Equality Act 2010 (Specific Duties) Regulations 2011

The general duty is in Section 149 and I have already said what it covers. I obviously did not do it very well, but that is where the general duty is. I was trying to explain that these extra obligations, on every public authority, really are an example, in my view, of overregulation. The noble Lord, Lord Waddington—who does not like the legislation, and has always made that absolutely clear, with the reasons given again and again in previous debates—rightly says that he is against overregulation. He referred to the Red Tape Challenge. The Minister will correct me if I am wrong but my understanding is that the Red Tape Challenge, which asked the public what they thought about the regulation under the Equality Act, disclosed that about 95 per cent of respondents expressed overwhelming support for the scheme that he dislikes so much, and the remaining 5 per cent included some who wanted it to go further. If one takes any regard of public consultation, that is a vote of confidence in the scheme, however much the noble Lord, Lord Waddington, and those around him may dislike it. One is entitled to take account of that since the Government did so. I am totally opposed to overregulation, and I want just to give one example of what worries me when a body such as the Equality and Human Rights Commission has responsibility for monitoring. In my professional capacity I was consulted by the Commission for Racial Equality about a scheme involving Crossrail. The question was whether digging a large hole in the ground in a particular part of London would be directly or indirectly racially discriminatory against people of Bangladeshi origin, and therefore whether the whole scheme might have to be stopped as a result. It seemed to me, if I may say so, a strange thing to ask me to advise on, but that is what happens in life. I then called for the race equality impact assessments that would have been made and were relevant to this under the previous legislation. I discovered that there were 100 pages from the Department of Transport, separate submissions by each of the three London boroughs affected, a separate submission by the Mayor of London and a separate one from Transport for London. One had this bulky mountain of paper, none of which had ever been read by the monitoring agency, in a cupboard that no one had ever opened. That seemed to me to be an example of creating paper mountains through overregulation of a completely pointless kind. When I was constructing my own Private Member’s Bill it was impressed on me by people from Northern Ireland who had great experience in monitoring that one must go for targeted monitoring by a body that is capable of doing the job. I do not think that the Equality and Human Rights Commission at the moment is capable of doing the job. It requires a great deal of professional expertise which is lacking and is very difficult to do. I therefore welcome the fact that the Government have sensibly produced specific duties that are capable of being carried out and have said that we will treat it as an experiment for two years, at the end of which we will suck it and see whether we need more or less regulation. That seems entirely desirable. Therefore, I could not possibly support the noble Lord, Lord Low, if he were to divide the House, which I hope he will not. As for the amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Waddington, when the Equality Bill was going through Parliament, as the Explanatory Notes make clear, the right to freedom of religion was specifically taken into account, as was freedom of conscience. My view is that there is nothing whatever in that Act, or in the way it has been interpreted by the courts or, in my judgment, in Strasbourg, that infringes on freedom of religion or freedom of conscience. I do not refer to the way in which it has been interpreted by the Daily Mail or in stupid reactions by ignorant people, or others. There are cases pending in Strasbourg.