Women

Part of the debate – in the House of Lords at 3:46 pm on 8 March 2007.

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Photo of Lord Lester of Herne Hill Lord Lester of Herne Hill Women & Equality, Cross-Portfolio and Non-Portfolio Responsibilities 3:46, 8 March 2007

My Lords, I am very grateful for that; it explains one of the problems. If the new commission is to be effective on sex equality and equal pay, the tangled and incoherent mess of existing equality laws has to be replaced by clear, consistent, easily intelligible legislation that, as far as possible, states the whole of the law in a single Bill. We must not level down existing protection, which the Government have promised they will not do, but we need to create an effective framework for enforcement and individual remedies with less emphasis on procedures and more emphasis on outcomes.

The Hepple report contains new ideas that need to be followed. It said that there should be effective action to tackle pay inequity, including a duty on employers, as the commission chaired by the noble Baroness, Lady Prosser, indicated, to conduct workforce reviews using government contracts and state aid. Where there is persistent non-compliance with tribunal orders, companies should not be eligible for government contracts. The report also focused on positive action and positive duties, and considered the merits of a general duty to promote equality of opportunity on all public bodies. Of course, we now have the gender duty.

It is also essential for the new commission to pursue strategic law enforcement energetically and wisely as a high priority. The existing equality agencies have tended to be reluctant to use their investigative enforcement powers effectively in accordance with their statutory mandate. If the new commission is, as we all hope, well led, professionally staffed and well resourced, it should provide much needed institutional support to promote a culture of respect for equality and human rights in this country, and much greater progress towards the elimination of discrimination and promotion of equality of opportunity for all, monitoring compliance with the new gender duty.

We now have the chair, most of the commissioners and the chief executive in place. A second round of appointments of up to five further commissioners is expected shortly. I am delighted that the panel of commissioners includes some distinguished and powerful women, including the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, Professor Francesca Klug, and Jeannie Drake and Kay Carberry from the TUC and trade union movement.

The commission will need a strong presence in London and Westminster to exert real influence on government policy and decision-making. To give reality to genuine equality for women, we need energetic, imaginative and bold leadership from government to tackle the persistent patterns of inequality and injustice. We hope that the Minister, who is of course not responsible for a great deal of what I have said, will be able to tell the House about the timetable for the Government's plans to reform the equal pay and sex discrimination legislation as part and parcel of their plans for a single Equality Act. This is the wake-up call of the noble Baroness, Lady Billingham. Great indeed is the work that remains to be accomplished.