Clause 1
Equality Bill
9:45 am
Tim Boswell (Daventry, Conservative)
May I also welcome you to the Chair, Mr. Benton? I think that we will have a positive and constructive Committee. I promise to speak about some of the general aspects of the amendments and the clause without straying on to the issue of Scotland. However, it is just conceivable, in view of my wife’s nationality and certain involvements that I have in Cardiff, where I come across the Welsh Assembly Government, that I may advert to that body. That is not a threat; it is simply that we have heard a lot about the different implications of devolved Administrations.
I will not indulge myself at length, but it comes as a wake-up call telling one that it is time to go when one finds that Cabinet Ministers were born after one had left higher education. I was shocked to discover that the other day, but it also prompts my first general remark. Forty-five years ago, I had the first—and probably only—lesson in moral philosophy that I can remember, which was to the effect that there is a distinction between saying that something should happen and saying that there should be a law that something should happen. That is the general issue raised by this place.
The Solicitor-General has been very kind to me on occasion, and I hope that there will be no argument about whether we are interested in inequalities. There could have been that argument, and there could still be in respect of certain members of my party and other parties, but we need to be alert to such factors.
Among local authorities in my county and most others, and even among regulators, which we recently discussed in relation to an amendment, there is a disposition to even things up and, to use a phrase that I used on Second Reading—I am interested in the human rights side, as well as the discrimination and equalities issue—to treat people decently. That is really why we are in business in Parliament, and we should not have an argument about that. The issue, however, is how we deliver that and whether it is appropriate to have a general duty.
When I interrupted the excellent speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean, who was making a perfectly reasonable distinction between inequality and discrimination, I adverted to my concern that the proposals did not amount to much, particularly when there was no opportunity of litigating in private to correct failures by a public authority. There are no teeth, although that does not necessarily mean that we should never have legislation.
During our evidence sessions, the Solicitor-General objected to my slight penchant for principles clauses, which we may have occasion to discuss later. She said that such a clause would not add value and that it was not clear how it would operate in practice. However, one could reasonably turn her argument against her and say that if she does not like principles clauses, she should accept that clause 1 is, in a way, a clause of generality or principle, which may not have many teeth or substance and which may serve a political rather than a purely functional purpose.
I add another general concern, which strays forward into clause 2. It relates to the operation of so-called Henry VIII clauses. The only other reminiscence that I will relate to the Committee is that the first house I grew up in was a farm house. It was nothing very grand; indeed, it had previously been used to store onions. It was called Bull’s lodge. Bull was in fact Boleyn, as in Anne Boleyn. It was a small hunting box that had been owned by Sir Thomas Boleyn. It was next to New hall, which happened to be one of Henry VIII’s palaces. Indeed, we found evidence that he and Anne had been courting, because there was a secret passage between the two. That is the early memory, but I was going to say that Anne Boleyn had a nasty time at the hands of Henry VIII, and we should resist Henry VIII clauses in principle.