Equality Bill

My Lords, what a lot of lovely questions and quite rightly, too, as this is a rather important debate. As I mentioned in my introduction, this amendment is being brought forward—yes, it is a government amendment and it is a government Bill—as a consequence of the deliberations and agreements which were made in the Speaker’s Conference. It comes from all parties working together under the aegis of the Speaker, who established the conference to consider and make recommendations on how to improve the representation of women, the disabled and minority ethnic people in the House of Commons so that it better reflects society. The conference could also agree to consider other associated matters. It is a government amendment but it comes with the authority—if I may put it like that—of the other political parties, although I accept the comments of the noble Baroness about the views of the right honourable David Cameron about sexual orientation and so on. This is not to do with quotas. We do not want the sort of quotas referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Alton. What we are attempting to do, as was said by the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, is to have a better view of the people who are representing us. All parties involved in the Speaker’s Conference believe that to have a healthy democracy we need healthy representation, which involves representation from all sections of our society. In many ways we do not know, at present, who our representatives are because we do not have the data. This is a means of collecting that data. We do not have all the fine details; they have to be worked out with the political parties, the Electoral Commission and the Equality and Human Rights Commission. It is very early days but I can assure noble Lords that we will involve all these individuals and bodies when bringing forward the regulations. The collected raw data are not enough to change things, of course. I accept entirely that we have to change the culture. However, we need these data to be catalysts for change. Noble Lords have spoken about the statistical accuracy of the data, and I draw their attention to the provision in subsection (7)(b) which is designed to ensure that the statistics published are not distorted by the number of people who decline to provide information. I stress this point—individuals do not have to provide the information; it is purely voluntary. This responds to the very important points about sensitivity made by the noble Baroness, Lady Morris. We must be sensitive toward those individuals who do not wish to provide the information, but we must also be sensitive in the way in which we use the information. The experience that the noble Baroness has in these issues is valuable and we could use it to our benefit. I hope that we can have a dialogue and the noble Baroness will work on this issue, so that we can use her experience when drawing up the regulations.