Baroness Hamwee (LD)

My Lords, I have Amendments 3 and 12 in this group. Like other noble Lords, I am sure, I have found myself very torn. I basically oppose the Bill, but we are having to deal with it today at the level of detail. I am sorry not to be able to go absolutely all the way with the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, but I am worried about the term “protected characteristics”. Perhaps this is taking too short-term a view, being too aware of the baggage that the term carries at the moment, but I have a nervous reaction against using a term which is in particular legislation for a particular purpose. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Burnett, mentioned the report of the Constitution Committee, of which I am also a member, which recommended that “the Bill should be amended to ensure appropriate legislative certainty and clarity”, going on to say there should be “a full definition of the ‘personal characteristics’ on the face of the Bill or … an alternative term which is clearly legally defined”, and also commented on retrospectivity. If the Bill is intended to apply to guidelines which are already operational, this should be explicit in the Bill. Over the weekend, I thought about another approach to this. It was too late to table it as an amendment, but as we will come back to this clause—essentially, the whole of the Bill—on Report, I thought I would float it now. I found myself increasingly intrigued by the phrase “framed by reference to different personal characteristics”. Does that mean that the guidelines can include some characteristics if they are not the frame for them? Does it mean framed alone or only by reference to personal characteristics? I want to get rid of the Bill entirely, as I have said, but anything that will ameliorate the effects is worth looking at.