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Equality Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 117:"Page 26, line 41, leave out ““or effect””" The noble Baroness said: My Lords, on his Amendment No. 120, the noble Lord, Lord Lester, will I am sure shortly explain his concern about Clause 47. It is right to tell the House that, to some extent, I share his concerns. However, in the litigious age in which we live, and in the atmosphere of political correctness which sometimes gives rise to excessive expectations by individuals and absurd decisions by local and other authorities, it is right that some boundaries should be set on the definition of harassment. Regretfully, therefore, I cannot support the proposal to reject the whole of Clause 47. I also take the practical point of view—it is possible that the Minister, when replying to the noble Lord, Lord Lester, will disagree with me—that it is unlikely that the Government would wish to delete the whole clause. We certainly do not want to see it ping-ponging up and down the corridor over this issue. My amendment resolves the noble Lord’s problem, as well as my own. ““Or effect”” is, to use the words of the Minister in an earlier debate, redundant. Indeed, the phrase actually imports a wholly unacceptable test in deciding whether harassment has occurred. It would enable someone to complain, or at least to launch a complaint, that such and such an event had violated his dignity, humiliated him, or made him feel that he was in a hostile environment. The real test of whether harassment has occurred should be only whether it was intentionally and specifically done for one of the objectionable purposes listed in subsection (1). We have seen educational authorities trying to change the name of Christmas to the ““Winter Festival””, or banning nativity plays or even the construction of Christmas cribs. There are reports that signs outside churches have been called provocative. It is not the non-Christian religious authorities that make those ridiculous complaints. It is not the Muslim, Jewish or other religious communities that raise those spurious objections. It is the do-gooders who take up unnecessary and unasked-for cudgels on their behalf. Personally, I have never had any problems with Christmas plays at school. My husband tells me that, when he first met me, I told him that I had been appropriately cast as an angel in one such play, but I confess that I do not recall that at all. The inclusion of ““effect”” leaves it wide open for a person to display unreasonable or even malicious sensitivity by claiming that he felt harmed by the Christmas tree in Trafalgar Square, or that someone exercising reasonable freedom of speech by making some religious criticism, even of his own religion, was creating an offensive environment. In subsection (3) the Government, to give them credit, have tried to modify the effect of subsection (1) by introducing a sort of test of reasonableness. But even then, that test is the complainant’s subjective perception and not the reasonable perception of the man on the top of the Clapham omnibus. The redundant word ““effect”” has crept into the Bill, possibly through the verbal exuberance of the draftsmen. I am told that the test of good drafting is, ““least said, soonest mended””. To remove the word ““effect””, to which I object, will at one stroke remove the basis for frivolous litigation and, I hope, with the remainder of the clause fully intact, the Minister will feel able to agree. I beg to move.