New Clause 4

Part of Financial Services Bill – in a Public Bill Committee at 1:15 pm on 14 January 2010.

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Photo of John Howell John Howell Conservative, Henley 1:15, 14 January 2010

The hon. Gentleman has mentioned the Equality Bill on a number of occasions. I sat on the Equality Bill Committee, and I remember the discussion about the socio-economic duty. The difficulty is that that Bill deals with discrimination. The unhelpful nature of the socio-economic duty blurred the distinction between discrimination and disadvantage, with the result that it tackled neither. The disadvantage element was  handled in many other ways by many other different pieces of Government legislation. Blurring the two led to feelings of confusion in the Committee on whether the duty would achieve anything.