Clause 73 - Employers' and principals' liability
Equality Bill [Lords]
7:00 pm
Dominic Grieve (Shadow Attorney General, (Assist the Home Affairs Team); Beaconsfield, Conservative)
I beg to move amendment No. 132, in clause 73, page 43, line 9, leave out subsection (2).
The clause provides for employers' and principals' liability where the default and the discrimination are in fact carried out by their employee or agent. However, subsection (4) states:
''In proceedings under this Part against a person in respect of an act alleged to have been done by his employee it shall be a defence for the employer to provide that he took such steps as were reasonably practicable to prevent the employee from . . . doing the act, or . . . from doing acts of that kind in the course of his employment.''
That is in respect of an employee. I was somewhat surprised to see that no such provision or defence is provided for in the case of the acts of an agent. I am drawing the Committee's attention to that by seeking to delete subsection (2), which would altogether remove the responsibility of a principal for the acts of an agent.
To give the Minister an obvious example, let us say that I employ a letting agent to let a property that I own. He is apparently a reputable letting agent operating in the locality. Unknown to me, however, he is in fact a religious bigot who dislikes the idea of people of minority faiths coming into the area, so, in operating the letting policy, he tries his best to ensure that people of minority faiths are deterred from applying by being surly and unpleasant to them. If they do get a letting, he tries—unknown to me, because I am the principal—to respond very slowly to any request that they make and is generally unpleasant to them.
If those matters are completely outside my knowledge—that will often be the case, as the Minister will realise simply by applying his mind to it—is it right that the principal should be saddled with the default of his agent? There is an easy way to cure the problem, which is to provide for a similar protection to that provided for employers in respect of employees, but the Government have not done that. In the absence of such provision, I am very unhappy about clause 73(2).