Sex Discrimination (Amendment) (Hansard, 11 December 2001)

§ Mr. Robert Walter (North Dorset)

I beg to move, That leave be given to bring in a Bill to amend the Sex Discrimination Act 1975; to make provision with respect to discrimination concerning the provision of goods, facilities, services and access to governance by private member clubs; and to continue to permit wholly single-sex clubs and sporting events. I welcome the opportunity to present another Bill to outlaw discrimination in private members' clubs. When I introduced a similar Bill two years ago, I did not foresee its far-reaching implications. I had personal experience of the injustice of a club that offered membership to both men and women, but which discriminated against women by offering them only inferior membership. They had second-class status with no access to the governance of that club.

My experience was of the Carlton club where I had been part of a campaign to remedy that injustice. On two separate occasions, the club narrowly missed the opportunity to move itself into the modern world. In the summer of 1999, I raised the issue again at the club's annual meeting. I was greeted with derision. After the meeting, otherwise intelligent men told me that I should have been asked to resign on the spot for having the audacity to ask the committee to reconsider its decision. I gave the club six months to re-address the issue, otherwise I could no long remain a member.

As a constituency Member of Parliament, I know that 52 per cent. of my electorate are women. As a Conservative Member of Parliament, whose party has been led by a woman and was home to the first woman MP to sit in the House, I find such discrimination intolerable.

Although others before and since have resigned from the Carlton, on this issue the club would not budge, so in November 1999 I resigned. In December that year, I drew No. 11 in the private Members' ballot. If I could not change the rules of the Carlton club, at least I could try to change the law. I was not in a high enough position to secure a decent Second Reading, but I was close enough to give my Bill an airing, if only for 32 seconds. It was, of course, blocked through the good offices of the Government Whip, but not before the full magnitude of the issue had been revealed.

It was not only the gentlemen's clubs of St. James's that practised this outdated form of discrimination. They were small fry; there were bigger offenders among the working men's clubs of the north, mostly Labour clubs, but some Conservative clubs too. However, their prejudice was generally born out of ignorance. The real villains of the piece were the golf clubs. Here a strict commercial logic prevailed, but one that was based in a bygone age and on a pattern of life that had last existed in the 1950s.

Here the ladies were obliged to play golf on weekdays, before the man of the house was home from the office. The gentlemen could not be expected to give way to the ladies on Saturdays and Sundays: the attitude was, "Goddam it man, any self-respecting gel should be at home cooking lunch or looking after the children on a Saturday morning." Those clubs honestly believed that while men had work to do during the week, women were at leisure or shopping. It was as if no working woman, with a career or business interests, would be the sort of 737 woman they wanted in their club, on their greens or in their bar. Oh, how the world has changed! It appears that when the Sex Discrimination Act was passed in 1975, those arguments could still be justified. A quarter of a century later, they are totally unacceptable.

I am grateful for the support that I received when I last rehearsed these arguments in support of my first Sex Discrimination (Amendment) Bill, and for my wife's sterling work in drafting and in corralling support. I am grateful to the Fawcett Society for its support, and most particularly, to colleagues in all parties and in both Houses for their encouragement. A number of my colleagues have followed me and resigned from the Carlton club, but this issue goes so much further than a parochial spat. It is no longer acceptable that an institution can offer its membership and facilities to men and women and then say that one sex can be admitted only on inferior terms. We would be outraged if they did so on the grounds of race, religion or disability.

I have no argument with single-sex clubs. I see little attraction in them, but they seem to do no one any harm. I acknowledge the physical difference between men and 738 women, and therefore have no problem with sporting events confined to either sex. The purpose of this Bill is to right the omissions of an earlier Act, introduced in another era. It is no longer right nor just for a woman to be offered inferior membership and facilities by any club, merely on the grounds of her gender. It is plainly wrong, offensive and outdated, and I ask the House to permit the Bill to be read a Second time.