Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)

My Lords, Amendment 438D would “exempt the police from the public sector equality duty under the Equality Act 2010, so as to ensure they are solely committed to effectively carrying out their policing functions”. When I read that I wished that we could apply this exemption across the board. I wish that more public bodies would commit themselves to effectively carrying out their functions and not get distracted by the public sector equality duty. The police, I am afraid, have become far too embroiled in politicised equality initiatives—the EDI-ing of the police, as it has become known. Briefly, I want to raise why this amendment is worth thinking about and why it is quite important. There is currently legal action being taken against the UK Civil Service over aspects of EDI practices, and specifically noted is official participation in Pride events. The argument is that taxpayer-funded Civil Service involvement in, for example, LGBTQ+ Pride marches, including civil servants marching in branded Civil Service Pride t-shirts, using rainbow lanyards at work and so on, is in breach of provisions in the Civil Service Code about being objective and impartial. This relates to the police as this recent legal action follows a successful legal challenge against Northumbria Police in 2025, where the High Court ruled that uniformed police officers marching in Pride marches breached police impartiality. For the public, the idea of a politicised police force fuels the argument that the police may be unfair or discriminatory in who they target for, for example, non-crime hate incidents. Though we have seen the back of those, they were the blight of many a person’s life and destroyed many citizens’ lives. We need reassurance that the public sector equality duty has not been used to distract the police or to politicise policing. All the evidence would imply that it has been, and that is something that the Government should be concerned about.