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Equality Bill

My Lords, taking my cue from the Leader of the House, I wish to say a few words. The Bill is a great achievement. I know of no measure as ambitious and far-reaching in any part of the world. It is the result of many years of effort, imagination and skill. New Labour’s 1997 election manifesto promised to, ""eliminate discrimination wherever it exists"." The Liberal Democrat manifesto contained a commitment to enact a single Equality Act. For four years, Professor Sir Robert Hepple QC directed an independent expert review published in July 2000. It was the subject of a consultative conference. My Private Member’s Equality Bill was prepared to give effect to the Hepple report and was given a Second Reading in this House on 28 February 2003 with wide support. I am delighted that the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh of Haringey, is in his place because as the Minister he was kind enough to describe the Bill as "quite outstanding" and said he believed it would "not die a death". We introduced that Bill to demonstrate that it was possible to create a coherent, user-friendly, non-bureaucratic framework, while encouraging voluntary compliance with the principle of equality without discrimination through workforce reviews and employment equity plans, and to provide effective redress. At that stage the Government responded piecemeal by introducing regulations to implement the new EU equality directives as well as the Disability Discrimination Bill setting up the Equality and Human Rights Commission and making religious discrimination unlawful. They then set up the discrimination law review in 2005 and published papers between 2007 and 2009. The Bill was at last published a year ago in April 2009. The appointment of the right honourable Harriet Harman as Minister for Equality gave the project a new energy and sense of direction and ambition. She and her fellow Ministers here and in the House of Commons have been advised and supported by an outstanding team of some 44 civil servants, if one includes legal advisers and parliamentary counsel, led by Melanie Field, James Maskell and Wally Ford. They will be cross if I do not mention all 44 but I do not think I should. I pay tribute to them for having delivered at last a Bill of which we should all be proud. The Bill reached this House very late, with parliamentary time scarce before the general election. But, as the Leader of the House has indicated, thanks to cross-party co-operation and a great deal of hard work, we have carried out a thorough scrutiny of it and improved it in important ways. The Leader of the House, the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, and civil servants have been generous in making themselves readily available to discuss the Bill, and have been open-minded in considering proposed amendments. The Official Opposition have played a constructive role and, for the most part, we have been able to achieve consensus, drawing on the great experience of many Members across the House. Not everything in the Bill is as we Liberal Democrats would have wished, but we recognise that law reform, like politics, is the art of the possible. We hope the Bill will now pass quickly into law, after our amendments have been approved in the other place, so that it may be carried into effect by the new Government of whatever colour after the election.