Equality Bill – in a Public Bill Committee am 6:15 pm ar 30 Mehefin 2009.
John Mason
Scottish National Party, Glasgow East
With your indulgence, Lady Winterton, I should like briefly to comment on clauses 145 to 149. The Government appear to be aiming to create wide-ranging order-making powers for themselves to fill in the gaps in the public sector duty. Clauses 145 and 146 create powers to specify—
Ann Winterton
Ceidwadwyr, Congleton
Order. I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman would concentrate on Clause 145, which is what we are debating at the moment.
John Mason
Scottish National Party, Glasgow East
I shall make a few comments on that Clause that will apply more widely to the other clauses, but I shall not repeat it each time. Creating the powers to specify which public authorities the duty will apply to is too important to be left to secondary legislation. I should be interested to hear the Minister say why, after 10 years or so of preparation, the Government have not been able to include more detail in the Bill.
Vera Baird
Solicitor General, Attorney General's Office
The Clause is needed to allow us to amend schedule 19 in the way that I have just described, and we intend to amend it. We have published what the general duty will involve, with the intention of extending the reach of schedule 19 to other bodies that we think should be in it, but we did not feel that it was right to do that until we had finalised the general duty. Now that duty is in the public domain we can enter into those conversations, but we need a power to add provisions, as necessary, to the schedule.
A parliamentary bill is divided into sections called clauses.
Printed in the margin next to each clause is a brief explanatory `side-note' giving details of what the effect of the clause will be.
During the committee stage of a bill, MPs examine these clauses in detail and may introduce new clauses of their own or table amendments to the existing clauses.
When a bill becomes an Act of Parliament, clauses become known as sections.
A parliamentary bill is divided into sections called clauses.
Printed in the margin next to each clause is a brief explanatory `side-note' giving details of what the effect of the clause will be.
During the committee stage of a bill, MPs examine these clauses in detail and may introduce new clauses of their own or table amendments to the existing clauses.
When a bill becomes an Act of Parliament, clauses become known as sections.
Ministers make up the Government and almost all are members of the House of Lords or the House of Commons. There are three main types of Minister. Departmental Ministers are in charge of Government Departments. The Government is divided into different Departments which have responsibilities for different areas. For example the Treasury is in charge of Government spending. Departmental Ministers in the Cabinet are generally called 'Secretary of State' but some have special titles such as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Ministers of State and Junior Ministers assist the ministers in charge of the department. They normally have responsibility for a particular area within the department and are sometimes given a title that reflects this - for example Minister of Transport.
