Debate contribution: Age Discrimination (Goods, Facilities and Services) Bill: Second Stage

Debate contribution by Ms Claire Sugden on 20 October 2026.

MLA: Ms Claire Sugden
Party at the time: Independent
Date: 20 October 2026
Type: Debate contribution
Business: Private Members' Business
Heading: Age Discrimination (Goods, Facilities and Services) Bill: Second Stage
Assembly identifier: Official Report component 5798420

Text

I beg to move
Thank you, Mr Speaker. I am pleased to bring the Bill before the Assembly today. It is legislation that I have wanted to introduce for a very long time. Indeed, in many respects, the journey towards the Bill began almost 12 years ago when I was first elected to the House. In 2014, as a new MLA, I went out to my constituency and met as many people, community groups and organisations as possible. I wanted to understand the communities that I represented, the challenges that people were experiencing and the issues that they believed needed greater attention. One thing that became apparent very quickly was how active older people's groups were throughout my constituency of East Londonderry. They are an important part of our community and voluntary sector. The groups bring people together to tackle loneliness and isolation, support people to remain active and independent and provide opportunities for older people to participate in community life. What struck me most about the groups was that they were not simply places where older people received support; they were places where older people provided support. They were volunteers, organisers, community leaders, carers and advocates. They were contributing enormously to the communities in which they lived. Through those early conversations, I began to hear concerns about the way in which older people were treated and, in particular, about the absence of legal protection against age discrimination outside employment. That came up repeatedly. Older people told me that Northern Ireland had fallen far behind other parts of the United Kingdom and Ireland when it came to protecting their rights. They were concerned that decisions could be taken about them or services denied to them because of their age, without the same statutory protections that people elsewhere enjoy, and they wanted that to change. Those conversations ultimately led to me establishing the all-party group on ageing and older people. Through that group and through continued engagement with older people's organisations, the issue became increasingly clear. It was not simply a concern raised by a handful of constituents; it was a long-standing omission in Northern Ireland's equality framework. That omission had been recognised by organisations working in equality, human rights and older people's advocacy for many years. The Commissioner for Older People, Age NI, the Equality Commission (ECNI) and the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission (NIHRC) have all contributed to the wider discussion about addressing that gap. The more that I explored the issue, the more apparent it became that it was a problem that would be addressed properly only through legislation. That is ultimately why we are all here today. At the last Assembly election, I made a commitment that I would seek to introduce legislation to address age discrimination in the area of goods, facilities and services. I am pleased to be fulfilling that commitment. However, whilst I am the Member who has brought the Bill before the Assembly, I acknowledge from the outset that the motivation did not originate with me. It came from the people whom I represent. It came from older people who felt that their concerns had not been sufficiently recognised. It came from people who believed that their age should not determine whether they were treated fairly when accessing services. It came from organisations that have spent many years advocating for stronger legal protections. I have had the opportunity to take those concerns forward through the legislative process. However, the principle behind the Bill belongs to everyone who believes that a person's age should not be a reason for unjustified discrimination. Although my own motivation began with older people, the more that I examined the issue, the clearer it became that its implications extend much further. Age discrimination does not affect older people exclusively. It can affect younger people. It can affect people at different stages throughout their life. It can affect any of us as we grow older. That is why the legislation before us is intended to establish protection for people who are aged 16 and over, rather than for one particular generation. There is something particularly fitting about the timing of the debate. October is Positive Ageing Month in Northern Ireland. Earlier this month, on 1 October, we marked International Day of Older Persons. Throughout October, community groups, councils and organisations throughout Northern Ireland are recognising the contribution of older people to our society. They are encouraging positive and active ageing, highlighting opportunities for social connection and celebrating the important roles that older people continue to play in their communities. I very much welcome that. However, Positive Ageing Month should also encourage us, as legislators, to reflect on how we treat older people. How do public services respond to their needs? How do our policies support their independence? How do our laws provide the protections that they deserve? While we rightly celebrate older people and their contribution to society, Northern Ireland continues to lack the general legal protection against age discrimination in goods, facilities and services that is already available in the United Kingdom and Ireland. That is a contradiction that we, as an Assembly, should address. Positive ageing should not simply be something that we celebrate