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Equality Bill

My Lords, the contributions we have heard today clearly demonstrate that goods and services legislation is complex and requires careful debate. I very much regret that that was denied in 2007 and welcome the opportunity that my noble and learned friend has given the House today to consider this question afresh. These amendments, which I strongly support, strike the right kind of balance for reasons that have been eloquently adumbrated during the course of our proceedings. Like others who have talked about their faith background, I make no secret of the fact that I am from a Catholic background. I live in the Salford diocese, and there has been great sadness there that the adoption agency in that diocese has had to close. I think it is an example of the law of unintended consequences. I do not believe that the Government set out with a vendetta against Catholic adoption agencies, with an agenda to try to close them. However, it has been one of the unfortunate side effects of the legislation that was enacted in the past. However, I do not come to this amendment as a Catholic. I come to it as a Member of your Lordships’ House concerned about the position of minorities and, as the noble Lord, Lord Patten, said as well, the position of service users, about which we have heard far too little during these debates. I come to it also because of my belief in minorities. One of the reasons why, when I was in another place, I voted against Section 28 was because of my belief in the importance of the place of minorities in society. Minorities will often be in competition and we are hearing today the debate about when majorities and minorities sit together in a tolerant and plural society. I also caution those who, as Queen Elizabeth I said, "make windows into men’s souls". I think we have to be very careful in this plural society not to make a big issue of the way in which people practise their faith. I am concerned, as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Bradford has just said, that there is an aggressive agenda at work which is almost itself becoming an ideology. The National Secular Society should reflect on that carefully, because pushing people into a corner on issues of conscience is not healthy for a democratic society. On Sunday, I was struck by the headlines in one newspaper about the effect of the Children, Schools and Families Bill and how it may be a requirement on Catholic, Jewish, Muslim and Anglican schools to refer pupils in the future for abortion services. I am sure that the Leader of the House will have seen those headlines. That too will raise a huge conscience question. It will be impossible for many people who run such schools. So respect for conscience is something that ought to unite the whole of your Lordships’ House. The noble Lord, Lord Patten, referred to the good work that these adoption agencies have done over the years. Rod Liddle is not a man who is given to writing very positive reports about many people, but I was struck by a review of a new book by Pauline Prescott that he wrote in last weekend’s Sunday Times. She very movingly described how a church adoption agency helped her when she was a teenager to put her child into adoption. She has had the benefit of being reconciled with him; he has had an illustrious career in the Armed Forces as a result. The Jewish rabbi who said that a man who saves a single life saves the world was right. We never know how these events will work out when we provide the opportunity for people to be adopted and to live. Modern concerns for equality were very much inspired by the work of scholars such as John Stuart Mill and Alexis de Tocqueville. They warned us about the tyranny of the majority and we should understand that warning today. They recognised that if you embrace a crudely majoritarian model of democracy, that will result in the formation of laws that have no regard for the rights of minorities. When laws designed for the majority are found to have negative or destructive effects on minorities, those minorities should be protected by different treatment under the law, usually courtesy of legal exceptions. There are numerous examples of such provision in relation to things such as military service, the taking of oaths, vaccination, abortion, the wearing of motorcycle helmets, and the wearing of protective head covering on building sites. The sexual orientation goods and services legislation has failed because it has not made adequate provision to protect the interests of what have been described as "these other strands". The impact of this is clearly seen today in the closure of both the Salford and, closer to home, the Westminster agencies, and the cessation of operations by the Leeds agency that is this very week fighting in the courts for its continued existence. Other agencies have continued, but no longer as agencies of the church. It is a real tragedy when people are pushed underground when they are actually doing great work, which should be seen as such. These changes have negatively affected children needing adoption by causing very unfortunate service disruption. They have had very unfortunate effects on those would-be parents wishing to access adoption in the context of the Catholic ethos. It seems bizarre to me that legislation that is supposed to further goods and services provision should have jeopardised the goods and services rights of so many people. These people did not want all adoption services to be provided in the context of the Catholic ethos, but they did hope that they might continue to have the option of accessing those services somewhere in a context that is accessible to their protected characteristic. They are asking why this has been taken away, because the Government have determined that another protected characteristic should be free to access services anywhere in a way that is accessible for their protected characteristic. I very much welcome my noble and learned friend’s amendment, which moves us to a place where a right balance can be struck. Failure to rise to this challenge leaves us with what might be described as majoritarian equalities legislation that has no regard to its effect on other minorities. Ironically, it moves us from the place where we properly worked to avoid the tyranny of the majority to a place where we are in danger, in some contexts, of creating a tyranny of a minority. I very much hope, therefore, that the Government will accept the spirit of the amendment which my noble and learned friend has moved today, and also accept, in view of the moderate way in which she moved the amendment, and in which all the noble Lords who have contributed to this debate today have spoken, that we want to see a reasonable resolution of an issue that is, as I have said, the result of the law of unintended consequences.