Deregulation Bill

Lord McNally Excerpts

Wednesday 11th February 2015 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord McNally]

44: Clause 89, page 71, line 2, at end insert—
“(d) a regulatory function of the Commission for Equality and Human Rights.”

[Lord McNally (LD)]

My Lords, I am not sure that I can give the same assurance to the Minister about withdrawing my amendment because, as I will try to explain, even the offer he may make—that the Equality and Human Rights Commission will be excluded from future statutory instruments—will not relieve the commission from the sword of Damocles that is hanging over it, as a future Government could bring it within the ambit of this legislation.

Perhaps I may explain to the House the position and why I think it should take this as an exceptional case and put the commission into this primary legislation. First, I should like to make clear the commission’s current position:

“The Commission supports the principle and intention behind the growth duty. We do, and will continue to, exercise our regulatory functions fairly and proportionately, taking all relevant considerations into account—including the impact on businesses and economic growth. However, applying the growth duty to the Commission risks our status as an NHRI”—

national human rights institution—

“and a National Equality Body and introduces legal uncertainty into the exercise of our functions. We therefore consider that the Commission should be excluded from the scope of the growth duty, as proposed by”—

Amendment 44. It continues:

“The Commission has the highest possible UN accreditation (‘A status’) as an NHRI rated against the UN ‘Paris Principles’, which clearly and unequivocally require NHRIs to be independent of government”.

I made sure that I had that clear statement of where the commission itself is in terms of its attitude to this legislation.

I should give the House a little background. When the coalition came into office in 2010, there were many criticisms of the EHRC, some justified. Since then the organisation has been refocused, restructured, given a new board and a new leadership in the person of the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, who I am pleased to see in her place. During my time as a Minister at the Ministry of Justice I became involved with the EHRC on two fronts: first, in attempting to regain A-list status at the UN, which we had lost; and secondly, regaining Britain’s place on the UN Human Rights Committee. With the help of the FCO and the DCMS, particularly the then Minister Maria Miller, we were able to achieve both. We were able to do that, however, by stressing the independence from government and the integrity of the Equality and Human Rights Commission.

As noble Lords will be aware, Clause 88 places a legal duty on regulators to have regard to the desirability of promoting economic growth when exercising regulatory functions. The EHRC, as I said, supports that principle. However, when the Joint Committee on Human Rights looked at the matter, it opined that the Bill,

“raises serious questions about the EHRC’s independence from the executive”.

It concluded that the matter could easily be dealt with,

“if the proposed new duty did not apply to the EHRC”.

The committee went on to ask that the EHRC and the Government should continue to negotiate to see whether such a settlement could be reached. As I indicated, no such settlement has been reached. The noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, has gone on record to express her concern about this matter, particularly the threat to our hard-won A status.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble (Con)]

My Lords, we are on Report, and the Companion is very clear about Report stage. I suggest that the noble Lord may not be in a position to speak.

[Lord McNally]

Another gem is lost to us from the noble Lord, Lord Jones. Let us not confuse this issue: the protection of a statutory instrument is not the same as the protection afforded by being in primary legislation. It is that protection of primary legislation that I want to give to the Equality and Human Rights Commission.

I have no doubts about my noble friend’s commitments, but we live in strange times. For most of my life, the concept of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights has been accepted as part of our world governance. We live in an age when people think of the concept of human rights as somehow a western imperialist invention, but I believe that this country’s role in championing human rights since the Second World War has been a very great one, of which we should be proud. David Maxwell Fyfe drafted the European Convention on Human Rights, and when Eleanor Roosevelt launched the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, she called it a Magna Carta for all mankind. There was no need for a translation of what she meant.

This is an exceptional case that I am arguing. I know all the objections of the barrack-room lawyers and draftsmen to specifics in primary legislation, but by putting this in primary legislation, I believe we will be keeping faith with our tradition of protecting human rights and be giving the EHRC the strength to carry on its excellent work. As I have indicated, I would like to the test the opinion of the House.