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Equality Bill

My Lords, I shall once again speak to an amendment tabled by my noble friend Lord Ouseley, who is unable to be here this evening. Amendment 114A seeks to ensure appropriate and meaningful assessment of public authorities’ performance with regard to the public sector equality duty, and I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Wirral, for having laid out some of the questions —he has saved me from having to do that—and for providing a context. Once again, the two amendments are somewhat complementary. A number of bodies are perfectly well equipped to carry out such reporting within the system of assessing local authorities, but I would guess that there is a sense that many of those bodies and agencies, when they undertake performance and inspections, are not necessarily reporting adequately or consistently on a public authority’s equality duties. This amendment would require those agencies to undertake appropriate assessments to determine and report on how a public authority is advancing equality and good relations as part of its programme of assessment, inspections and performance reviews. This is about consistency; the issue of how good and bad practice is recognised and dealt with, in one way or another, is an important part of that. However, the bodies and agencies which currently exist can carry out that assessment of performance.