My Lords, I apologise, but I rise to raise a procedural issue crucial to the reputation of your Lordships’ House. When I blocked out my diary for the Fridays scheduled for Committee on this Bill, I did so in good faith. I assumed not only that your Lordships’ House would recognise the value of the views of Members with lifelong lived experience of disability, but that steps would be taken to ensure that those views were heard on an equal and non-discriminatory basis. That would be entirely in keeping with the Equality Act 2010, which placed on organisations a legal duty to make reasonable adjustments on account of disability in, among other things, the way in which they work.

In the belief that your Lordships’ House and the Government will appreciate the crucial importance of our being seen to set an example and uphold the law, which we passed and which we expect others to abide by, I emailed the Government Chief Whip and wrote to the Prime Minister to explain that, because of my disability, I need to leave by 3 pm in order to catch my flight home. I requested an assurance that the House would not sit beyond 3 pm, which is of course the time by when the House normally rises on a sitting Friday. Regrettably, I have been given no such assurance. Instead, the Government are using a procedural technicality as a feeble fig leaf for discrimination against me as one of the House’s Members—one of its few Members—with lifelong disability. I do not believe it is beyond the wit or the will of the Government, or indeed your Lordships’ House, to ensure that we rise by 3 pm so that I can participate today and on other sitting Fridays on an equal and non-discriminatory basis. Given that not one organisation of or for disabled people supports this Bill, surely it is right that all of us—every one of us—are enabled to do our duty of subjecting this monumentally significant Bill to the forensic scrutiny it requires.

In conclusion, do we really want to send the message to those who are following our proceedings today, “Do as we say, not as we do”? That would be shameful and it would be unworthy of your Lordships’ House. For our own sake, I urge the House not to discriminate against me as one of the very few Members born disabled. I therefore ask that the House rises by 3pm.