Law is just one step towards fairer society

It has been a long journey to make progress and campaigners who celebrated on the steps of the Royal Court yesterday will recognise it is not over.

Anti-discrimination legislation will help govern people’s and businesses’ behaviour, but does not guarantee deeper cultural and societal change.

Within the next 18 or so months, the wording of the first phase of the law will be finalised and that will need to be agreed by the new Assembly.

Efforts to ensure its enactment, and to ensure its wording is effective and achievable, do not end with yesterday’s debate.

People should not be discriminated against because of their sexual beliefs, their religion, their race, their age – that argument is not in doubt.

What has concerned is the mechanisms for achieving that and ensuring they do not become unnecessarily burdensome, costly and bureaucratic.

Close attention will now be turned to the wording of the law – there remain contentious nuances within the broader philosophy.

But Guernsey, so keen to garner praise on the international stage for its work in other areas, had fallen well behind modern standards in terms of equality legislation.

We are fortunate to live in a broadly tolerant society, one where community, as demonstrated throughout the Covid-19 crisis, is core to how we live.

There are still those, however, who will discriminate against people who they perceive as different and think of as inferior.

The new law should be the ultimate deterrent, but it also needs to be coupled with greater education and awareness – everyone has a part to play in that.

Debate about the anti-discrimination legislation has ebbed and flowed, with Employment & Social Security battling hard to save its all-encompassing proposals by shifting to a phased approach.

In the end, in trying to save core elements it became overcautious – its members would have been delighted to have got that wrong.