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Equality Bill

I am very grateful to the Minister. I am not making trouble—I promise—but what worries me is the principle not of collecting the data but of what they are used for. Let us assume that the House of Lords were reduced to 400 Peers—not a bad idea—and let us assume we then had to decide, on an appointed or elected basis, who should be here. Let us think, for example, about my own ethnicity. I am a Jew, but not a religious Jew. Would we then count that there are 300,000 Jews in the population—which there are—and there are six times as many Muslims—which there are? Would we then decide how many Jews and how many Muslims would be representative in this place? That is not a great idea, and it is that principle which I am trying to understand. God forbid that I should ever question anything that has been agreed by the Speaker’s Conference, which includes members of my own party. I would like us, however, to reflect on that principle, or lack of it.