Baroness Scotland

The government has downplayed suggestions it is set to create a single watchdog to enforce equality laws.

Speaking in the Lords on Tuesday, Baroness Scotland said there was not likely to be any change in the "foreseeable future".

The government is currently conducting a feasibility study of the possibility of merging the existing watchdogs.

With current bodies covering gender, race and disability-based discrimination, new European directives on employment and race will extend protection to discrimination on grounds of religion, sexual orientation and age.

Rules outlawing unfair discrimination at work on the grounds of religion and sexual orientation are to come into force by 2003, and age by 2006.

While the government has previously said there will be no changes to structures within the lifetime of this parliament, ministers have previously said there are good arguments in favour of a single equality body.

"We cannot have six commissions dealing with six separate strands," then Cabinet Office minister Barbara Roche said when the feasibility study was launched in May this year.

However Baroness Scotland, a minister in the Lord Chancellor's Department, emphasised that no decisions had been made on the subject.

She said the feasibility study was on track to report in the Autumn.

Labour peer and long-time campaigner for disability rights, Lord Ashley of Stoke, said many disabled people were "deeply worried that any new arrangement will mean that the rights of disabled people, the interests of disabled people, suffer".

He said that tackling discrimination against disabled people was different to addressing other forms of discrimination because it involves issues of improving access, which incurred financial costs, as well as tackling prejudice.

"This necessarily means, I think, that special consideration should be given to disability and the funding of disability," Lord Ashley said.

Baroness Scotland said the government understood the concerns of disabled people and offered reassurance that the government recognised the different types of discrimination.

"We will very carefully consider all the representations that are made by all the different groups before taking any steps in relation to this matter."

She said there were arguments on both sides and the government would consider the findings of the study.

"That's what it is, a feasibility study, and we will look at that feasibility study and all that it tells us with great care before taking any further step."

She emphasised that there was "no fixed decision at his moment".

She said there could be a number of models, such as a federal system based around the existing six equality bodies. "We are going to consider this consultation very openly," she pledged.

But pressed to introduce a single equality act covering all forms of discrimination, Baroness Scotland said there were "some quite significant difficulties" with any such move.

She said changes should not be expected to "happen very quickly in the foreseeable future".