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Equality Bill [HL]

I am grateful to the noble Lord,   Lord Goodhart, for setting out so clearly the   amendments before us. There is a long and comprehensive list of amendments. Certainly, I would happily support some of the amendments, but taking the package as a whole, I have some reservations. In Committee, we need to remove some of the powers that are given to the Secretary of State to make the commission completely independent of being directed by the Secretary of State. But I am not sure whether creating another committee, as is proposed under the amendments, is the answer to the problem. It will be a completely new structure and I would not want it in any way to fetter the freedom of the new commission to carry out its responsibilities under the Act. With regard to the financial amendments, in particular, I know it has been suggested that in the past the Secretary of State might have tried to interfere on the financial side. During my days as chairman of the EOC, we would certainly have wished to have more finances than we did. But that was not a question of interference; it was a question of the adequacy of the funding, which is an entirely different matter, whichever form of answerability the commission has. I give way to the noble Lord.