My Lords, I, too, welcome the forthright statement by the Minister that caste discrimination is unacceptable, unfair and must be eliminated. However, I disagree with the diagnosis that she offered, which involves a delay at least until the end of the year before anything positive is done. I think that your Lordships will agree with the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries of Pentregarth, that, having spent three years since the Equality Act waiting for the Government to declare their intentions on Section 9(5)(a), which they could have invoked at any time during that period, it is now time for your Lordships to make a decision on how we deal with this matter in law.
The basis of the argument about this proposal has shifted radically since your Lordships agreed to give the Government the power to extend by order the
protected characteristic of race to include caste. At that time, the Government were not satisfied that discrimination on the grounds of caste existed in employment, education or the delivery of services. Now, three years later, from the Prime Minister downwards the Government accept that people in the United Kingdom do suffer discrimination on the grounds of caste, and that action needs to be taken against it.
They believe, however, that, unlike with discrimination on the grounds of any of the protected characteristics that are already dealt with in the Equality Act—age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex and sexual orientation—caste is unique in being susceptible to treatment merely by education and conciliation. This is clearly a vain hope, as we see from the history of racial discrimination. The noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, mentioned the repeated efforts of Fenner Brockway in the 1950s and 1960s, which, as I remember very well, fell on stony ground. Before the 1976 Act, introduced by my late friend Lord Jenkins of Hillhead, provided legal remedies for victims of racial discrimination in employment, education and the delivery of services, the Race Relations Board provided education and conciliation but those remedies were ineffective.
The Government say that there is no consensus for this amendment. I remember that the Conservative Opposition in the Commons, led by Mr Quintin Hogg as he then was, were against the 1968 Race Relations Bill on the grounds that it was unfair to private employers. As your Lordships know, many employers today would like to be able to discriminate on grounds of sexual orientation. There is no consensus there, but it did not stop us from legislating.
There is a consensus in favour of legislation among all the organisations in this country that represent the Dalits and other groups that are on the receiving end of caste discrimination, as we saw from the BBC “Newsnight” programme last week. Those bodies that have expressed concern draw their members from the higher castes. I challenge the Minister to produce a single Dalit who belongs to any of them.
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We have considered the memorandum circulated by the Hindu Forum on behalf of a number of these organisations that speak for the higher castes. The members of the forum still believe that there is no caste discrimination in this country. If that is so, why are they concerned? According to them, it is because the Hindu community feels deeply insulted by the very idea that caste prejudice, still endemic in south Asia, has accompanied some migrants from the subcontinent on their journey to the UK. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Harries, has said, caste is not peculiar to the Hindus; it is a cultural phenomenon that affects Sikhs, Jains and Buddhists as well, and it would be extraordinary if it were the only aspect of the culture of the Dharmic communities that was left behind when people came here from Gujarat or West Bengal.
Hindus did not feel insulted when, as a result of pressure from great men like Mahatma Gandhi and Ambedkar, caste discrimination was prohibited under
the Indian constitution in 1950. It was recognised that the law was not directed against Hindus as such, or indeed any other religion. There is no reason why, if this amendment is passed, it should be seen as a slur on whole communities that contribute significantly to our national society.
Recently, the Government started claiming that caste is a complex matter and that this amendment would impose an expensive burden on industry. If an employer does not have staff from the Indian subcontinent there would be no burden at all, but where there are such workers, as caste is an aspect of race, the bosses would already have to be familiar with their duties towards those workers.
The Talk for a Change programme mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Harries, touted as an alternative to legislation, does not involve employers at all but is said to involve a dialogue between organisations that are pro-legislation and anti-legislation. That is a pointless exercise, providing no remedy for the victims of discrimination.
My honourable friend the Minister in another place, Jo Swinson, for whom I have a great deal of respect, trotted out the original argument from 2010 that we have no clear evidence on the extent of caste discrimination. She may be right in thinking that the number of cases that would potentially be covered is quite small, as the Hindu Forum believes. The same is probably true of gender reassignment cases but it was never suggested, as far as I know, that victims of discrimination on those grounds should be entitled only to an inferior degree of protection or to none at all. I hope that we are all agreed that discrimination against any person on grounds of any innate personal characteristic is wrong in principle and that all should receive the same protection.
Late in the day the Government woke up to the fact that it was going to be difficult to fend off the challenge posed by your Lordships on this issue, and started looking for a compromise. Would you compromise with racism, misogyny or homophobia? Of course not. Nor would you go back to the days when their victims had no legal redress. This is a unique opportunity to deal effectively with a problem that blights the lives of its victims because, if we accept the Government’s invitation to try out the remedies that failed with every other protected characteristic, we, and the Dalits, may never get another chance.