but something that we support through our policies, public services and laws. There is also a wider demographic argument for doing so. Northern Ireland's population is ageing. According to the latest population projections from the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA), by the middle of next year, 2027, there will be more people aged over 65 living in Northern Ireland than children under the age of 16. NISRA projects that there will be approximately 375,600 people aged over 65, compared with 365,700 children aged under 16. That is a significant demographic milestone. I hope that, subject to the Assembly's approval, 2027 will also be the year in which the Bill receives Royal Assent. There will be something particularly meaningful about those two milestones coinciding. At a time when our population is ageing and we should be planning strategically for the implications of that change, Northern Ireland still does not afford older people the same general legal protection against age discrimination in everyday services that exists elsewhere in these islands. The implications of an ageing population extend far beyond equality legislation. They extend to health and social care, housing, transport, financial services, community provision and public services. As people live longer, the decisions made by those who provide services can have increasingly important consequences for their independence, well-being, financial security and quality of life. We know that our society is changing and that public services and the wider economy will have to adapt to that. Surely, then, the legal framework within which those services operate should also reflect the society that we are becoming. I do not make the argument that older people deserve protection because they are becoming a larger proportion of our population. Their entitlement to equal treatment does not depend on their numbers, but our changing population makes the practical importance of the legislation increasingly obvious. Our laws should reflect the society that we are becoming rather than the society that we were when those protections were first considered. I believe that that makes the case for addressing the gap now rather than continuing to defer it. I want to explain why the legislation matters to people in their everyday lives. When we talk about equality legislation, it is easy to become absorbed in legal definitions, statutory provisions and technical arguments. Those things are important, and I will come to them later in my speech, but, ultimately, the Bill is about people. It is about how people are treated when they access healthcare, seek financial services, use public transport, book accommodation, access leisure facilities or seek support from a public authority. Age discrimination is not necessarily something dramatic or immediately obvious. It may arise from a policy that has been in place for many years and has never been properly questioned.
I thank the Member for her intervention. Absolutely. Indeed, Part 5 of the Bill empowers the Equality Commission to provide the knowledge and understanding of how the legislation will take effect. You are right to say that not only does the Bill affect private-sector businesses but it cuts across public-sector functions. Age discrimination may also arise over what someone is capable of doing because of their age or it may arise because of a decision about an individual without proper consideration of their personal circumstances. For example, imagine that someone in their 70s is applying for a financial product. They have a reliable income, substantial savings, and a history of managing their finances responsibly. Yet, they discover that their access is restricted because they have passed a particular age. There may be legitimate reasons for age-based restrictions in some financial products — a lender may need to consider affordability, repayment periods and risk — but those matters should be capable of examination. The question should not simply be whether someone is 70 or 75. It should be whether the treatment has a lawful basis and, where required, that it can be justified. Let us consider another example. An older person lives independently and has always dealt with their bank in person or over the telephone. The bank decides to move a particular service entirely online and the same rules apply to everyone, regardless of age. However, its effect may fall disproportionately on people who are less confident using digital technology or who cannot easily access it. That does not mean that digital banking in itself is unlawful. Nor does it mean that banks should not modernise, but it does raise questions about whether the policy creates a particular disadvantage, whether it can be justified and whether reasonable alternatives exist. Those are precisely the kinds of questions that equality law can help us examine. We should also recognise that age discrimination can affect younger people. A young adult may be refused accommodation because a hotel assumes that everyone under a particular age is likely to behave irresponsibly.
I thank the Member. I have considered that since the conversation that we had at Committee. My understanding in respect of the Bill is that it is the subject of the discrimination rather than the contractual arrangement between the individuals, so the discrimination case that may be taken would not be between the persons who the contractual arrangement exists with. It would be against the subject — the young person, for example — because they are being treated differently on the basis of their age. There is also a section — I cannot quite remember the Part — that talks about contracts, and that ensures that contracts themselves do not provide a legal loophole in which discrimination can be written out of law. We certainly need to discuss that further in Committee because it is a fair point.
