This is not a repeat of the same cast on this subject—I did not mean that and I beg noble Lords’ pardon. I say to the Government that the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, was too kind about the previous Government spending time thinking about whether there was enough trouble here to necessitate legislation. I find it utterly impossible to explain to somebody how it is that in this country we do not apply an absolutely clear rule that people are not discriminated against because of what they are—from people who are homosexual at one end to people who are of a particular colour at the other, or people who happen to have particular views. All of them become vulnerable unless we hold to that view, because we are all a bit odd in one way or another. We expect to be treated perfectly properly whatever our position, background, colour, sexual orientation or anything else.
It is impossible—this is a very difficult thing for a politician to say—to build a case for suggesting that caste is different from any of these other things. Having been a Minister for longer than most, I am always suspicious of Ministers who write letters in which certain sentences are almost incomprehensible. It means that they do not want to write the sentence that they ought to write because they suspect that if it is comprehensible people might think that it is not adequate. I make no such claim in these circumstances. However, those of us who listened to the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, read out a sentence, had some difficulty in understanding what it meant—whether or not we believed that it might mean something with which we might agree.
All that I say to Ministers is that there are no formulations. Whatever may have been written down, there are no formulations which can get out of the
simple statement that it is wrong to discriminate against people on the basis of their caste. I want to say something even tougher. The standards of our nation are not up for grabs. If people want to live in this country according to any system they have to accept the fundamental standards that we have. If you really want to cause difficulties, you do so by saying that “this is a very old view of theirs”, and they have it and it may be pretty nasty: I am afraid that that is not on. In this country we treat everybody equally and properly. That is the basis of our democracy. We cannot accept anything less than that. I do not care what organisation thinks differently.
You could go even further with this argument. You could argue that the positions of all sorts of totalitarian regimes are acceptable, because you can still find some people who support them. But you cannot possibly argue that, and we should not. I hope that the least that the Minister will be able to say is that although this may not be precisely what she wants, she will go away to make sure. I think that there is an overwhelming majority in this House and in the other House who say that caste cannot be treated in any way that is different from race or sexual orientation.