With the greatest respect to the hon. Gentleman, our party has made it very clear what we believe. Mr Wadham can speak for himself, but I must first point out that he is not the chair of the organisation. Secondly, the Equality and Human Rights Commission has made it clear that it has changed its position on this matter. Thirdly, we are hardly going to find a senior member of an agency such as the commission seeking to have a public row with its Minister. However, I think we all know exactly what people in the commission think. I was told that the last time we discussed this matter in the House, Opposition Members were being cheered on by employees of the commission who were
watching the debate. I am sure that they are watching this debate right now, and that they will have listened with interest to what the hon. Gentleman has just said.
The Minister should also reflect on what the majority of her party’s members think about this issue. They cannot fathom why she and the Business Secretary are making all these changes to people’s rights at work, to the role of the commission and so on. My hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South (Ian Murray), the shadow Minister for employment relations has told me about his trip to the Liberal Democrats’ spring conference last month. He spoke at a fringe meeting on employment rights—I did not know he was going to do that—at which the Minister tried to justify all these changes. My understanding is that people walked out of that room in disgust at the measures that she is trying to push through today. I have, of course, castigated my hon. Friend for forgetting to take Labour party membership forms with him to dish out; he will take a big box of them next time. We support the Lords amendments in this respect.
Let me turn now to deal with caste discrimination, a matter that has attracted considerable interest outside this House. Labour has a proud history of tackling injustice and discrimination. We believe that people should be able to make the most of their potential opportunities—whatever their race, gender, family background or social circumstances. In recent months, organisations such as the Anti-caste Discrimination Alliance have campaigned for stronger action to tackle caste discrimination, and their case has been powerful. Every community group and every faith group to which we have spoken—on either side of the debate in recent days—has been united in the belief that caste discrimination has no place in our country.
We Labour Members thus believe that we must send a strong and clear message today—that caste discrimination is completely unacceptable, and that we support taking more action. That is why we will support the amendment. We need to do more to ensure that the small number of people who face such injustice have access to the redress they deserve and have somewhere to turn to for support.
It is fair to say, however, that some have raised legitimate concerns about the practicalities of how the legislation would work—about its drafting and implementation. We take those practical points seriously and we agree that any new action we take must over time reduce rather than increase the number of people being identified by their caste, eliminating discrimination in the future.