Clause 15 - Codes of practice: supplemental
Equality Bill
9:15 am
Sandra Gidley (Women & Older People, Non-Departmental & Cross Departmental Responsibilities; Romsey, Liberal Democrat)
I beg to move amendment No. 48, in clause 15, page 9, line 15, leave out from ‘a’ to end of line 18 and insert
‘court or tribunal shall take such a code into account, or any provisions thereof, in any proceedings before it.’.
Clause 15(4) replicates section 47(10) of the Race Relations Act 1976. Our amendment would mean that courts and tribunals would have a duty in future to take the relevant code of practice into account when considering a case. The clause will mean that any court or tribunal would have to consider the code only if it were introduced as evidence by the complainant. That is particularly important given the fact that public funding, which we discussed at some length on Tuesday, is available only for representation in county court or sheriff court cases, not for hearings or employment tribunals, so the vast majority of people taking race discrimination cases to employment tribunals have no legal representation. One hopes that a solicitor would raise the relevant part of the code as evidence, but lay people do not necessarily work in the same way as solicitors, so it is possible that, as they are not so well acquainted with the law, the code would not be introduced as evidence. Given the lack of legal representation, it would be much better if the court or tribunal had an automatic duty to consider the code when judging a case.