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Equality Bill

I want to pursue what I was saying a little further. The noble Lord, Lord Lester, said that it was not possible within this Act to address all aspects of bullying and that we could only fill the gaps between those which had already been specified. I suspect that the Long Title would enable us to do something quite simple and would please the noble Lord, Lord Ouseley. A very nice obligation would be placed on schools if we just tweaked a little his Amendment 106 to make it read: ""The circumstances in which the responsible body of … a school"—" rather than stating "such a school"— ""is to be treated as harassing a pupil … include those where"," leaving out "under subsection (3)(a)", and then take it out of the limitations of Part 2. On the occurrence of a second occasion of the bullying of an individual, there would be a legal duty to intervene. I do not like imposing legal duties on common-room staff, but when this problem cannot be solved in any other way, which it has not been, I would not object to trying this. It seems to me that that would be possible and would be within the Long Title.