Equality Bill

My Lords, it is a privilege to open a debate of such importance and interest to so many people. I am grateful for the support that I have received from many noble Lords for what we seek to achieve. In particular, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Winchester and the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, for co-sponsoring my amendments. Unfortunately, due to the timing of this debate, the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, has had to go to Strasbourg to fulfil his commitments to the Council of Europe. However, he supports the amendments. I intend to test the opinion of the Committee on these amendments. Organisations that are based on deeply held beliefs must be free to choose their staff on the basis of whether they share those beliefs. It would, for example, be appalling if the Labour Party could be sued for not selecting Conservative candidates and no one would want to see Greenpeace sued for refusing to appoint oil executives to its board of directors. A belief in freedom of association demands that, even if we do not share the beliefs of an organisation, we must stand up for its liberty to choose its own leaders and representatives. That, in essence, is what this debate is all about. I accept that the Government intend to protect the freedom of churches to choose their own staff, but their wording does not mirror that intention. The exemption in paragraph 2 to Schedule 9 to the Bill allows churches to discriminate on the grounds of sex, sexual orientation and marital status when making appointments to key religious posts. An exemption along these lines has existed for more than 30 years. Some think that this is special pleading for the churches, but the principle of exemptions is widely accepted, not just for religion. Paragraph 1 of this schedule is a general employment exemption that applies when being of a particular race, sex or other protected characteristic is a crucial requirement for a particular job. This makes perfect sense. My next point has already been mentioned today, but how would a rape crisis centre operate if it was forced to employ male counsellors? Beyond the employment sphere, Schedules 3 and 6 contain broad exemptions for insurance, political posts and for Parliament itself. Clause 193 even contains an exemption for sport, so the churches are not alone in needing limited exemptions from discrimination law in order to allow them to function normally. It has been said that paragraph 2 is intended to be nothing more than a restatement of existing exemptions for religion. However, the Government have tinkered with the wording. Whereas the key phrase, ""employment is for the purposes of an organised religion"," was previously undefined, the Government decided to insert a new definition, contained in paragraph 2(8). In addition, whereas previous legislation did not include the qualifying word "proportionate", that word now appears twice in paragraph 2. If the Government’s intention was to maintain the status quo, as they have said continuously since April 2009, why not use the same wording? After all, it has been in use without difficulty since 1975, when it was incorporated in the Sex Discrimination Act. By tinkering, they have caused enormous concern among religious groups. It is essential that the wording is returned to what it was. All the religious groups and their lawyers say that the result of my amendments would be the retention of the status quo. That is what we want—nothing more and nothing less. Many noble Lords will have received briefing in support of Amendments 98, 99 and 100 from the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church. Support, however, goes much wider than that. A letter pleading specifically for all three of these amendments was sent to the Government in November last year, signed by numerous religious groups, including the Hindu Council UK, Sikhs in England, the Jain Network, the Muslim Council of Great Britain, the Fellowship of Independent Evangelical Churches and many other Christian groups. These are the very groups that the Government intend should be protected by paragraph 2. These are the ones whose religious liberty is now at stake. If we get this wrong, these are the ones who will have to pay the legal bills to defend themselves in court. The religious groups, particularly the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church, have made representations to the Government on this issue since the Bill was published in April last year. Until two weeks ago, the Government denied that paragraph 2 caused any problems and refused to budge. Now, at the 11th hour, they have admitted that there is a problem and have tabled Amendment 99A. It is a slight improvement, but they still have not got it right. For a church post to be exempt, paragraph (b) in Amendment 99A requires proof that the post exists to promote or explain the religion. The Church of England briefing that we all received last week says that paragraph (b) leaves, ""an unacceptable amount of legal uncertainty"." The briefing states: ""Although Ministers may say that ‘exists to’ does not mean ‘exists only to’, our legal advice is that that does not reflect the natural meaning of the words and that [subsection] (b) as drafted would require promoting or representing the religion, or explaining its doctrine, to be the defining characteristic of the job. That is highly problematic because many roles in the Church of England that involve promoting or representing the religion could not simply be described as ‘existing’ for such a purpose. Many posts require their holders to carry out multiple functions, some of which would involve promoting or representing the Church, while other functions of the same post would not"." The briefing concludes that the government Amendment will leave the churches worse off than under existing law. This is very serious. We cannot accept the government Amendment. We have been forced into the position of having a vote at Committee because of government Amendment 99A. The doctrine of pre-emption means that I could not bring my own amendments back at Report if Amendment 99A went through today. We must vote to decide the issue now. I wish the Committee to consider all three of my amendments as a group. They are a package. They seek to maintain the status quo by taking out the changes inserted by the Government. Amendments 98 and 99 would remove the new proportionality tests. Amendment 100 would remove the new definition of organised religion. Amendments 99 and 100 are therefore consequential on Amendment 98. The Minister may take a different view on what is consequential. I am sure that she will explain her view when she speaks. For my part, I invite the Committee to regard Amendments 98, 99 and 100 as a package and to vote accordingly. The other package on offer today is the Government’s Amendment 99A. Due to the fact that it offers an alternative definition of organised religion from the one already in the Bill, it also requires Amendment 100 to go through. It seems a little complicated, but a single Division will decide the matter: if the Committee supports Amendment 98, it is rejecting Amendment 99A; if the Committee rejects Amendment 98, then the Government get their way and Amendment 99A goes into the Bill. My package of amendments represents the legal status quo, which is supported by the Church of England, the Roman Catholic Church and others. The Government’s package represents a change in the wording of religious exemptions that is not supported by the churches. I beg to move.