ESTABLISHMENT AND DUITES OF COMMISSION (Hansard, 27 October 1976)

§ Mr. John
I beg to move, That the House doth disagree with the Lords in the said amendment.

§ Mr. Speaker
With this we may discuss Lords Amendments Nos. 30, 44, 45 and 47 and amendments to Lords Amendments Nos. 48, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 56, 57, 58 and 59.

§ Mr. John
I shall be very brief because there are very few permutations of names left which have not been examined thoroughly. The name of the Commission as originally placed in the Bill was the Race Relations Commission. However, the Committee felt that this was inappropriate. It was suggested to the Committee that the Commission should be called the Commission for Racial Equality and this was accepted. That was the name when the Bill left the House to go to another place. In another place Baroness Vickers moved an amendment to change it to the Community Relations Commission.
Without being pernickety about this, I should point out that there are dangers in that particular name. We are setting up a new commission with new powers. The Community Relations Commission is the name of an existing body with limited powers and if we retain this name we risk the danger that people will regard the new commission as having the powers of the existing body and being identical in all respects. I am not being disparaging about the present CRC but the powers and functions which it has are not identical to those of the new body and we wish to avoid confusion.

§ Mr. Alison
Although one of my noble Friends made this change in the name, we believe that the Minister is absolutely right. We do not want to perpetuate the name of the existing CRC in a new body which will have a new rôle, strategy and function. The Government are absolutely right on this point.

§ Mr. Frederick Willey (Sunderland, North)
The Standing Committee was very concerned about the name of the new commission and anxious to avoid the continuation of the term "race relations". This was discussed at length and we accept the Minister of State's proposal as a fair compromise.