Young drivers may also encounter significantly higher insurance premiums. Although some of those decisions may be entirely legitimate, others may be based on assumptions rather than evidence. The point is, however, that the law should provide a framework against which those distinctions can be assessed. It should not automatically prohibit such distinctions, but neither should it leave them entirely beyond challenge. I want to address health and social care in particular. While age discrimination can result in inconvenience or financial disadvantage, there are circumstances in which its consequences can be much more serious. They can affect someone's independence, their dignity, their well-being and, potentially, their health and life. During the COVID-19 pandemic, we saw how important questions of age, vulnerability and access to healthcare could become. I recognise the extraordinary circumstances in which decisions were made. Healthcare professionals were working under immense pressure, resources were constrained, and difficult clinical and public health judgements had to be made, but the pandemic also exposed concerns about the treatment of our older people. In May 2020, the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission and the Commissioner for Older People issued a joint statement highlighting the impact of the pandemic on older people, particularly those living in residential and nursing care homes. That statement emphasised the importance of recognising older people as individuals and ensuring that decisions on life-saving treatment respected their rights and dignity. That is an important principle, but an individual's chronological age is not the same as their health circumstances or ability to benefit from treatment. Two people of the same age may have entirely different medical needs. Equally, two people of different ages may have similar needs. Clinical decisions should reflect individual circumstances and the available medical evidence. Age can, of course, sometimes be clinically relevant, and no one is suggesting that healthcare professionals should disregard legitimate medical considerations, but there is a difference between making an evidence-based clinical judgement and relying on an unjustified assumption about someone because they have reached a particular age. Imagine a healthcare service introducing an upper age threshold for a treatment. Legitimate clinical evidence relating to effectiveness, patient safety or the allocation of limited resources may support that threshold. However, if the threshold is arbitrary or makes no appropriate allowance for individual circumstances, serious questions should arise. What is the purpose of the restriction? What evidence supports it? Is it proportionate? Could the objectives be achieved through a less restrictive approach? Those questions matter because the consequences for the person affected may be profound.
Not necessarily, but it places a duty on the trust to review the circumstances to see whether it could take a less restrictive approach. It is an interesting issue, and it came up in my constituency. The patient had reached adult age, but it was felt that it would be more appropriate for her to be on a children's ward. The suffering and the issues that not being on a children's ward caused led to an intervention, and that showed that a less restrictive approach based on her individual circumstances could have been found. This law is not prohibitive insofar as there is an opportunity for flexibility. That is important because, as the debate will, I am sure, reveal, dealing with different circumstances requires flexibility. We need to get to a situation where it is not necessarily about treating everybody the same but recognising that their circumstances may require different approaches. A person's age should not in isolation determine the value placed on their life or the healthcare that they receive. Earlier this year, the Commissioner for Older People published 'Voices of Concern: The Reality of Health and Social Care for Older People in Northern Ireland'. The report drew on the experiences of over 1,200 older people and highlighted difficulties in accessing GP appointments, treatment and social care. I want to make an important distinction: those findings did not establish that every difficulty experienced by an older person amounts to unlawful age discrimination. A waiting list is not in itself proof of discrimination, and a shortage of care packages is not necessarily discrimination. The Bill will not resolve the structural problems that affect our health and social care system at the moment, but those experiences demonstrate why fair access, individualised decisions and effective accountability matter. The Bill seeks to establish one important protection within that wider framework. At present, someone in Northern Ireland may believe that they have been treated unfairly because of their age. They may challenge that decision, seek an explanation, approach an organisation for assistance and discover that, although they would have had a protection in an equivalent situation elsewhere, Northern Ireland's legislation does not provide the particular statutory protection that they need. That is the injustice that I want to address. The purpose of equality legislation is not to guarantee that everyone receives the outcome that they want; it is to establish standards by which treatment can be assessed and provide remedies when those standards are breached. Age discrimination may not seem to be an issue in 2026 until someone in Northern Ireland experiences it, seeks redress and then discovers that the legal protection simply is not there. That is why the Bill is necessary. I turn to the legal position. We already recognise age as a protected characteristic in employment. The Employment Equality (Age) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2006 prohibit age discrimination in employment and occupation, so the principle that unjustified age discrimination should be unlawful is not new to Northern Ireland. Outside of employment, however, the position is different. Northern Ireland has developed its equality legislation through a range of separate statutory provisions. We have protections against discrimination on grounds including