Equality Act 2010 (Specific Duties) Regulations 2011

Debate between Earl of Listowel and Baroness Oppenheim-Barnes

Tuesday 6th September 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Oppenheim-Barnes]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Waddington on moving this amendment and on the moderate and thoughtful manner in which he moved it, giving examples of situations widely ridiculed at the time. It is not a fatal amendment. I wish that it was. I would like to get rid of the regulations.

I am going to clarify my position on the issue in the form of a confession. Some 40 years ago in the other place I was the sponsor of two separate pieces of anti-discrimination legislation. However, it was made clear at the time that these were not in favour of positive discrimination, which is a very different matter. I therefore oppose the regulations on a number of specific grounds. The objective of the regulations is absolutely right if the intention is to prevent victimisation, but it is not right because it is not about equality. It is about inequality of opportunity because it requires a protective element for some but not for others who may in fact be best suited for the job. They are not to be considered equally. They are to be considered after the protected characteristic groups. These groups are very wide and very varied, giving special protection to a wide and varied group. That is positive discrimination, which is neither fair nor equal in regulations stemming from what is the so-called Equality Act.

I emphasise my support for the stated object, that anybody should be given a chance, whatever protected characteristic they may have, as long as they can do the job better than or at least as well as other applicants who do not comply with these characteristics. There is always a chance that some bright young body might claim to have one of these characteristics in order to be considered for the job more favourably. This would only enhance the unfairness. We can only imagine how much these requirements are going to cost local authorities and their ratepayers to enact. How much additional staff will be needed? What burdens will be placed on staff who are already there? How are they to represent their reasons for not employing an able applicant who does not meet the requirements in the regulations but is after all the best person for the job?

The regulations under the Equality Act’s Explanatory Memorandum 10/4 states that this new version, presented to your Lordships’ House today, initiates various savings compared with the previous regulations of up to £205 million over 10 years. That would probably be the cost over the same period of the adoption of the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Low, if it was accepted. All of us care about the fairness with which people are treated and given jobs and about human rights, but then we look at the Equality and Human Rights Commission, which cost £70 million to set up, was recently condemned by the National Audit Office for not presenting its accounts in an acceptable manner and recently squandered more than £800,000 on a website that did not work. Is this the sort of pattern we wish to impose on local authorities? Again, I emphasise that no one wants to condone unfair discrimination in any walk of life. However, I am not at all sure that these regulations will not lead to discrimination that is more unfair than the very discrimination they seek to prevent.

[The Earl of Listowel]

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Waddington, for tabling this amendment and for the work he has done in this area for many years now. I join him in expressing deep concern about what has happened to those five Catholic adoption agencies. The previous Government and this Government are well aware that voluntary adoption agencies have the best outcomes for children. They provide the best stability and the longer term support for those children and their families to see that those children do well. It is a matter of very great regret that those five agencies have closed. Will the Minister assure me that the guidance makes clear that the principles in the Children Act 1989 and the Children Act 2004 are paramount, that the interests of the child are paramount and that where it is considered that it is in the best interests of children not to be placed with same-sex couples, agencies can do so? I believe it is a perfectly tenable position. I have worked in this House on child welfare for 12 years now and, in my view, it is not generally in the child’s best interests to be placed in that situation. I may be wrong in that view, but there are many professionals who share it. It is not proven that it is safe or in the best interests of children to place them in such settings. I think Professor Golombok—I hope I have her name correctly—has done the most work in this area, but she looks only to the age of 18 and the sample of families examined is quite small. I should be most grateful to the Minister if she could assure me that the guidance will be clear about the paramountcy of the welfare of children, about agencies’ ability to decide where that interest lies and that we will not be seeing a repeat of what happened with those five Catholic adoption agencies.