Equality Act 2010 (Specific Duties) Regulations 2011

Lord Renton of Mount Harry Excerpts

Tuesday 6th September 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Waddington]

My Lords, in speaking to the amendment in my name, I should make plain what I think is known to most people in the House: I am not a born rebel. The object of the exercise this afternoon is not to ask the House to vote down these regulations. It is an opportunity for all of us to express any concerns that we have about the development of what is loosely called the equality agenda.

None of us wants unfairness and injustice. However, these regulations are not really about unfairness and injustice. They are about the new bureaucratic burden to be placed on local authorities and public authorities, which are already overburdened with red tape, to push forward an equality agenda that has often produced unfairness rather than fairness and injustice rather than justice.

I have the greatest respect for the noble Lord, Lord Low of Dalston, but I have to say that his amendment to the Government’s Motion, with its references to equality analyses, reports on engagement with affected groups, annual reports, et cetera, serves only to highlight the morass into which we would have sunk up to our elbows had we been required to approve regulations in line with what was originally proposed. As it is, I suppose I can thank the Government for planning to have us sink only up to our knees, although I think that is bad enough.

The regulations are, of course, entirely irrelevant to the enormous problems that the country is now facing except for the sad fact that, as the equality agenda has been pushed forward by people with the best intentions, the established values, moral codes stressing the importance of the traditional family, with a man and wife sharing responsibility for the upbringing of children, and the very institution of marriage—as unfortunately was made plain today during Questions—have all been neglected and sometimes almost derided. We have seen some of the consequences of that recently.

I believe that the Government should not have spent the last few months cooking up new regulations. They should have spent the time, first, trying to find a way to mitigate some of the more baleful consequences of the equality agenda, and, secondly, looking for ways to stop public authorities practising gross unfairness in the name of equality law. Noble Lords may remember the following instances: the woman threatened with the sack for being unwilling to perform civil partnership ceremonies even though she had worked for the council before civil partnerships were even invented; the nurse suspended for offering to pray for a patient’s recovery; the five year-old girl reprimanded for discussing her faith at school, and her mother, a worker at the school, investigated for professional misconduct because she asked for her friends’ prayers in the matter; the BA employee sent home without pay for wearing a silver cross; the council worker in Wandsworth sacked for suggesting to a terminally ill woman that she should seek help from God; Camden Council almost unbelievably saying that a Roman Catholic group had no right to advertise a meeting with the slogan, “Climate change is a Christian issue”. I am thinking of religious charities which have been finding it harder and harder to get local authority funding, with Brighton and Hove Council withdrawing funding from a residential care home because those running it refused to ask the elderly residents every three months about their sexual orientation. I am thinking of the five Catholic adoption agencies forced to close because of their unwillingness to place children with same-sex couples, although there are very many adoption agencies specifically catering for gay couples and the society’s objections could have been accommodated with no harm to anybody at all.

It is not just people like myself who are outraged by this determination to treat unfairly people who wish to do no more than observe a moral code that, only a few years ago, was accepted as a valid guide to behaviour by the vast majority of people. Even the Equality and Human Rights Commission has complained that the courts and public bodies have failed to recognise that people prevented from expressing their beliefs have suffered discrimination and has said that something ought to be done about it.

Now let us get back to the particulars of the regulations. Noble Lords will be aware that plenty of local authorities already enjoy collecting useless statistics. On 27 August, the papers reported that when people want to borrow a book in Islington, they are asked if they are transgender; in Brent, they are asked whether they are schizophrenic; and in Leicestershire, they are asked whether they are HIV. Is it not strange that while Eric Pickles says that this nonsense has to stop, the Home Secretary is insisting that all local authorities should behave exactly like Islington—because that is exactly what she is doing through the regulations? Is the world going completely mad?

Look at what public authorities will have to do under the regulations. They will have to collect information about people in the community and in their workforce who are disabled, gay, about to change their sex, et cetera, and then demonstrate to the world how they intend to eliminate discrimination against such people. It is hard to see how they can do that except by counting the number of their clients and the number of their employees sharing each of the relevant protected characteristics and, when they find that they do not have enough clients or employees sharing each relevant protected characteristic, setting out to recruit a few more clients or employees to fit into one of the protected groups. How else could they demonstrate, as the regulations require, that they are indeed eliminating discrimination?

The Government say that compliance with the regulations will not cost much—certainly not as much as complying with the current three separate duties with regard to disability, race and sex. Of course, that is complete nonsense because Section 149 extends the coverage of the duty massively to age, sexual orientation, religion or belief, pregnancy, maternity and gender reassignment. More importantly, the Government are careful not to say what will be the total cost of the regulations for more than 27,000 public bodies. It will be enormous. How on earth do the Government reconcile that with their declared intention to cut back on bureaucracy—a point made by my noble friend? How does it fit in with the Prime Minister's red tape challenge, and how can it be squared with his bold declaration that it is about time that we encouraged greater responsibility in society and that that means that we have to trust people and give them the freedom to do the right thing rather than to regulate them? Almost every utterance of the Minister and almost every word of the regulations contradict what I was told after the election was one of the principal aims of this Government.

The regulations will do nothing to ensure that people who do not fit into the neat categories prescribed in equality law have their rights protected. There is nothing to ensure, for instance, that people with religious convictions are allowed to live by them without harassment or worse. Why should it be so difficult to protect such people? If in the darkest days of the war we could allow people the right to conscientious objection, why is it thought necessary to compel those who have deeply held convictions against gay adoption, for instance, to conform or else?

I have great admiration for the Minister. The Government are privileged to have her in their ranks.

[Lord Renton of Mount Harry]

I thank my noble friend for allowing me to say a few words. I very much follow what he is saying and I know that we will vote on the issue. Where I am a bit lost is that I do not know how any of us could change the equality law so that it takes proper account of freedom of religion and conscience. His idea is very good, but how would he do it if he was in charge?