Clause 51 - Public authorities: general
Equality Bill [Lords]
4:00 pm
Dominic Grieve (Shadow Attorney General, (Assist the Home Affairs Team); Beaconsfield, Conservative)
The Minister makes a persuasive case. I hope that he will excuse my saying that it highlights a slight oddity that underlies the measure. I suspect that I shall, at the end of the day, be comfortable with it, but I think that the Committee should bear that in mind. We consider it acceptable for the state to lay down criteria by which it can deny access to the country to individuals whose views it considers not conducive to the public good. However, under the Bill we would deny individuals in Britain the right not to provide goods and services to people about whom they might hold exactly the same view.
I can make a distinction between those two concepts, but we should do well to have the issue in mind in Committee, because that is the reality of what we are doing. There is an argument, which was raised in another place, that we may be going too far—I now come back to my views about beliefs, which I raised with the Minister earlier—in extending the mantle of acceptability to other people's views, and that in doing so we may put an unwarranted burden on individuals. I have a residual anxiety about that.
There is, however, logic in the Minister's position as to why he wants to refuse entry to the relevant people. Of course, that is open to challenge in the courts, and I dare say that it will be challenged. One of the probable grounds on which it will be challenged is the European convention on human rights freedom to practise a religion.
I have no doubt that this area of the legislation is likely to be tested. I can well imagine that some individuals who are kept out—for good reasons, in my view—will say, ''The only basis on which you are keeping me out is my religious views, and that is discriminatory.'' It will then be for the Government's lawyers to argue that they are entitled to do so. In such circumstances, they may fall back on the argument that public order issues relating to such people warrant their exclusion. That is why I initially touched on whether we should focus on the public order element.
I genuinely hope that subsection (4)(f) stands the test of being challenged in the courts. In view of what the Government are setting up in the rest of the Bill, I suspect that it will come to be challenged, but that is not to say that I think that the Government are wrong.