Equality (Amendment and Revocation) (EU Exit) Regulations 2018

Lord Smith of Finsbury Excerpts

Tuesday 29th January 2019 Grand Committee

[Baroness Hussein-Ece]

The noble Lord advances my case. I was giving a few examples of some of the rights that currently protect different sections of society, but they will not necessarily be protected—and probably will not be—under what is proposed in the SI, which simply harmonises and takes out some of the laws that we currently enjoy and puts them into domestic law. If it is not already something that we recognise, it will not be there. Therefore we need some answers to these issues.

Article 10, which is important and which we discuss a lot in your Lordships’ House, is on freedom of thought, conscience and religion. It,

“includes a right to conscientious objection not recognised in domestic law”.

That is another example of what will not necessarily be harmonised or merely slipped into our domestic laws, because it does not already exist.

The question with the EU withdrawal Act as it stands is: is it not the case that we risk losing protections for sections of society that we have enjoyed for many decades now? An example is the loss of protection for women in work. The noble Baroness, Lady Gale, mentioned gender equality and how we must keep pace on that and not slip back. In addition, as I mentioned earlier, some business leaders see some of these rights as a burden. We need some reassurance from the Government of today, but they may not be the Government of tomorrow, a future Government, so reassurances in themselves will not be enough, because Governments come and go. We need something more fundamental enshrined in our law, which will provide the protections that we do not currently have.

Can the Minister address some of these issues? Another example is that European law has recognised the right of older people to live a dignified and independent life. There is no equivalent of that in the ECHR or a treaty, as I said. While I understand the sentiments the Minister expressed today, we need more than assurances; we need something more cast-iron, and even copper bottomed, which we will probably not get today. That will probably be for another day.

There are a lot of questions and concerns about how we keep pace with issues such as gender equality, race equality measures, LGBT rights and disability rights. Those laws are always evolving to keep pace. The EU has been a positive force for change, enabling us to keep pace and harmonise with those laws. If we are outside the EU, what will be the force for that? Will equality legislation and priorities simply slow down? They may not be a priority any more; other legislation will probably be seen as more of a priority. Quite simply, they could just be weakened and diluted and rights could be lost.

I ask the Minister to address the points that I have made and give more reassurance as to how these issues will be tackled. The UK has proudly played a pivotal role in bringing these protections for protected groups into EU law—we have been at the centre of that, if not the forefront—so how will we ensure that we do not fall behind?

[Lord Smith of Finsbury (Non-Afl)]

Before the noble Baroness sits down, I suggest a very clear example of exactly what she has been talking about. In 1997-98, the only reason why we in this country were able to change the rules on the age of consent for gay male sex was that two brave gay men took the case to the European Court, and the court gave a judgment that meant that not only were we able to change the law here but we had to change it. That is a very good example of exactly the impact, which the noble Baroness is talking about, that it has had over many years.