sex, race, disability, religious belief and political opinion, although the precise scope differs among the legislative frameworks. We do not have one, consolidated equality Act equivalent to the Equality Act 2010 that exists in Great Britain; instead, we have a collection of legislation developed over time. I am not attempting, through this private Member's Bill, to consolidate all Northern Ireland's equality law, nor am I attempting to replace existing protections. I seek to address a specific and long-standing omission. Age remains the outstanding substantive gap in our general anti-discrimination protection for goods, facilities and services. That means that a person may be able to challenge discriminatory treatment when accessing a service because of their disability but may not have an equivalent statutory remedy if the unfair treatment is solely because of their age. I find that inconsistency difficult to justify. I also want to distinguish the Bill from section 75 of the Northern Ireland Act 1998. Section 75 places an important duty on designated public authorities to have:
"due regard to the need to promote equality of opportunity"
between specified groups, including persons of different ages. However, section 75 is not the same as an individual's statutory right not to be discriminated against when accessing a service. It does not by itself create an equivalent civil remedy, and it does not impose comparable duties across the private sector. The two approaches serve different purposes. Section 75 is concerned with how public authorities develop and exercise their functions, whereas the Bill establishes substantive protection against unlawful age discrimination. They can and should complement each other. Northern Ireland is also out of step with neighbouring jurisdictions. In Great Britain, protection against age discrimination in services has operated since 2012 under the Equality Act 2010 and associated provisions. In the Republic of Ireland, age discrimination is addressed through the Equal Status Acts. Both frameworks, while accommodating legitimate differences in treatment, recognise that there should be legal protection from unjustified age discrimination in everyday services. There are differences in their scope and exceptions, but the important point is that we are not legislating in an area without precedent. We can examine established frameworks, learn from their operation and adapt familiar legal principles to Northern Ireland's circumstances. The Bill is also not the first attempt to address the issue here. During the 2011-16 mandate, proposals were developed through the former Office of the First Minister and deputy First Minister. The proposals contemplated protection initially applying to people aged 16 and over. However, the legislation did not progress. There were disagreements about its scope, particularly about whether protection should extend to children of all ages. Ultimately, no Bill was introduced. I do not particularly want to revisit the political disagreements of that period, but we need to learn from the experience. Whatever the reasons, the consequence has been that the legal gap remains. People who were concerned about age discrimination more than a decade ago are still without the protection that they seek. We have an established body of equality law on which to draw, and we now have an opportunity to make meaningful progress. Before I turn to its substantive provisions, I will explain how the Bill was developed. After committing to taking it forward, I sought to establish whether the Executive planned to legislate, so, in September 2024, I wrote to the Executive Office. I received confirmation that there were no plans to introduce legislation in the area and that no comparable proposals were being developed. My preference would have been for such a significant gap in our equality framework to be addressed through Executive legislation, but, in the absence of that, I decided to pursue the matter through a private Member's Bill. I launched a public consultation in March 2025 that ran until June 2025. It sought views on the principle of protection; the appropriate age threshold; the scope of the legislation; potential exceptions; and practical implications. I received 68 responses. I recognise that some Members may regard that as a relatively small number, and I do not want to overstate what can be concluded from the responses, but the consultation was part of a wider process. There was also the previous Executive consultation, existing research and advocacy from equality bodies and experience in Great Britain and the Republic of Ireland. I also undertook targeted engagement with organisations and sectors likely to be affected. Those included the Equality Commission, the Commissioner for Older People, organisations representing children and young people, Age NI and representatives of services including the financial sector. In recent days, I have continued conversations with the children's sector and the Association of British Insurers (ABI). Those discussions have been valuable, because organisations understandably approach the legislation from their own perspective. Those representing older people want meaningful protection; those representing children want the Assembly to consider whether the Bill should be extended further than 16-plus; and service providers need to understand their responsibilities and whether legitimate practices can continue. All are legitimate interests, and my responsibility as the Bill sponsor has been to consider the different perspectives and make judgements about the framework that I am bringing before the Assembly. I also emphasise that the consultation was intended to inform the development of legislation, not simply to endorse a predetermined approach. As drafting progressed, I considered the responses received, legal precedents, practical implications and the advice available to me. That required decisions about the age threshold, exceptions, enforcement and the treatment of financial services. In some areas, the Bill differs from options that were initially contemplated. That is an appropriate part of legislative development. Where further consideration identifies a more workable or proportionate approach, the legislation should be capable of reflecting