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Session 2008 - 09 Publications on the internet General Committee Debates Equality Bill |
The Committee consisted of the following Members:Alan Sandall, Eliot Wilson,
Committee Clerks attended
the Committee Public Bill CommitteeTuesday 30 June 2009(Morning)[Mr. Joe Benton in the Chair]Equality BillWritten evidence to be reported to the HouseE57 - Michael
Connolly E58 -
Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied
Workers E59 -
Rory
OLoughlin E60
- British Chambers of Commerce (additional
memorandum) 10.30
am
The
Solicitor-General (Vera Baird): On a point of order,
Mr. Benton. Good morning and welcome back to the Chair. May
I mention that yesterday we published our consultation paper on ending
age discrimination in public service? Copies are available here and in
the Libraries. The document is about the order-making power in clause
190, which we shall debate
soon. May
I draw the Committees attention to some important Government
amendments that we tabled last Friday, which are about multiple
discrimination, adding a new clause 26? I have written to all Committee
members in connection with
that.
Clause 143Public
sector equality
duty Mr.
Tim Boswell (Daventry) (Con): I beg to move amendment 242,
in
clause 143, page 105, line 13, at
end insert (d) respect and
protect the human rights of any person for whom it has responsibility,
whether or not they have a relevant protected
characteristic..
The
Chairman: With this it will be convenient to discuss the
following: amendment (a) to amendment 242, at beginning
insert fulfil. Amendment to take
the usual formation of human rights
legislation. Amendment
19, in
clause 143, page 105, line 14, at
beginning
insert Subsection
(1) will also apply
to. Amendment
20, in clause 143, page 105, leave out
lines 15 and 16 and insert
except in relation to matters of
employment. Amendment
279, in
clause 143, page 105, line 31, leave
out and.
Amendment 280,
in
clause 143, page 105, line 32, at
end insert and, (c) eliminate
hatred and hostility towards members of different
groups.. Amendment
21, in
clause 143, page 105, line 35, at
end insert (5A) A public
authority must collect and publish data annually showing, in the
exercise of its functions, the extent to which it has succeeded in
meeting the requirements under subsection
(1).. Amendment
(a) to amendment 21, line 2, leave out from meeting to
end and insert (a)
eliminating discrimination, harassment, victimisation and any other
conduct that is prohibited by or under this
Act; (b) advancing equality of
opportunity between persons who share a relevant protected
characteristic and persons who do not share
it; (c) fostering good
relations between persons who share a relevant protected characteristic
and persons who do not share
it.. Public
authorities must publish data on whether they have achieved the three
parts of the equality duty, rather than on whether they have had regard
to this
requirement. Clause
stand
part.
Mr.
Boswell: Welcome back to the Chair, Mr. Benton.
I am pleased to be back after leave of absence last week to attend the
Council of Europe. I shall refer to that
briefly. I
am grateful, first, to the Solicitor-General for her statement this
morning, for publishing that document and for what she has done on
multiple discrimination, which we shall need to consider at greater
length. I am also grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Forest of
Dean for picking up the new clause on volunteering that I tabled for
last week. There was a useful scoping debate on it, which was the
intention of the new clause. Given the huge progress made, the
Committee may heave a sigh of relief that I did not have to share with
it the comments and jottings that I had made on parts 9 and 10. In that
spirit, I shall be as succinct as I can this
morning. I
return to discussing the Council of Europe, which is germane to my
amendment. Attending the Council is healthy and always interesting,
giving the opportunity of getting close to real human rights issues in
a way that sometimes our debates do not, however good natured and well
intended. In the same afternoon I found myself speaking in debates on
the position of Roma in Europe, as part of the annual human rights
discussions, and the widespread arrests in Armenia. As
parliamentarians, we can across the board understand the need for
action in such areas, those really serious breaches of human rights. In
the same way 60 years ago, the drafters of the European convention on
human rightsmainly British lawyers, incidentallyfully
understood their human duty in the light of the holocaust and the
events of the second world war. That is real human rights. I do not
wish to pretend for a moment that what we are discussing is not real
human rights, but that puts it in the context of immediate
needs. The
clause does not open brand new ground but sets out fresh ground in
relation to the public sector equality duty. I have to admit to being
something of an initial
sceptic as to the efficiency or efficacy of such forward-gear and
declaratory duties. However, I have in the event been belied and am
reasonably happy with how they have worked in practice with the
obligations in relation to race, disability and gender, which informed
the wider obligations of the
clause. In
principle, therefore, I welcome the extension of those positive duties
that the Government are introducing to the other protected
characteristics. I shall leave others to speak about their specific
concerns with the wording and details of the clause, but to some extent
they will give us a chance to look back at some of the underlying
issues, which are being considered throughout the Billnotably
the balance between a purely reactive mode for public authorities and
what I call a more positive and forward-gear approach. We touched on
that when we discussed clause 1, as we do
here. Secondly,
the concomitant debate is about how much positive discrimination is
required to meet a wish for equal treatment and fairness for all. There
is an underlying concern about the extent to which human rights are
seen as the rights of individuals or groups and how they should be
expressed. At least the effect of last weeks recharging of the
human rights batteries at the Council of Europe stimulated me to take
such issues a little further. It is clear when we re-read the
conventionwhich I do from time to time, at least the shortened
part of itthat the genesis of the document is personal rights,
or the rights of the individual. It starts with a pretty firm list: the
right to life, the right not to be tortured, the right not to be
enslaved, the right for a fair trial and the right for a measure of
distance in a persons personal and family life. They reflect
not only the collective tragedies of the second world war, but their
real-world emanation in the denial of the rights of the individuals who
suffered under those
tragedies. It
is quite interesting that the convention brings in anti-discrimination
only a little later in the list, under article 14. That provision is
conditional on the context of the application of the other articles of
the convention. It is also worth remarking that the right to property,
which some of us may think quite important, is brought in only under
the first
protocol. The
fact that the hierarchy starts with the individual is important and we
should not lose it. I am not saying that that is wrong, but in the
intervening yearsin continental Europe and especially in the
United Kingdomthere has been a shift to looking at human rights
as collective rights, particularly as people sometimes recognise that
public policies, or policies in the conduct and practice of public
authorities, are defective and affect the rights of more than one
individual. I
am thinking about institutional racism or the material failure of
inclusive employment policies. I sometimes wonder whether local
authorities or others have got round to thinking about them more than
in name only, yet even if we are not collectively, as a society,
setting out to kill or torture our citizens, and even if our public
authorities are properly mindful, which they will be after the clause
is enacted, of their public responsibilities to avoid discrimination
and promote positive values, including the wider ones of community
cohesion, something is missing in the
debate. We
have to understand the deformation of the concept of human rights,
which still takes part in public debate. In the survey conducted by the
Equality and Human
Rights Commission, to which I shall have occasion to refer specifically
in relation to the amendment, the rather disturbing data from an
opinion poll it conducted showed that 42 per cent. of the general
public thought that human rights were for criminals and terrorists
while only 40 per cent. thought they had something to do with them as
well. We
are in difficulty as a society if we think that human rights belong
only to those with first-rate lawyers, the politically correct and
those who might be a threat to society, and that they are not shared
with us. They are our rights, too. We benefit from them, and we should
celebrate them. That brings me straight to the point of the amendment.
