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Equality Bill [HL]

I always try to think about the themes that might come out of the amendments that have been tabled. When I was thinking about this Bill, three themes struck me for today’s debate. The first is independence, which we discussed with reference to the previous group of amendments. The second is what I call ““freedom of action”” or the ability of the commission to operate without being fettered—I think that that was the word used by the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia. The third is lists. Noble Lords who have worked with me on other Bills will know that I have a particular thing about lists, precisely because we end up unable to move or to take action in an appropriate manner because we have confined ourselves entirely by lists in the legislation or because we have missed someone off. I promise the Committee that if we go down the road of lists we will end up on our next day in Committee or on Report with another set of lists and, as a result, as my noble friend Lady Lockwood said, we shall have more lists than commissioners. The Committee will not be surprised that I agree with the vast number of Members who have spoken in this debate. I am very reluctant to go down the prescriptive route put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Ouseley, in terms of what numbers from different representative groups ought to be part of the commission. Having said that, I completely understand the point that the noble Lord makes. The commission needs to reflect the society that it seeks to serve. From the point of view of the commissioners, if it does not do so it will have automatically failed. So if it ends up being representative of only one group in our society, it would not be a success. Where the noble Lord perhaps goes too far with his amendment is that it does not allow us to think about   the expertise and experience, as the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, said, that could be brought to bear on a commission. That might rest in a variety of people who do not necessarily come from a particular ethnic group, who are not necessarily women or disabled, or who represent any other group, but who, because of the work that they have done, we can truly say are committed to the kind of society that we want to create. For those reasons I will resist what the noble Lord, Lord Ouseley, seeks to do, but with the understanding that I will consider us to have failed if we do not have a commission that represents our society in some way. I am also going to resist, of course, what I call the almost federal structure in terms of committees. We have been very clear in the Bill and we have tried very hard to make sure that Scotland and Wales are represented through a committee, which is absolutely right. As the Committee will know from Second Reading, because of the particular role of the Disability Rights Commission in terms of reasonable adjustments, we have set up, for a period of time, a particular disability committee. But I am very reluctant to go further. I have met with representatives from different groups, not least from the Greater London Assembly, to talk about London in particular. I accept that London is a distinct case. It is a very diverse city that will look very different in the next five to 10 years and there are certain issues to address. But it is for the commission to decide the committees that it wishes to have. The more that we create through the Bill only one set of committees, the more we hamper it to do precisely the job that Members of the Committee who have argued for independence want it to do; that is, to think cross-cutting and to think out of silos. The noble Baroness, Lady O’Cathain, is not with us today, but she will be joining us for the next day of debate. She talked about silos very powerfully at Second Reading and about not creating a silo mentality in the way we put together the committees, but to allow the commission to be cross-cutting, to be strategically thinking and to look at issues in the right way. It is for those reasons that I will resist these amendments, but I take on board what lies behind them, as, I think, other Members of the Committee have done. On that basis, I hope that the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw his amendment.