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Equality Bill [HL]

My Lords, I am extremely grateful to the Government for having been open-minded in removing completely unnecessary bureaucratic obstacles. I agree entirely with the way in which the Minister expressed the situation: this does not in any way lower the high threshold needed by the commission to obtain injunctive relief. In my personal experience, the power has been rarely exercised in the past—partly because of the obscurity of the drafting, which has been removed. But where it has been used—and it is only used against a persistent discriminator; someone so obstinate and stupid that they continue to defy the law flagrantly—although there have been very few such cases, the threat of going to court is normally sufficient to lead to a prompt settlement and change of heart. So, in that sense, it will actually reduce rather than increase litigation. I should add that one cannot please all the people all the time. The Equal Opportunities Commission would have been happy had it continued to have the option of going to an employment tribunal in order to obtain a finding of unlawful employment discrimination. It prefers employment tribunals to county and sheriff courts as appropriate places to deal with discrimination. I understand and sympathise with that view but it seems to me that that should be taken into account by the discrimination law review when it considers which is the best tribunal for dealing with discrimination cases. We wholeheartedly support the amendment.