Clause 17 - Grants
Equality Bill
9:30 am
Eleanor Laing (Shadow Secretary of State for Scotland, Scotland; Epping Forest, Conservative)
Clause 17 deals with grants, and clauses 28 and 29, to which some of the amendments in this group relate, deal with legal assistance and its costs. We tabled the amendments to find out whether the Government intend to exclude small organisations or charities from receiving any financial help or assistance to deal with cases brought as a result of the Bill, or possibly by the new commission.
Subsection (1) states:
“In pursuance of any of its duties under sections 8 to 10 the Commission may make grants to another person.”
We suggest in amendment No. 85 that the commission should be able to make grants to another person, body or organisation. Although I appreciate that “person” has a legal meaning that is much wider than just an individual human being, it does not necessarily include a small charity, small organisation or small business brought into any proceedings as a result of the Bill. This is important because the Bill imposes considerable new duties on, for example, employers, and rightly so—we want to see those duties imposed on employers.
I have always argued—we dealt with this matter at some length on Second Reading—that it would be unfair and counter-productive, and would inhibit the working of the Bill, if small businesses and small employers, even those with just one or two employees, were deterred by the rigour of the legislation from employing anyone who might bring a case under any of the six strands of discrimination that the new commission will examine. That would do the exact opposite of what we intend the legislation and the new commission to do.
One way we can ensure that a small employer, charity or other small body without sufficient funds to have its own legal advice would not be deterred from employing, entering into a contract with or doing business with someone who might be the subject of a discrimination action is to ensure that funding would be available from the public purse for such an action.
Having said that, I return to my recurring theme: we do not want the costs of the commission and of implementing the legislation to impose a greater burden than necessary on the taxpayer. I am not suggesting—far from it—that any of the amendments should be a charter for encouraging litigation or, as I said previously, that any of the provisions should be an open invitation to lawyers to engage in interesting exploration of the meaning and intent of the law. However, such a safeguard in relation to funding would ensure that the right balance was struck. My other recurring theme is that, if we put too many burdens on business, particularly on small business and small organisations, charities and other voluntary organisations, the intent of the Bill will backfire.