Spiking Section 3 of the Equality Act

The Government has had its eyes on the Equality Act for quite some time. Last year, I attended a consultation at the Government Equalities Office in Victoria about the future of discrimination advice. By the time I had left the building the Governments Red Tape Challenge had been launched with a plan to scrap the general duty. For the longest while they seemed to talk about launching a consultation without actually launching one when they did actually launch it is came with a raft of other proposals relating to the Equality Act. 

The consultation responses to keep the General Duty outnumbered those to scrap it by six to one.  However still like a thief in the night the proposal is not only here, but voted through parliament on a vote of 310 – 244 in that 66 vote difference 41 Liberal Democrat MP’s voted. In the 2010 election, the Guardian was urging many to vote Lib Dem to keep a Tory Government out to protect a core set of values about civil liberties. Here those same Lib Dems were vote en mass to remove the General Duty. Jo Swinson argued that it was unimportant. The governments briefing on the reasoning to remove it was it argued creating unrealistic expectations.

A significant proportion of Lib Dems at their own conference expressed concern over the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill and there seemed to be some concerted lobbying to try and get Lib Dem MP’s to at least abstain. It therefore comes as a surprise that the Conservative Peter Bottomley felt able to rebel on this issue whilst only David Ward was the only Lib Dem to do so. If you are still unconvinced about the need to oppose the changes watch the video. If you want to do something about it write to your MP using this site here. If Peter Bottomley can be on the forces protecting Equality perhaps there's still hope.

As local elections draw closer, the Lib Dems are trailing behind UKIP on many polls. In the Borough elections two years ago, they suffered heavy losses in Northampton. Some of the greatest of those were in student areas such as Trinity and St. Georges. With overwhelming more Conservative County Councils being defended in this election, and UKIP polling to get up to 20% of the Conservative vote, the May elections are expected to bring significant change.  It need not have been so for the Lib Dems. They sold their souls for a Proportional Representation referendum and still feel the need to pay for it.            

It's about power

Over the last couple of weeks there has been so much it’s hard to make sense out of.

Sometimes it’s hard to know what the right thing to do is. Sometimes it’s not. One defining characteristic about 2013 is a level of brutality on a personal, organisation, governmental and international level.

Earlier this month we had the conviction and sentencing of Mick and Mairead Philpott for their part in the deaths of the six children. Then a subsequent news frenzy as rather than violence it was seen as the fault of a benefit culture by senior Conservative figures. Earlier this week it came out that Mick Philpott  was a Conservative voter an left bloggers alluded to the fact that it was his voting practices rather than his benefits that created the culture that resulted in the deaths of the children.

The inquest into Savita Halappanavar's death has unanimously delivered its verdict: her death was as a result of medical misadventure. A strong health young woman who was herself a medical professional died because the medical professionals around her would not give her an abortion whilst there was the presence of the foetal heartbeat despite and admission that the foetus had fatal abnormalities. Whilst senior clinicians protected themselves by citing the anomalies in the Irish law it was left to a midwife to tell the truth about why Savita was denied an abortion.  It was not because an abortion wouldn’t save her ... as it would have it was because of the country that Savita had the misfortune to be in when she had problems with the pregnancy. Savita’s death created outrage in India from feminists but supported by a wave of patriotic anti-West sentiment that turned a blind eye to the need for greater access to abortion for Indian women in India and more basic health care support for Indian woman and girls.

In the last twenty-four hours there is a new atrocity to focus on as a five year old girl is raped and physically abused in Delhi. The reports of the abuse, and the police investigations when she went missed is gut wrenchingly both horrific and tragic. As demonstrators demand that enough is enough, the police alienate themselves even more by reports of one of them slapping a protester.

The common thread is clearly the issue of power imbalances against women and children. Rather than issues about the state, this kind of inhumanity will continue as long as people think they can get away with playing life and death over others because no one will stand up and be counted in defence of others that are more vulnerable or simply do not have the power. In some ways you can argue that there are tough decisions to be made as no one wants to be accused with no comeback but unless more people stand up for what they believe in, then women and children will continue to die. Despite the fact that deeply violent and disgusting things have happened in India ... at least there is protest. All too often bad things happen in Britain and no one wants to know.

It is a question of honesty.

The real reason why people are sick to the back teeth of job insecurity, rising food and energy costs, their friends and family members losing work, becoming homeless, becoming ill or acquiring a disability and finding it really difficult to get any support, but still not engaging in the kind of numbers needed to effect change.

People really don’t trust anymore because they have been lied, and lied and lied to.  Politicians of various hues have come along with a variety of policies and panaceas and are repeatedly found out to be untrustworthy deceitful individuals.  With Gloria de Piero, Labour MP for Ashfield asking why people view politicians as “Axe Murderers” (strangely enough asking people in Manchester, Yorkshire and South East London rather than Nottinghamshire which is the place she’s paid to represent) the real issues is the bare faced lies.

