Clause 3 - General Duty
Equality Bill [Lords]
12:30 pm
Eleanor Laing (Shadow Secretary of State for Scotland, Scotland; Epping Forest, Conservative)
I beg to move amendment No. 55, in page 2, line 5, leave out ‘to participate in society’.
Clause 3 was the subject of a great deal of debate in another place. My noble Friend Baroness Miller succeeded in persuading Ministers to amend it, so that the general duty imposed by it is as set out in the new version of the Bill. I commend my noble Friend and all who supported her on their achievement in this respect. I am pleased that the Government have not sought to restore the original wording, because the clause is very much better for having been amended.
Our further amendment simply deletes from subsection (d) the words “to participate in society”, so that the clause states that the commission will exercise its functions with a view to encouraging and supporting
“the development of a society in which ... each individual has an equal opportunity”.
I consider it essential for each person to have equal opportunity. That is the basis of the Bill and it is right that it be stated under the title “General duty”, which is in one of the Bill’s first clauses. We see no need for the phrase “to participate in society”; each individual simply has to have “an equal opportunity”. This subsection is much stronger for such brevity and simplicity.