Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill

Lord Avebury Excerpts

Monday 22nd April 2013 Lords Chamber

She stated unequivocally that the Government are against caste discrimination of any kind and want to do something about it. If there is discrimination in the areas covered by the Equality Act, and the Government recognise that, it should not be countenanced but made illegal. I beg to move.

[Lord Avebury]

My Lords, I, too, welcome the forthright statement by the Minister that caste discrimination is unacceptable, unfair and must be eliminated. However, I disagree with the diagnosis that she offered, which involves a delay at least until the end of the year before anything positive is done. I think that your Lordships will agree with the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries of Pentregarth, that, having spent three years since the Equality Act waiting for the Government to declare their intentions on Section 9(5)(a), which they could have invoked at any time during that period, it is now time for your Lordships to make a decision on how we deal with this matter in law.

The basis of the argument about this proposal has shifted radically since your Lordships agreed to give the Government the power to extend by order the protected characteristic of race to include caste. At that time, the Government were not satisfied that discrimination on the grounds of caste existed in employment, education or the delivery of services. Now, three years later, from the Prime Minister downwards the Government accept that people in the United Kingdom do suffer discrimination on the grounds of caste, and that action needs to be taken against it.

They believe, however, that, unlike with discrimination on the grounds of any of the protected characteristics that are already dealt with in the Equality Act—age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex and sexual orientation—caste is unique in being susceptible to treatment merely by education and conciliation. This is clearly a vain hope, as we see from the history of racial discrimination. The noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, mentioned the repeated efforts of Fenner Brockway in the 1950s and 1960s, which, as I remember very well, fell on stony ground. Before the 1976 Act, introduced by my late friend Lord Jenkins of Hillhead, provided legal remedies for victims of racial discrimination in employment, education and the delivery of services, the Race Relations Board provided education and conciliation but those remedies were ineffective.

The Government say that there is no consensus for this amendment. I remember that the Conservative Opposition in the Commons, led by Mr Quintin Hogg as he then was, were against the 1968 Race Relations Bill on the grounds that it was unfair to private employers. As your Lordships know, many employers today would like to be able to discriminate on grounds of sexual orientation. There is no consensus there, but it did not stop us from legislating.

There is a consensus in favour of legislation among all the organisations in this country that represent the Dalits and other groups that are on the receiving end of caste discrimination, as we saw from the BBC “Newsnight” programme last week. Those bodies that have expressed concern draw their members from the higher castes. I challenge the Minister to produce a single Dalit who belongs to any of them.