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Equality Bill

I suspect the right hon. Lady speaks for a large number of her colleagues in the country as a whole. However, the Conservative Front-Bench speakers say that in general they do not oppose the Bill, and I believe them. They do not oppose it, because it is not a radical Bill. As the hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr. Harper) made clear, it is mainly a reorganising Bill, and it has missed huge opportunities to be much more radical. The Government cannot say both that the Bill is radical and that the Conservatives who support it are anti-equality. In many cases, the Conservatives are anti-equality, but the Bill is not the test that shows it—except in the three areas mentioned by the hon. Gentleman. It is unfortunate that even though the Bill was amended in the Lords it is not as strong as it could be in many respects. I should like to press the hon. Member for Forest of Dean on the question about the shadow Home Secretary. If the shadow Home Secretary does not think the Bill should be changed, was he advocating that the law be ignored—an unusual position for a shadow Home Secretary—when he said that people should be able to exclude other people on the basis of sexual orientation? I fear that question will go unanswered. We welcome Lords amendment 1. Members may recall that Liberal Democrats in this House first raised the issue. We did not have a great welcome from the Minister in Committee, but on reflection in the Lords, and thanks to the work of Lord Avebury and Lord Harries of Pentregarth, among others, the Government were persuaded to compromise, so we have a provision that is welcome as far as it goes. There were a number of amendments on equal pay, including on comparators. The Government have accepted amendments proposed by my noble Friend, Lord Lester—or that they tabled following discussion with him. Those amendments are welcome because they improve the equal pay situation. However, we regret the fact that the pay audit provisions in the Bill are still weak, because we were unable to get a majority for amendments in the Lords, despite our best efforts. Of course, the Conservatives think that even measures requiring companies to carry out audits at a certain point go too far, which says a lot about the Conservative commitment to equality. I particularly welcome Lords amendment 29, the Government's concession on pregnancy in schools. The issue was raised in Committee in the House of Commons and I am pleased that the Government were persuaded that it was wrong not to make it explicit in the Bill that pregnant schoolgirls should not be exempted from some of the equality laws. That is important. We welcome Lords amendments 34 to 38, which deal with diversity in the range of candidates. I endorse what has been said about the work of the Speaker's Commission in that respect. I have sympathy for the Government's position, as expressed in the House of Lords, on civil partnerships on religious premises. It is not ideal to use the Equality Bill to change civil partnerships from being the equivalent of a same-sex civil marriage. The introduction of language about religious buildings or religious services would mean that there was no longer a read-across between civil marriage and civil partnership. The most effective way of dealing with what I recognise is a legitimate wish of people to have a religious aspect to their civil partnership would be to provide for same-sex marriage and amend the Marriage Acts. My party has been very clear: we think society has moved on sufficiently for the Government and the House to take a lead on that. It happens in other jurisdictions, and it is unfortunate that the Government will, as I suspect, leave office after 13 years without having been able to make an advance in that respect. Things are now made more complicated, in terms of what is civil about civil partnerships, by the fact that that had to be the necessary compromise. Lords amendment 84 is the extra provision that the Government included. The reason why I express concern about that Lords amendment, especially as it relates to religion and belief, is to ensure that we have as much freedom of speech and expression as possible for religious people. The House has resisted, as has the House of Lords— rightly—a free-standing provision on harassment on the grounds of religion and belief in the delivery of services. Yes of course, in employment it is right and proper to have such a provision, but outside employment there are real concerns that if one enables people to take harassment proceedings on the basis of feeling that their dignity has been infringed or that they have been exposed to an offensive environment—that is the terminology of harassment law—it would mean that, for example, Christian hotel owners who display a poster, crucifix or some such thing in the public areas of their business where their customers will see it might well find themselves open to complaints that people are being harassed.