no doubt there is another committee, the name of which escapes me, which would also have to look at it. Those are purely and simply procedural matters, to get to the point that the noble Lord is making, and it is well overdue. One very simple point, which has already been pointed out by the noble Lord and by the noble Baroness, Lady Turner, is that it is inefficient to use a single person when that single person is representing a lot of other people. It would be much more efficiently done, and actually better for the employers, if they knew the extent of those who were involved in this, and everybody knew where they stood. It would be more efficient from the point of view of everybody. It therefore seems to be well overdue.