Clause 36 - Dissolution
Equality Bill [Lords]
2:30 pm

Meg Munn (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department of Trade and Industry; Sheffield, Heeley, Labour)

Clause 36 is a necessary procedural clause. Its purpose is to ensure a smooth transition between the existing three equality commissions and the new CEHR. It provides the Secretary of State with an order-making power to dissolve the existing equality commissions or remove specified functions from them. In that way, it is a counterpart of clause 1, establishing the new commission. It will be used to wind up in due course the Equal Opportunities Commission, the Disability Rights Commission and the Commission for Racial Equality. There needs to be flexibility in timing, but also a degree of certainty. The order-making power could be exercised to dissolve each of the commissions or to switch functions from them to the new commission at a different time. However, it must be used to dissolve each existing commission by 31 March 2009.

We are working to launch the CEHR in October 2007, with the functions and powers of the DRC and EOC folding in just before that date. Although we have agreed with the CRE that it will not join at that stage, we specified a date by which all the commissions must cease to exist. Imposing the date of 31 March 2009 will ensure that the gap between the CEHR’s operational launch and the race strand being included does not extend beyond 18 months.

As I have already said, the power includes the flexibility to remove specified functions from the existing commissions. That will make it possible to transfer functions gradually, as part of the complex transition process. It will allow the functions of the existing commissions to be transferred to the CEHR in a strategic and well managed process.

The order-making power is subject to the negative procedure under clause 41. That is justified because we are talking about a series of highly technical and detailed provisions, the purpose of which is to implement the principle of dissolution of the former commissions and transfer to the new one; and that principle, of course, is embedded in primary legislation—in the Bill.