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Equality Bill [HL]

My Lords, I entirely agree with the criticism that the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, made of the Leonard Cheshire decision. I believe that it was wrongly decided and that it will be overturned in a suitable case in the House of Lords. I also believe that Age Concern should warn any care establishment or agency that if they consider themselves to be private in that they have no responsibility under the Human Rights Act, they are wrong. If they dispute that, I believe that it would not be impossible for Age Concern to bring appropriate proceedings themselves, no doubt with the Government intervening. We know that the Government’s position is that the approach taken by the Court of Appeal is not correct in accordance with the intention of the legislation. Having said that, the problem that the legislation raises is whether we should deal with the problem specifically in the context of this particular care standards issue or by amending the Human Rights Act. My difficulty here is that the problem extends well beyond this particular important issue. The problem really is the extent to which private bodies—what I call ““private governments””—exercising public powers are within the scope of the Human Rights Act. It is a boringly technical point in a way, but if we accepted this amendment, what would we do about all the other situations that should be dealt with as well? We get back to the lists problem of the noble Baroness, Lady Ashton. I believe that I was touting for unpaid work at one point. However, I believe that it would be perfectly possible to get a case up to the Law Lords given enough will and support from the Government and others. Therefore, I entirely agree with the reasons for the amendment but I am not sure that this is the right way of going about it.