EQUALITY BILL AND ACCESS TO PUBLIC SECTOR CONTRACTS

That this House welcomes the intentions behind the Government's proposed Equality Bill; expresses concern, however, that the measures it contains to use public sector procurement as a lever to ensure that private sector companies are meeting the proposed equality duty will have an adverse impact on small and medium-sized enterprises, which do not necessarily have the resources to support the extra administration required to prove that they are meeting the new duty; notes the Glover Review's findings that small and medium-sized enterprises already encounter barriers to accessing the £160 billion of public sector procurement contracts that are on offer each year; believes that the current provisions in the draft Equality Bill will exacerbate these difficulties; recognises that in the current macroeconomic environment it is important to ease administrative burdens on businesses; and therefore supports the British Chambers of Commerce in its campaign to ask the Government to consider the needs of small and medium-sized enterprises in determining the final provisions of the Equality Bill.