Equality Bill

My Lords, I shall speak first to Amendment 110. The new equality duty will follow the same structure as the current race, disability and gender duties, with specific duties sitting underneath the general duty to help public bodies to better perform the equality duty. Those specific duties will be introduced through secondary legislation and will include the steps outlined in the policy statement published earlier this week, on 25 January. Copies of that have been placed in the House Libraries; they may well also be in the Public Bill Office. Noble Lords will see from the document that we want the public bodies that will be subject to the specific duties to report annually on their progress against their equality objectives. We also want public bodies to publish their gender pay gaps and BME and disabled employment rates in such a manner that citizens can track progress and compare public bodies. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, mentioned the need for flexibility. We believe that secondary legislation is the right place to set out these detailed procedures, since it gives us greater flexibility to change specific requirements if necessary. For example, we may need to make small changes to reporting timescales or the format of the data that we have required public bodies to report. Amendment 110 would set out in primary legislation process requirements that are better suited to secondary legislation. Further, the amendment would impose data reporting requirements on all public authorities listed in Schedule 19. It would include, for instance, small organisations such as parish councils, on which the reporting requirements could impose disproportionate additional burdens. When we prepare the regulations that contain the specific duties, we intend to consult closely bodies that are likely to be affected. One of the main drivers behind the design of the new suite of specific duties was a move away from processes and towards outcomes. Our proposals for reporting requirements achieve this aim. Just like the noble Lord, we want the outcomes to live up to the ideals to which we all aspire in this Equality Bill. The noble Lord asked whether the process would achieve equality outcomes. The answer is yes. The specific duties will require the setting of equality objectives in the light of evidence, the taking of action towards achieving them and reporting on progress. By these means, we will ensure that the process that we prescribe in the regulations will deliver the outcomes.