HC Deb 10 June 2004 vol 422 cc400-1
18. Vera Baird (Redcar) (Lab)

If she will make a statement on progress towards a commission for equality and human rights. [177772]

The Deputy Minister for Women and Equality (Jacqui Smith)

We believe that a single commission for equality and human rights is the best way to contribute to our vision of a fair, prosperous and cohesive society. We published the White Paper "Fairness for All: A New Commission for Equality and Human Rights" on 12 May, setting out details of the new commission. We will be consulting on it until 6 August.

Vera Baird

I am very grateful for that reply. The White Paper is extremely welcome—in particular, for its expressed intention to take concrete steps towards implementing the Government's long-standing commitment on a gender duty. Does my right hon. Friend expect that, in due course, that gender duty will be included in the statute that will set up the commission?

Jacqui Smith

My hon. and learned Friend raises a very important point about public duties. Earlier, in response to my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz), I outlined some of the new powers that the commission will have. It will have the important role of monitoring and ensuring that the public duties already existing for race are applied in respect of disability and gender. Frankly, the point at which we legislate for the gender duty depends on the progress that we can make in designing the duty to ensure that it makes a difference in developing better, more accessible and more responsive public services without a heavy bureaucratic burden.

I assure my hon. and learned Friend that we have now significantly stepped up activity. The Equal Opportunities Commission is engaged in that design work, and officials from across government have met. I am very confident that we will make good progress.

Mr. Harry Barnes (North-East Derbyshire) (Lab)

Whatever the pros and cons of an overall equality commission involving disability, race and gender, the fact is that such a commission is off the ground and developing in Northern Ireland, because that was part of the Belfast agreement. What has been learned from developments in Northern Ireland?

Jacqui Smith

My hon. Friend is right. We need to learn not only from Northern Ireland but more broadly, not least because there were particular circumstances in Northern Ireland that necessitated the development of the approach taken there. Part of the reason for the consultation process and for the process that we engaged in up to the publication of the White Paper, which brought together a taskforce of stakeholders from business and the different equality groups to consider how best to set up the commission, was to ensure that we learned the best lessons, that we took the best from the existing arrangements and that we came out at the end with something more effective than we have at the moment for embedding equality and diversity and for tackling discrimination where it exists.

Miss Anne Begg (Aberdeen, South) (Lab)

I am sure that the Minister will be aware that when a single equality commission was first proposed, many disabled people were concerned that disability would lose some of its impact, especially because the Disability Rights Commission is still a relatively new commission. Many of these fears have been addressed with the guaranteed place for a disabled person on the board of the proposed commission for equality and human rights and the provision for a separate committee that would have policy-making powers. However, the concern remains that there will be less focus on disability, so can the Minister assure people in the disabled community that that will not happen and that work will go on to introduce a single equality Act? That is also important in underpinning the work of any single equality commission.

Jacqui Smith

As I have spelt out in response to other questions, disability stakeholders have much to gain from an organisation that is able to provide a much better service to employers and to service providers. Because of the way in which we have set up a disability commission, which my hon. Friend mentioned, with specific expertise on some of the areas of disability legislation such as, in particular, the idea of reasonable adjustment, we shall ensure that that expertise is also fed into the commission. The benefits for disabled people of having a commission that will enable them to see also the different elements of their identity and the different challenges faced by, for example, a black disabled person or an older disabled person will ensure that we end up with something that is both more effective for disabled people across the piece as well as for all the other stakeholders for whom the commission will play a very important role.