Employment

Lord Collins of Highbury Excerpts

Thursday 27th October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Collins of Highbury]

My Lords, I am very pleased to be able to speak in this debate and I am very grateful to my noble friend Lady Prosser for initiating it. The world of work has certainly changed significantly in recent decades and must continue to do so, not only to ensure that Britain is as competitive as it can be, but also to ensure that it is as fair as it can be.

As I said in my first contribution to this House, the early death of my father meant that my mother was faced with the loss of her husband, her home and her livelihood in short succession. She was determined to provide for her children, and her hard work and resolve secured our future. Yet my mother would have been the first to acknowledge that things might have turned out very differently had it not been for the progress achieved through politics. It was the Equal Pay Act that transformed my family’s income and provided a level playing field for women like my mother. It was changes in the law that gave my mother protection from exploitation and it was changes in the law that enabled her to become an economically active individual rather than dependent on the state. I am very concerned that, amidst all the talk of rolling back red tape or ridding ourselves of EU regulation, we must be very careful that we do not also roll back those 30 years of progress. My mother’s struggle then is the struggle of thousands of working women now. They support their families and they grow the economy. If we make it harder for them to work and drive down the economy, we will only make it harder for ourselves.

In recent times, I cannot think of an area where the world of employment has changed as much as for the estimated 3.7 million lesbian, gay and bisexual people in our country. I think it is important to remember that, until the previous Government took action less than 10 years ago, it was entirely lawful for gay people to be refused a job or a promotion or to be sacked in this country simply because of the way they were born. Thankfully, this is no longer the case, in no small part also due to the campaigning work of many trades unions and organisations such as Stonewall.

Unusually, perhaps, it was the armed services that changed their treatment of gay personnel first, from 2000. The fact that, until then, the RAF was summarily dismissing fighter pilots for being gay, in spite of the £1.5 million cost of their training to the public purse, is a stark reminder that prejudice in the workplace is not only a human tragedy for those involved but also hugely costly to employers.

Changing the law was merely the first step in the process of changing the day-to-day working lives of gay people. I welcome the fact that they have demonstrably changed. Over 600 employers, for example, are now members of Stonewall's diversity champions programme. Those employers, including the Royal Navy, MI5, many police services and many major public companies, have all made a commitment to create workplaces where gay people can be themselves. Collectively those employers employ over 5.1 million people, and that is a real sign, perhaps, of the way that the world beyond Parliament is changing in the early years of the 21st century.

Furthermore, those employers are clear that doing this is not just the right thing to do, but makes sound business sense. Research has clearly demonstrated that gay people who feel able to be themselves at work are more productive, more creative, better team members and more loyal to the enterprise. As my noble friend Lord Kestenbaum said, it is these skills that we need to value.

Let us be clear, however. Thousands of people still experience discrimination at work simply because of their sexual orientation. Recent research from the Equality and Human Rights Commission revealed that almost a third of gay people go to work every day and feel unable to be open about their sexual orientation, unable to talk about their partners and their children in the way that heterosexual people may take for granted, simply because they fear how their colleagues may react. YouGov polling commissioned by Stonewall has shown that one in five gay people have experienced homophobic bullying at work from their colleagues.

We also need only to consider the near invisibility of openly gay people on the boards of FTSE 100 companies to see the impact that has. Gay people face their own pink plateau at work similar to that of women, disabled people and people from different ethnic groups. This is bad for people, but it is also bad for business. A company that does not allow its brightest and best to rise to the top will, in the end, damage its bottom line, a sentiment expressed so elegantly by my noble friend Lady Prosser and one that we all know is shared firmly by my noble friend Lord Davies of Abersoch.

Creating workplaces where all employees can be themselves need not be excessively expensive or complicated. If it were costly, would the many successful businesses that work in this area, such as IBM and Google, be so demonstrably in favour of making their workplaces better for gay employees? The answer is no. However, you do not have to be a large company to make a difference. Simple and practical steps can be taken by all employers, large and small, to create workplaces where everyone can contribute fully without fear of discrimination. I hope that we will see all employers creating those workplaces within our lifetimes.