People know that they are being lied to because:

Of the U-turns

For so long people have heard that whether it be shutting down libraries, youth centres, or the introduction of the pasty tax, the policy of those in control is the only way forward ... only to find another way round it shortly later.

Politicians hide the truth

Northamptonshire County Council like many other public bodies is consulting on its budget with the headline to having to find £84.7 million of savings over the next four years. The Easy read version doesn’t even mention that the decisions are predicated on the assumption that reserves or an increase in Council Tax aren’t suggested.  This doesn’t even take into account that with changes to Council Tax Benefit rules Councils will have a tougher job than ever before in collecting money that they need to pay for services from people who simply don’t have any money.

Other Politicians grass each other up

Even politicians on the same side dish the dirt on each other. Probably the most memorable recent instance of this is Theresa May’s assertion that an Asylum seeker used the Human Rights Act to successfully challenge a deportation order.

With so much going on, the even more depressing news is that traditionally trusted sources of information like the BBC feel it’s OK to repeat spurious claims about the increase in Tax credit claims and tax credit fraud. For further information take a look at Sue Marsh’ blog here.

Talking about immigration doesn’t make you a racist. Being racist makes you a racist.

I talk about immigration much of the time. I’ve just heard a Labour PPC on the news stating the key reason Labour lost the General  election in 2010 was as a result of perceptions about immigration policy.

Labour lost that election because over a long period of time they had made a number of wrong judgement calls, had leaders that saw themselves above the jurisdiction of international law and had back bencher's and cabinet members who’s egos just couldn’t help themselves from sticking the boot in at totally inopportune moments such as the day before an election.  

It’s inconceivable that a political grouping can be in power for three terms and not make mistakes but quite frankly these aren’t the apologies that Labour needs to be making.

People in this country are more concerned about whether they have enough money to pay the bills at the end of the month than anything else. They are concerns about pay, concerned about job security, concerned about youth unemployment way above their concern about immigration. It’s only those on the level of Anders Brevik who still believe that immigration is the reason for the economic crisis and recession that we find ourselves in. The arguments people actually want to hear are the arguments which lead to solutions to economic stability.  Further tinkering with immigration simply will not deliver this. In a month that saw immigration advice providers deluged by concerned clients desperately trying to get their settlement visa applications in before a July deadline when income thresholds to bring in spouses rocket from £5,000 to £27,500. This puts the right to family life for people who choose to marry non-EU migrants well out of the reach of those on average salaries.  The Con-Dem immigration zealousness has already damaged the stability of British Universities with the restriction of foreign students, is Labour seriously wanting to head in this direction.

Have discussion about immigration but look at the human stories of the impact decision have on peoples ability to enjoy basic human rights.  Look at the impact on economic recovery and check out that a policy isn’t being implemented that will further damage a shaky, fragile economy to pander to people who just don’t like a lot of “them” here.  Look at more fundamental solutions to problems. If school leavers cannot access employment, what is being done to make them more able and more skilled? Was axing Education Maintenance Allowance and increasing University fees really that bright an idea?

Making a difference

The Northampton Borough Council International Day Against Homophobia (IDAHo) on Thursday was an uplifting experience. To see over the years the growth of the event can’t help but give a sense of optimism for the future.

One of the highlights of the event was hearing Ben Cohen’s personal video message for the event. It was the first time that I had heard him speak about his motivation emerging from the murder of his father and his drive to take action to achieve something positive about the experience.

Northampton Borough Council has come quite some way over the past couple of years. In 2010 I suggested that they look at Hate Crime as a piece of work for their scrutiny committee. Part of my reasoning for doing so was to draw attention to culture of the Borough Council in dealing with hate crime.

This culture was no more clearly demonstrated by the failure of the Borough Council to deals with hate incidents reported by residents who had the misfortune to live near Gavin Kerr, one of the individuals that was convicted of killing Peter Cohen, when he lived on Kings Heath up till two years ago. People were obviously unwilling to report the incidents and so the homophobia and the racism continued.  The Council at the time refused to deal with the issue and did not bring the case for discussion at multi-agency groups designed to review such cases.  Gavin has now moved and I’m not sure what he is doing now but for the black families and young gay men that had to endure his offense verbal diatribe on a regular basis, life is better.

Northampton Borough Council has bravely included taking more action on Hate crime as an equality objective that it commits to make progress on. It is indeed brave but it will have to be so much more than making noise. It will be getting to the bottom of hard issues and really making a difference rather than working hard and making noise.