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Equality Bill

My Lords, I wonder if I could probe a little bit. I would be equally loath to question anything that the noble Lord, Lord Lester, has said, but, with all the other things going on, there has not been time to pose these questions to him. I have in mind the considerable inequalities that still remain between husbands and wives, men and women, with regard to pay, the percentages who get the very top jobs, and pension arrangements. I have to say again that, as far as the European regulations were concerned, I found it extremely disturbing that on issues such as annuities, women and men were not treated the same even though they were equally entitled, by what they had earned over the years, to the same annuity. I still find these things worrying. I would like to be reassured that they are being taken into account; that the Minister has the answers to them; and, above all, that my noble friend Lord Lester took all that into account when he was deciding that all these things could just be finished with completely.