My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Hussein-Ece, and the noble Lords, Lord Low and Lord Crisp, for supporting me on the amendment. This is by way of trying to be helpful. As the Government, in their wisdom, chose to alter our equalities framework, we thought that we would take them at their word and make even more improvements. I suspect that the amendment is not perfect, but I hope that it gives the gist.
I acknowledge, as was outlined by the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, when she was in her place, that the balance of accountability has already started to shift. I should also say, as a member of the Government who put the 2010 Act on the statute book and supported the Equality Act 2006, that perhaps we did not get it quite right then. This is an attempt to remedy that. The amendment amends the Equality Act 2006 so that Parliament can have a greater say in appointment to the EHRC, its budget setting and its reporting.
The EHRC put forward a proposal that required the commission to lay its business plans before Parliament, achieving, as he put it, an optimal balance between independence, accountability and transparency. I recommend
Members of the Committee to read what the commission said in its document of 2011, Building a Fairer Britain: Reform of the Equality and Human Rights Commission. That discusses in detail what the balance between independence, accountability and transparency should be. This amendment is drawn very largely from those proposals.
Parliamentary accountability was recommended also by the Joint Committee on Human Rights, which stated that,
“the standard model of non-departmental public body accountability is [not] a sufficiently outward and visible guarantee of independence from the government to be appropriate to a national human rights commission (or indeed the proposed single equality body, whether or not integrated with a human rights commission)”.
Similar constitutional bodies with a role in holding the Government to account, such as the National Audit Office, report directly to Parliament, as do other national human rights institutions such as the Scottish Human Rights Commission, which is accountable to the Scottish Parliament.
Furthermore, the previous and current chairs of the UN International Coordinating Committee endorsed this model. In June 2011, the then chair of the ICC, Rosslyn Noonan, wrote to Theresa May MP and the noble Lord, Lord McNally, stating:
“The challenge is in the nature of the accountability, which should not be, as proposed, to an agency of the government, but should be to the Parliament … Providing an individual government agency (other than the official Auditor) with active oversight powers would undermine the independence of the NHRI in relation to its monitoring of that agency”.
To this end, we tabled this amendment, which seeks to change the balance of accountability of the EHRC in accordance with the Paris principles that gave our EHRC its “A” status.
I hope that this will be seen in the light of trying to start a discussion. The amendment will strengthen the commission’s accountability to Parliament, thereby making it better able to fulfil its mandate as Britain’s equality regulator and national human rights institution. It covers the appointment of commissioners and the chief executive of the EHRC and includes requirements for the commission to lay annual reports and strategic plans before Parliament and for the commission’s budget to be subject to approval by a resolution of each House of Parliament.
The commission has a strategy responsibility to assess how the Government are complying with their domestic and international equality and human rights obligations. It will do that job very much better if parliamentary accountability provides it with the appropriate independence from government. I mean any Government, not just this Government. I include what I hope will be my own Government after 2015. That is the right way to go. It is not always comfortable for Governments to be held to account in this way on their equalities and human rights record, but it is vital that they are.
In addition, this approach will offer long-term consistency of accountability arrangements to the commission. This will overcome some of the major difficulties recognised in the establishment of the commission, which to date has had a number of different sponsor departments. Again, I hold my own
Government responsible for the movement of the Government Equalities Office and therefore for the commission. I understand that it is now on the move from the Home Office to the DCMS; a machinery of government announcement was made just before Christmas. Frankly, that is not consistent. We will have a few months of planning blight, because that is what happens when departments have to move their base and find themselves a new home. I do not think that that is a particularly good move, but if the commission is accountable to Parliament for its work, that will help and perhaps, as the future unfolds, we will find a permanent home in government for the Government Equalities Office. That would be a very good idea.
This does not mean that Ministers and the Government do not have responsibility for the overarching policy and the policy framework through which our equalities and human rights legislation should take place. That is not the purpose of this amendment; its purpose is to make the EHRC a more effective and accountable body to our Parliament. I beg to move.