Marsha Singh: Is the hon. Gentleman saying to his constituents that if someone faces discrimination or feels that he does, "Don't come knocking on my door. Don't go to your local Member of Parliament. I do not believe that discrimination exists." If that is his position, I would be grateful if he issued a press release.
Marsha Singh: I think that the House has heard your message to those who are presumably bringing vexatious and frivolous cases. What message do you have for those people who suffer genuine discrimination? Have you any message of support for them?
Marsha Singh: I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time. It is with great pleasure that I present the Bill to the House. Its purpose is self-evident in its title. If it is successful, it will address an imbalance between England, Wales and Northern Ireland and Scotland. The Scottish Parliament has recognised that failure to provide assistance to victims of employment discrimination contravenes...
Marsha Singh: I would not oppose such a review, but in its absence we need to do something to ensure that the victims of discrimination have some way of exercising their rights and challenging that discrimination. That is what the Bill is intended to do. Unfair dismissal accounts for just over a quarter of all employment claims in recent years—a proportion that has remained fairly constant. Such cases...
Marsha Singh: I am sorry, I do not have those details, but I can try and get them. If my hon. Friend will be patient, I shall come to trade unions later in my speech. Sarah, aged 28, from London had worked in public relations for eight years and for her current employer for eight months when she became pregnant. Within a fortnight she was called to a disciplinary meeting and given a list of grievances. She...
Marsha Singh: I entirely agree. One aspect of the Bill, to which I shall return, is that it does not put matters back into the hands of lawyers, but introduces a different system of advice and support.
Marsha Singh: I agree. I wish more people were union members. As I shall show, large parts of the work force, especially the most vulnerable workers, are not unionised. We have a duty and a responsibility to protect those workers as well. On the case taken up by the northern complainants aid fund, although the employers denied dismissing the woman for being pregnant, she won her case at tribunal. The case...
Marsha Singh: I entirely agree, but what do we do in the meantime? What do we do about people who do not want to join a union? Should they not have access to justice?
Marsha Singh: The hon. Gentleman clearly does not support access to justice for all. I do, and I hope many of my colleagues agree with me. We will find out later. Tribunals in London cost between £15,000 and £40,000. Evidence of intimidation and unjustified threats has also been revealed by Citizens Advice.
Marsha Singh: One of the main selling points of the Bill is that it will do precisely the opposite, by setting up a system of advice and representation in which lay people and specialists in the subject who are not lawyers will also be involved. Revised procedural rules introduced in 2001 increase the costs that can be awarded from £500 to a massive £10,000. Although there is little evidence that high...
Marsha Singh: With his experience in the union, my hon. Friend has probably dealt only with a unionised work force. I am speaking about the huge number of people who are non-unionised. Perhaps my hon. Friend does not know about their experiences out there, but they are what I am describing.
Marsha Singh: My hon. Friend makes an important point, but some of the people I am discussing here number among the most vulnerable groups in society. They have the least support available to them, and they are also probably among the least well informed about their rights.
Marsha Singh: Community law centres play a very important role, but the problem is that many of them rely on funding from local councils or other bodies, and such funding is not always secure. In fact, because of the funding situation my own law centre in Bradford no longer has an employment lawyer. The case for this Bill is that we need a solid system throughout the country that enables people to get...
Marsha Singh: I know that my hon. Friend is a very patient Member, and if he will bear with me I will deal with that point in due course.
Marsha Singh: Does my hon. Friend wish to monopolise these opening exchanges?
Marsha Singh: The CLS's role will not be duplicated. The fact is that there is no nationwide system that provides assistance to victims of discrimination. We need such a system because the help available is very patchy; indeed, in many areas it is often non-existent. In Bradford, for example, employment advice, assistance and representation are now non-existent. My Bill will not lead to duplication;...
Marsha Singh: No, I do not know its views, but to be frank, in general, equal opportunities bodies are not in favour of the Bill. Funding for such a system would come from their existing budgets, and they are not going to support a Bill that would reduce their budgets.
Marsha Singh: As I said earlier, the advice available for people who have suffered employment discrimination is very patchy. The equal opportunities bodies are not providing a national system of access to justice, and it is not a question of cannibalising funding for them. The point that this House must address, and which I shall deal with later, is that such bodies have not been spending enough of their...
Marsha Singh: I am sure that those bodies do a lot of important work in raising awareness of such issues, and so on, but I am not here to speak about what they do or do not do, except in the context of providing representation for discrimination complainants. Those bodies could doubtless answer the hon. Gentleman's questions perfectly adequately, were he to approach them.
Marsha Singh: In response to my hon. Friend, the funding of racial equality councils can be quite precarious: it is supplied on an annual basis and can be taken away at any time. If the leadership complexion of the Commission for Racial Equality changes, so can its priorities. I do not believe that taking some funding away to establish the proposed board would affect the organisation's major...