As I have said, it arises from the recent EHRC inquiry on human rights,
which was published two weeks ago. I attended the launch and, more to
the point, the Secretary of State for Justice, who introduced it, spoke
at it very well. It was a very positive
occasion. In
these days of declaring even the most vestigial interest, I should make
it clear that the commission did not commission me to table the
amendment or new clause 18, which I shall touch on in a moment, but,
fired by the enthusiasm of attending the launch, I could not resist the
temptation to do
so. The
amendment is essentially an attempt to recover the human rights debate
from the idea that it is somehow the ground for
individualspeople who sometimes might be malicious or contrary
to the interests of societywho are wriggling to protect their
position and that that debate is nothing to do with us. We have a
problem of perception of what human rights are and of execution as to
how they might be taken forward. Paragraph 30 of the executive summary
of the report on the inquiry
found: There
were a number of factors inhibiting the assertion, provision and
enjoyment of rights, including: a lack of leadership, especially from
the Government, the Commission and politicians; a lack of knowledge and
insufficient mainstreaming of a human rights approach in core
processes; a lack of confidence inhibiting members of the public from
asserting their rights; organisational culture and structure; the use
of general rather than specific language; and inaccurate media
reporting. When
summarised, a report tends to emphasise the bad side and I would not
like to suggestI do not think the report doesthat
everything is negative, but it is clearly unfinished business. Evidence
tendered by the Gwynedd local health board
said: A
lack of awareness of human rights issues can be a barrier to
mainstreaming throughout the
organisation. The
distinguished chair of the inquiry, Dame Nuala OLoan, who has
hands-on Northern Ireland experience, was quoted in relation to public
authorities that complained that all the human rights stuff got in the
way of the day job. She repliedmajestically and
magisteriallythat human rights are the day job.
That is an eloquent statement of the approach of most members of the
Committee, and I hope it is shared a little more
widely. Human
rights are about our right to be fed properly when we are in hospital
or a care home, and about reasonably law-abiding persons not being
subject to excess surveillance by the security authorities. They
include the loss of personal data by public officials. Those are all
part of how the state interfaces with us. I believe
stronglythis is the substance of the amendmentthat
public authorities need to mainstream human rights,
and they should not be frightened of using human rights language and the
human rights approach in forming their policies and drawing up their
performance standards and evaluation of achievements. Is what they are
doing fit for purpose in terms of the human rights we all
have? That
human rights approach is intended to move somewhat away from what, with
due respect to the Solicitor-General, I might term the legalistic,
which she is not, or box-ticking, which she also is not, approach. It
is, however, the approach taken by some public authorities. The
question should not be simply or naively, Did we avoid
discrimination? Did we meet our statutory duties as set out in the
clause? It should not be, Can we get away with it in
court? The questions that public authoritiestheir
councillors, elected members and usshould be asking is,
Did we treat that person with fairness, dignity and
respect? Bear
in mind the fact that more than one authority might be involved because
there are border issues, which are touched on in the report. We need to
ask, On the whole, was the outcome what we would have wished
for ourselves or our loved ones or was it defective? In other
words, does the public service work for the
public? All
that leads me inexorably to the specific recommendations of the
inquiry, a lot of which are addressed to public authorities directly
and are not really matters of law. The two recommendations that I want
to touch on include my amendment 242, which would mean the Government
consulting on whether a statutory duty should be imposed on all public
authorities to take into account human rights before they implement new
policies. That is precedented by what is already in the provision and,
somewhat obliquely, by what the Committee has already approved in
clause 1 in relation to socio-economic
duties. 10.45
am If
we can do that in the one case, sauce for the goose should be sauce for
the gander, so we could do something in relation to human rights,
although I do not want to force the Solicitor-General to say yes or no
to my amendment now. Incidentally, as the hon. Member for Hornsey and
Wood Green is dutifully listening to me, I am perfectly happy with her
amendment (a) to amendment 242. Although Rome is not going
to be taken in a day, we should now be looking at extending the
duty. My
second point is a little more sensitive, not least because the
Government have already rejected it, and is encapsulated in new clause
18, which I
tabled.
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