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Equality Bill [HL]

I shall try; I am grateful to the noble Lord for clarifying the position. I shall make a point about the role of the law. I agree with what the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, seeks to do in terms of recognising the importance of the law. It is probably the most vital instrument in promoting change. It is right for the commission to support the laws, both where it has an explicit function set out in discrimination legislation and, in a more general sense, in recognising the contribution of other legislation to tackling inequality and disadvantage. Members of the Committee will agree that the law is a partial instrument, in a sense—that where we want to achieve progress, there needs to be the cultural shift and change to move beyond compliance with the law to embracing equality and human rights positively in everyday attitudes and practice. The Committee will know that those involved in the world of disability, for example, will talk about the fact that legislation is   important, but real involvement, acceptance and participation comes from the cultural shift of attitudes that enables people to see beyond the disability to the person, if I might put it that way. My experience as a Minister for children with special needs and disabilities was very much that inclusion is about what happens to you. It is not about the school to which you go, but the experience that you have. Whether you are black, female, disabled or come from any category—the elderly, the young, whatever—your life experiences of inclusion depend on how people treat you and the way in which they interact with you. The law is critical in that, but it is not the only instrument; we must look beyond that. In the Bill, we are trying to capture some of that and recognise not only the role of the law, but that true inclusion goes beyond that to making sure that we can take action. One difficulty with the amendment is that it defines things in terms of legislation passed by Parliament. The devolved administrations are taking their own paths to deal with equality, human rights and strong communities. We want the commission to be able to operate in those countries. It is a technical point, but one that I shall make in any event so that the Committee will see where I am trying to position the matter in the way in which I have approached it. The law and the breadth of people’s experience are critically important. The clause was drafted very much with the stakeholders involved. They felt very strongly; Members of the Committee will not be surprised to hear that I asked where the clause came from. They sought to capture the point that I have made through the wording of the clause. The noble Baroness, Lady Miller, rightly quoted the letter from the noble Lord, Lord Holme. I mentioned before that the correspondence was on the website. I replied on behalf of my noble and learned friend to the committee, and said:"““While Clause 3 . . .  depicts the society to which we aspire—one characterized by opportunity, respect for all and cohesiveness””—" all Members of the Committee would share that aspiration—"““it does not itself confer any powers. Its purpose is to set the context in which the CEHR should work””." No powers are created in the clause. That is very important in understanding the way in which we have tried to approach the Bill. The noble Lord, Lord Peyton of Yeovil, specifically had issues with worth and dignity, so I looked up the definitions of them. We are trying to capture the concept of not only treating people in an equal way—you can be equally horrible or equally torture—but recognising the worth of people. ““Worth”” is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as the character or standing of a person in respect of moral and intellectual qualities. There are a number of different ways in which ““dignity”” can be defined—that one has stateliness, seriousness, formality of manner, goodness and ability of character, calmness, self-control and so on. There are lots of ways in which we approach those words, but they are well recognised in terms of how the UN charter has been developed and how we have developed our work with the Human Rights Act. Beyond the equal treatment that you seek, the character must be recognised. The noble Lord, Lord   Monson, asked about murderers and evil and wicked people. We are trying to describe mutual respect for people—the mutual way in which we approach people. Those who treat others badly because of their extreme views or because they are evil are not included in that sense. We say that every person is worthy—every person should be treated with worth and dignity, but those who behave badly do not command the mutual respect of the society and need to be dealt with. We have tried to capture the essence of humanity.