Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill

Debate between Baroness Thornton and Lord Deben

Monday 8th July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Deben]

My Lords, we have complained about many people suing, but this is an absolute opening for anybody to sue. I find it incredibly peculiar to say that an employer should organise his business so that somebody who objects to same-sex marriages could say that it was unreasonable to drive two people from one place to another. There is a limit to what can be reasonably considered a conscientious objection.

I voted for the case of registrars because I felt it was one end of the limit. I have to say that this really is ridiculous. It will open up the opportunity for people to sue the other way round on the basis of the most trivial issues. If a cook was able to say, “I am afraid that my petit fours cannot be used for the reception at a same-sex marriage”, we are making a laughing stock of the law. This is not just a bridge too far, it is a whole highway beyond where we should go.

[Baroness Thornton]

My Lords, the noble Lords, Lord Deben and Lord Lester, have put this very well indeed. I would add just one other matter. I find my noble friend’s view of the future rather depressing. I do not believe that people will argue and fight with each other about the existence of same-sex marriage. I simply do not believe that this is what will happen. Apart from the fact that in most cases this is a private matter between two people of the same sex or opposite sex, it is not the kind of issue that will raise the problems that my noble friend has suggested. I hope that, as the Bill moves forward in the next year, my noble friend will start to take a more optimistic view of it.

Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill

Debate between Baroness Thornton and Lord Deben

Wednesday 9th January 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Deben]

Can I not ask the noble Baroness to go a bit further than that? For that comment by the Secretary of State for Business to be relevant, surely he should have explained why removing this section is helpful. In other words, he seems to have it the wrong way round. It does not help to say, “This section, in its existence, is not being helpful to business”. That is one thing, but it is there. Removing it is a real action. In that case, surely he should have explained why it would be helpful to business to remove this section. I do not see that he has proved that. My problem with this issue is that I do not see why we should not just leave it there, unless there is a good reason to change it. I am old-fashioned enough to believe, “If it ain’t broke, don’t try to change it”.

[Baroness Thornton]

The noble Lord makes an absolutely perfect point; I wish I had made it myself. I have two final points on the amendments that the Government are proposing in this part of the Bill. One is on the provision of conciliation duties and the repeal of Section 3. Under the Equality Act 2006, the EHRC provides conciliation services and the Government propose to repeal that provision. One particular issue really concerns me, which is that of transferring the complaints service for disabled travellers to the Civil Aviation Authority. I have to say that this astonished me. Apart from concerns arising on the ability of the CAA, which has close ties to the aviation industry, one has to ask: will it act independently and impartially? It seems a remarkable thing to be doing.

Moreover, through forcing private and public sector organisations down the more costly compliance route, rather than that of conciliation, and driving the commission towards a court-led approach as opposed to pre-court conciliation, the repeal of Section 3 directly contradicts the overarching aim of the Bill. I would be grateful if the noble Baroness could explain to the Committee how this can be justified.

Health and Social Care Bill

Debate between Baroness Thornton and Lord Deben

Monday 19th March 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Deben]

My Lords, I would like to share with your Lordships’ House, for the first time, my experience of trying to deal with the complicated matter of BSE as it makes clear this distinction. I committed myself to total openness; I knew nothing that the public did not know. It was the only way in which one could be sure of obtaining people’s trust. Nothing was hidden. We did not have risk registers in the sense that we do today but it would be quite wrong to say that we had not considered every possible risk.

I put it to your Lordships that there is a difference between what you know and the extreme cases which you ask about in order to make sure that what you know covers everything that you could know. If in the middle of that terrible crisis newspapers more interested in their numbers of sales had accused the Minister of uncertainty because he had asked about risk—and I do not need to go into the kinds of risk you had to ask about—it would have been impossible to make what were already difficult enough decisions. It turns out now, 20 years later, that the decisions were right but at the time they could only be what you knew, and what I knew I shared.

Consider also what it meant for my civil servants. Do your Lordships really believe that your civil servants would be able to be as frank and direct and complete if they found themselves and their relationships being used as part of a battle? There were some terrible battles at that time between people who had all sorts of other interests. Compare this to another case, which out of kindness I will not be too detailed about. For many years in the ministry of agriculture a particular view had been upheld and we had been told that it was true. When I sought further information I discovered it was not. It was at that point that I tried to establish a very clear distinction between what you know and what you have to ask about which you do not know.

The risk register has come into our governmental structure largely from private business. I sit on the boards of a number of companies and chair several; in all those cases we have a risk register. That risk register is only useful if it is kept entirely to the company itself, because you want to ask questions of a very extreme kind. I ask the noble Lord, Lord Owen, whether he can imagine a Foreign Secretary who had to reveal his risk register asking what would happen if this or that Government did this or that, or what would happen if some Middle Eastern state refused to allow our ships into the Strait of Hormuz at this moment. Would any Foreign Secretary be able to be Foreign Secretary?

[Baroness Thornton]

Does the noble Lord not think that the Information Commissioner and the tribunal have taken those points into account?

[Lord Deben]

I would not dream of suggesting that I know what the tribunal and the commissioner have taken into account. All I am saying is that if they have taken it into account and come to this decision, I think it is wrong, and if they have not taken it into account they ought to have done. That is why I come to the point that the noble Baroness raised when she said that it is all very good because the National Health Service has risk registers and publishes them. They are not risk registers, not in the sense that a business has risk registers. They are not risk registers in the sense that the Foreign Office has risk registers. They are such risks as the National Health Service believes will stand being in the public domain. The risk registers that a Government have are a wholly different kind of thing and need to be. I believe that we must protect them.