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Equality and Human Rights Commission

Answer

As I said to the Joint Committee on Human Rights when it called me in to give evidence, the chief executive of the Equality and Human Rights Commission had left her post. Especially because the Equality Bill was going through the House of Commons and the House of Lords, I felt that we needed continuity of leadership, and therefore that it was right to reappoint the chair and vice-chair. Obviously, we were then going to need to find new commissioners and a new chief executive, but we did not want a wholesale change of personnel in this important organisation at a critical time. Hon. Members should look at the substance of the work that has been done by the commission. They should look at the important inquiry into sex discrimination in the financial sector; the important legal challenge to the apartheid constitution of the British National party; the work on the unfairness to agency workers in the meat packing industry; and the important evidence the commission gave on the question of the default retirement age. The question is this: are hon. Members—I exclude the hon. Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon (Dr. Harris), who asked the question, from this, because I accept his good faith—interested in discrimination against people on the ground of age, discrimination against agency workers, and discrimination against women in the financial services sector? Members from the official Opposition are having a go at the commission as a proxy for the fact that they do not like the onward march of equality.

Secondary information

Type

Oral question

Reference

507 c967-8 

Session

2009-10

Oral question type

Supplementary

Chamber / Committee

House of Commons chamber

Subjects

Equality and Human Rights Commission

Link

View this Oral question on www.publications.parliament.uk