I will listen with interest to the Minister’s response to my noble friend Lady Lister’s amendment. As far as I understand it, the Government will accept British Sign Language—or at least they are saying it is provided for in the code—but they do not wish to put that in the Bill. I will wait with interest to see why that is unnecessary or undesirable since I am not quite sure at the moment what the answer is.
I also want to pursue the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee. I am sure the Minister will put me right if I have misread this, but the language requirements refer to public sector workers. I take it that means that any private sector organisation with customer-facing roles will not be covered by the Bill. I ask the same question as the noble Baroness. Why is
this being geared to the public sector alone? I do not know that I have particular enthusiasm for seeing it apply across the private sector since I have some of the reservations, subject to what the Minister may say, about the extent to which this could lead to some discrimination. No doubt the noble and learned Lord will explain how it is going to work. As I understand it, the definition of speaking fluent English is laid out in the Bill:
“For the purposes of this Part a person speaks fluent English if the person has a command of spoken English which is sufficient to enable the effective performance of the person’s role”.
Who will judge that and decide whether their English is sufficient? Is it open to somebody to complain that that criterion has not been met? If so, what then happens?
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On the issue of the provision appearing to apply only to the public sector, Network Rail is currently in the public sector but the Government are busily looking at whether they can flog it off. Network Rail is responsible for some of our major stations in London and therefore will have staff who meet the public and are involved in talking to and addressing them. Does it mean that we could start off with Network Rail being covered by the Bill but, if it is sold off, it would then cease to be covered by the Bill? That is, this provision is thought to be necessary when people are in the public sector but is no longer considered necessary if those same people doing the same job end up in the private sector.
Likewise, what happens in relation to the National Health Service? What happens if operations are currently conducted in the public sector in the National Health Service but then certain operations are put out to be undertaken in the private sector? Are we being told that this is a vital and necessary piece of legislation if the operation is carried out by the National Health Service in the public sector but it is not necessary if the same operation is outsourced to be dealt with within the private sector of the health service? Some clarification on those points would be much appreciated.