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Equality Bill [HL]

My Lords, I thank the noble and learned Lord very much for having listened to those arguments and for having been kind enough to consider them and agree to alter the Bill. I had not realised that the descriptive header could not be changed. I was surprised that it could not be changed as I thought that anything which appeared in front of Parliament in a Bill could be changed. I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord for having said that it could not be changed but nevertheless for having found that it could be. The new words that have been suggested go all the way to meeting the points about which most of us were concerned. I return to a point about which I was concerned in Committee. I am worried about the huge powers that officials have at present as regards allocating funds, and which are likely to increase. I referred to Barnabas House, a hostel for 18 homeless people run by a Baptist church in King’s Lynn. It receives a grant of £150,000. The noble Baroness, Lady Ashton, was kind enough to write to me about it. But the fact is that staff at Barnabas House have been told that they must not have Bibles in the rooms, say grace before meals or do anything which is too religious because it might upset those who are non-Christian, even though the organisation is a Christian one. The organisation is now told that staff must not even say prayers at the beginning of their daily meeting. I find it astonishing that officials should interfere in such a way. The officials belong to the Supporting People programme. The interference constitutes the threat that, ““If you do not do what we say, the funds will be removed””. The noble Baroness, Lady Ashton, said in her letter:"““An action plan has been agreed between Norfolk County Council and Barnabas House and the local Supporting People team along with the West Norfolk Council for Voluntary Services (WNCVS), the Voluntary Hostels Group (VHG) and King’s Lynn Churches””." That is six organisations involved in a poor little hostel which is trying to help homeless people. All these guys will crawl all over it and tell the staff what to do. I believe that is, frankly, a misuse of bureaucracy. It should not be necessary for that to happen. The noble Baroness, Lady Ashton, referred in her letter to what the noble Baroness, Lady Scotland, said; namely, that prayer should not be a prerequisite of receiving a public service, nor should people be preached to while receiving a public service. There should be no compulsion. I understand that but perhaps I should declare an interest in that I am High Steward of Norwich Cathedral. The cathedral has a lot of repair work carried out for which it often receives money from English Heritage. It would be absurd to say that because the cathedral had received public money it should not conduct services for fear that it might upset a passing visitor from the Far East who may not be a Christian. These matters are absurdities which should not be allowed to continue. In my view the Supporting People programme is not supporting people. I refer to Thornage Hall, a Camphill Village Trust home. I declare an interest in that I am a patron of it and I also have a daughter who was there. That home looks after people with all kinds of handicap. However, instead of supporting people, the Supporting People programme is virtually undermining them. The officials say that people should not sit down to meals together at set times but should be free to eat and come and go when they want to. Families eat together at the same time; even your Lordships eat together. What is wrong with that? How can officials say, ““you should not do that; it is against our philosophy””? They even talk about decommissioning the organisation as if it were some sort of obsolete aircraft carrier. I am not sure what decommissioning means, but it is obviously not very nice. Over all that hangs the threat of losing grants and people suffering. I say to the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor in the nicest possible way—why do the Government not support those organisations? Why do local authorities not support them? My guess is that it is because the Government, maybe government officials, send a message down saying, ““this is the kind of society that we want and you—local authorities—must use your money in the way in which we—the Government—want””. I hope that the noble and learned Lord and the noble Baroness, Lady Ashton, will look into those points, because they are serious. At present, officials wield colossal power over individuals and organisations. It is not the job of officials to tell religious organisations how to run their organisations or to tell professional people, who for years have looked after handicapped people, that what they are doing is wrong and is not the way that the Government want them to do it. My fear is that the new commission, having much more money and much more power, may inadvertently be giving much more power to officials to say in what way organisations should run their affairs instead of backing those organisations. I do not expect the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor or the noble Baroness, Lady Ashton, to answer those points today. I would be grateful if one of them—perhaps the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor if he had time on his hands—could look into the important principle that these organisations should help people. The officials are being given tremendous power, and my fear is that they may try to run those organisations as opposed to helping them to help themselves.