Equality Bill

My memory is normally terrible, but I think what happened was that the House did approve them, the Commons disagreed and then by compromise Clause 13 was put in. Perhaps that is beside the point at the moment. The point I am making is that all of this happened then. A concession was made, there has been no subsequent case in which the concession was ever needed, because in practice the Human Rights Act did not affect the churches, but the same kinds of concerns were then expressed. The Equality Bill gives very strong protection to the rights and freedoms of the churches and religious organisations and, if I can take up the word used by the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of York, I agree with him that magnanimity is of the essence. The Government have in fact, although you would not think so from some of the responses, been magnanimous in the way that they have included Amendment 99A. I am not going to go over the ground on this amendment, but I would like to explain about the framework directive because it is really important. UK law has to implement the directive and it is important for the Bill to ensure full compatibility. In my view, it does so if it is amended as the Government propose and if its present text is approved. The Bill and Amendment 99A maintain a fair balance between conflicting rights and freedoms and meet the obligations under the directive. In the Amicus case, the High Court held that Regulation 7(3) of the old regulations does not interfere with rights under Article 8(1) of the convention and that it strikes a fair balance. As I have explained, however, the problem about Amendments 98 and 99, which I very much hope will not be approved today, is that they overreach in seeking to widen further the rights of churches and religious organisations to discriminate because of someone’s sexuality. They are not compatible—I would love to know whether the Minister and her legal advisers agree with this—with the UK’s obligations under the directive. You will be glad to know that I am not going to quote the directive. It goes into great detail. The current wording reflects current law. The Government amendment is even clearer and faithfully reflects the scope of the exception currently in the old employment regulations. I am glad that the Minister has clarified that Amendment 99A would not permit sexual orientation discrimination against those involved in youth work. I consider that Amendment 100 would allow, although that may not be the intention, arbitrary and disproportionate discrimination by religious organisations and therefore should not be accepted.