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Equality Bill [HL]

I understand the object of this group of amendments. I wish to speak to the other amendments in the group because they are all linked. I shall look particularly at Amendment No. 55, which suggests that equalities committees of various kinds should be engrafted into to the Bill. I have great sympathy with the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Lockwood, that we should not fetter the powers of the new commission. We would be doing a disservice to the new commission if as Parliament we fettered it by imposing a committee system of the kind envisaged in Amendment No. 55, quota systems or anything else. I am happy with Schedule 1, provided that we can achieve agreement on independence and a way of achieving a proper system of appointments. I am happy with how it is expressed in paragraph 2. It describes the criteria for appointment as being,"““experience and knowledge relating to the matters in respect of which the Commission has functions””." It then lists discrimination on the various grounds and human rights. If we attempt to write into the Bill a lot of over-prescriptive stuff of one kind or another, we will, if we are not careful, undermine the cohesiveness of a unified single commission. In my Private Member’s Bill, in deference to the disability lobby, I made a concession that would have created a disability committee. I did so partly because the Disability Rights Commission was so new and it seemed politically necessary to do so. Of course, once one does that, every other group says, ““Me too””. Before you know where you are, you have a Balkanisation or splitting up of the commission into different interest groups. We should not do that. The chairman, commissioners and senior staff should be left to work out the best structures for achieving the objectives of the Bill. I approve of the way in which that is done in Schedule 1, leaving it to general criteria rather than more specific and intrusive provision. For those reasons, although I sympathise with the aims that the noble Lord, Lord Ouseley, explained, I am not really in favour of the means set out in the amendments.