Mr. Christopher Bowes:

To add to what Ms Lucy mentioned about a bench book, that is a measure to mainstream equality and human rights in the system. Rather than having a system where people have to challenge discrimination or take cases in order to vindicate their rights, it is about trying to put in place these systems where their rights are vindicated in the first place and they do not have to vindicate them. In addition to all the important points around amending the equality law and legal aid, and because of the reviews going on in those areas, there is an opportunity for the committee to make those important recommendations.

Recommendations on mainstreaming human rights and equality are also significant. Our submission has a section on improving the public sector human rights and equality duty so that there can be specific duties on local authorities. We talked earlier about training members of local authorities so there are ways whereby the requirements for training and the requirement to take the needs of specific communities into account can be mainstreamed into decision-making and planning through the equality legislation. It is that side of things, such as promoting equality on an active basis, rather than-----