My Lords, I am grateful for the debate on this amendment. It might be worth saying for the record, and for the purposes of clarity, that the amendment that we are debating now is to Section 149 of the Equality Act and that the Bill in front of us does not propose to amend that bit of the Act. This is of course different from the general duty for the Equality and Human Rights Commission, which this Bill will amend. I say that because, as I said in an earlier debate today, it is important to keep reminding ourselves that the two are different things.
Let me say first that I understand the concerns raised in this debate but that I would put myself absolutely shoulder to shoulder with my noble friend Lord Deben in what he says. Like him, I absolutely support equality but I do not support bureaucracy, particularly because I do not want processes to undermine our ability to extend the support for equality beyond those of us who feel passionately about it. It cannot just be the same people who believe in equality; if we are to improve equality in our society, we have to get everybody on board. We need to be mindful of that in how we design our approach to achieving that end. We all want the same thing: the better consideration of equality issues by public bodies when they are designing services and policies. Where I think we differ, and this is obviously what we are debating, is the method for achieving it. I will explain why I believe this Government’s approach is the right one.
The implementation of the public sector equality duty in 2011 marked a significant change in approach compared to previous equality duties. We wanted to move away from the bureaucratic box-ticking and form-filling to make sure we make real progress on equality. I understand that we in the Government have to deliver on that outcome; that is what we will be judged on. We believe that this amendment would be a regression to the previous practice of too much process and bureaucracy, with not enough focus on real equality outcomes.
Because it has been referred to, let me refer directly to the speech made by my right honourable friend the Prime Minister to the CBI about equality impact assessments. This is really a point in response to my noble friend Lady Hussein-Ece, but what the Prime Minister was saying that day was that EIAs are not and never have been a legal requirement to ensure what we are committed to achieving, which is public
services that do not marginalise or discriminate but which ensure that people are treated equally. They are an intensive resource that can take key staff away from planning and delivering better public services.
If that is not bad enough, worse, they are often produced after key decisions are taken, so they can be a sort of reverse-engineering exercise: a decision has been made and the decision-makers then go back and look at the equality impact assessment form, rather than thinking about the effect of their policy on equalities at the time of their forming it. For that reason, departments were asked to call a halt to the production of equality impact assessments. It was not of course to stop in any way their absolute requirement to have due regard to the public sector equality duty.
Public bodies should consider the potential equality impacts of their policies throughout their design and delivery. Records of this can be used as evidence of due regard to the relevant equality aim and there is no need to create additional unnecessary paperwork. The public sector equality review is taking place at this time but it is important to stress, going back to the point made by my noble friend Lord Deben, that we want to make sure that it delivers the outcome that we all seek to achieve. We feel strongly about it and we are absolutely committed to the need for the public sector to deliver policies and services that ensure an outcome in support of everyone. We want to ensure that it delivers that aim.
The noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, asked in a previous debate whether we would be taking evidence. We plan to hold a series of round tables that will allow us to gather evidence from the VCS, legal advisers to public bodies, equality and diversity practitioners, trade unions, inspectorates and the private sector. We are also developing a questionnaire to enable public service professionals to provide their personal experience of working with the duty. The involvement of the Equality and Human Rights Commission in the review is critical and, for this reason, the commission is represented on the independent steering group that oversees the review. We are also working closely with the commission as we develop the evidence-gathering for it. The noble Baroness referred to the Schneider Ross research. In evidence-gathering to date, so far we have focused on analysing existing research and case law, but we will look closely at that research as part of this. I realise that we are keen to make progress, so I hope that in this short debate I have given the noble Baroness enough reassurance for her to withdraw her amendment.