I will speak in support of Lords amendment 37, which would provide people with legal protection against caste discrimination in the workplace.
I have listened intently to the debate. A number of speakers have said that this is a complex issue, including the Minister, the shadow Secretary of State and my hon. Friend the Member for Reading West (Alok Sharma). I regard all those colleagues with great esteem, so I hope that they will forgive my saying that the idea that this is a complex issue is rubbish. This is a straightforward issue. Caste discrimination in the workplace is wrong and the people who suffer from it deserve legal protection. That is the beginning and end of the matter.
To help the Minister, who with the best of intentions has found herself on the wrong side of the argument, I will answer three questions that I expect this Government and the previous Government asked on this issue. Is there evidence of a problem of caste discrimination? Is legislation the best approach? Is a delay to implementation justified?
On whether there is evidence of a problem, I have received a petition signed by more than 300 of my constituents in Bedford and Kempston. I have received representations from the Valmiki community, the Ravidassia community and the Dr Ambedkar Mission Society in Bedford. Those who saw “Newsnight”—a current affairs programme on the BBC—will have seen, towards the end of the programme, personal testimonies from three of my constituents: Mr Ram Dhariwal, Mr Sam Kalyan and, most movingly, Mr Prithi Kaeley.
On behalf of those constituents and many others, I must say that I cannot see how people can argue that there is no evidence of a problem. Some may say that the studies by the Anti Caste Discrimination Alliance and the NIESR did not provide sufficient evidence. Those reports made me angry and made me cry. They made me feel that action on this issue was all the more important.
I repeat what I said to the Minister earlier on the evidence for a problem. She should listen to her colleague, the Under-Secretary of State for International Development, the hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Lynne Featherstone), who said:
“The evidence is compelling—so hopefully the Government who said that they would consider any evidence coming forward will now bring forward their own amendment to include caste.”
We are not talking about caste discrimination in social or personal circumstances. However, I understand that when the Equality Act 2010 was debated, the then Solicitor-General accepted that the evidence showed that caste discrimination was prevalent in personal and social situations. I ask the Government, and in particular the Minister, whether we can rest comfortably on the assumption that discrimination that persists widely in personal and social situations will magically halt at the threshold to the shop floor or the door to the office? That is a hard position to take.
On whether legislation is the right approach, I say to the Government that Talk for a Change is an inappropriate and insufficient measure. The NIESR report advised that education would not be sufficient. I ask the Minister whether she would rest on education alone as the answer to racist or sexist behaviour in the workplace. If not, why should we rest on that alone in this case? On the basis of my constituents’ experiences, I disagree with the argument that caste discrimination is a diminishing issue. Does the Minister not see that the provision of education without the provision of legal remedy is the worst possible solution, because it raises knowledge but does not afford consequences for discriminatory actions?
The current laws do not provide sufficient protection for those who face caste discrimination. I draw the House’s attention to the judgment in the employment tribunal case of Naveed v. Chilli Pink in November 2011, which stated:
“We consider in the light of the above provisions”—
meaning section 9(5) of the Equality Act 2010—
“that the Claimant’s complaint of discrimination based on his caste was doomed to fail… First, no order has yet been made extending section 9 of the Equality Act 2010 so as to provide for caste to amount of itself to an aspect of race.”
The current situation is hostile to people who want to bring discrimination cases based on caste, and delay in that matter is serious.
Hon. Members have already said that we need legislation so that some of those cases can move forward. There was an important case recently. I will not talk about it specifically, but the impediments faced by the person trying to bring the case to justice in terms of understanding among the police of the issues involved, access to legal advice and legal aid, and the personal costs in such circumstances, would put anybody off doing so.
On whether a delay is justified, the EHRC’s position seems perverse—we heard earlier about its flip-flops on other issues. Yesterday, the policy statement on its website stated:
“The Equality and Human Rights Commission supports the enactment of Section 9 (5) of the Equality Act 2010”,
yet after being given this job by the Government, it recently stated:
“What is clear is that caste is an extremely complex area,”.
I would be interested to hear from the Government—perhaps the Minister will respond—whether the EHRC is researching this issue or looking at ways in which companies could move forward with rules on implementation should the Government enact this measure. Would it be possible for the EHRC to bring cases to court or support cases going through the courts?
I tried to intervene earlier on the shadow Secretary of State because I want to be absolutely clear about the position of the Labour party on this issue, and specifically on whether it would like this measure on caste to be enacted. That was not clear from what the shadow Secretary of State said because he also talked about consultation and other things. It would be helpful to have clarification on that. I argue that whether or not the issue of caste is diminishing over time—that may or may not be true—is not material. Discrimination today deserves remedy today. It is no good telling people that we can sort the issue out and that their grandchildren and great grandchildren will be fine. We need a remedy today.