that. The underlying purpose has remained consistent: meaningful protection against unjustified age discrimination. Achieving that purpose, however, requires careful consideration of how the law should operate. One question that was raised during consideration of the proposals concerns the extent of age discrimination in Northern Ireland. That is a fair question. When legislating, we should seek evidence to determine whether there is a gap, but we must also recognise the difficulty in measuring discrimination where the particular statutory protection does not exist. People may not recognise their experience as potential discrimination. They may not complain, because they believe that nothing can be done, and currently it cannot. Without an equivalent statutory right, there is no comparable body of litigation through which the problem can be examined. The absence of cases cannot therefore establish that age discrimination does not occur. That does not remove the need for evidence, but it means that the available evidence must be considered in its proper context. The legal gap is identifiable. The experiences of older people and other age groups must provide important context. The operation of legislation elsewhere demonstrates that statutory protection is possible. Those are all relevant considerations when determining whether reform is justified. The Bill is substantial. It contains 50 clauses across nine Parts, together with two schedules. I appreciate that it is a significant undertaking for a private Member's Bill, but the fundamental objective is straightforward: to prohibit unjustified discrimination, harassment and victimisation on the grounds of age in connection with goods, facilities and services. Giving effect to that objective requires more than simply declaring age discrimination to be unlawful: we must define "prohibited conduct", establish the scope of protection, provide legitimate exceptions and create appropriate means of enforcement and redress. That explains the Bill's structure. Much of its framework draws on existing legislation, particularly the Equality Act 2010 and Northern Ireland's already established equality laws. We are not inventing entirely new concepts of discrimination, harassment, victimisation or objective justifications. Those are familiar legal principles.
I am not suggesting, however, that every provision simply reproduces existing law. The inclusion of 16- and 17-year-olds, the treatment of financial services, and certain adapted provisions represent deliberate legislative choices. The Bill therefore combines established legal concepts with provisions that have been developed for Northern Ireland's particular circumstances. It is a substantial piece of legislation, but I believe that its structure is logical. It identifies who would be protected, what would be prohibited, where the protection would apply, the circumstances in which treatment would be permitted, and how the law could be enforced. I will explain those principles in turn.
Part 1 establishes age as a protected characteristic. Age discrimination is not confined to treating older people less favourably than younger people, nor does the Bill establish one fixed definition of an older person. Age groups may be defined by reference to a particular range, or a range of ages. For example, a distinction might be made between people aged 55 and over and those younger than 55, or between people aged 65 and over and those below that threshold. The important question is why the distinction has been made and whether the treatment is lawful. The Bill also recognises assumed age. Someone should not necessarily fall outside the protection simply because a service provider has incorrectly guessed their age. For example, a person may be refused a service because staff believe that they are too old to access it. That assumption may be wrong, but the treatment may nevertheless have occurred because of the age attributed to that person. The concept of assumed or perceived characteristics is not unfamiliar to Northern Ireland's discrimination law. The Bill seeks to ensure that an incorrect assumption does not, by itself, defeat the protection. I will spend some time explaining the principal policy decision that I made in developing the legislation, which was to begin the protection in respect of goods, facilities and services at 16. I anticipate that Members will question why I chose that threshold. Some may believe that the Bill should extend to children of all ages. Others may ask why it goes further than the general services protections in Great Britain and Ireland, which generally begin at 18. Both of those questions deserve an answer. When I consulted, I sought views on protections for all ages, for those aged 16 and over, and for those aged 18 and over. The majority of respondents favoured all-age protection. I do not dispute that children younger than 16 can experience unjustified age discrimination, nor would I suggest that they are less deserving of appropriate protection. However, in developing the legislation, I had to consider how the principle could be translated into workable law, how it would interact with existing statutory arrangements and what could realistically be achieved through a private Member's Bill. I also had to consider the history of previous attempts to legislate in this area. As I have explained, the Executive previously proposed beginning protection at 16. Disagreements about whether it should extend further contributed to those proposals not progressing. The history is important, because the consequence of that disagreement was that no protection was introduced. I do not want a repeat of that outcome. There is a substantive reason for including 16- and 17-year-olds. Sixteen is an important transitional age in our existing legal framework. It is around that age that young people reach the end of compulsory schooling and begin to exercise greater independence. They may enter employment, begin earning and managing their own money, undertake further education or training and increasingly access services independently. That does not mean that a 16-year-old is legally an adult, nor does it mean that every right or responsibility changes at 16. However, the law already recognises that 16- and 17-year-olds occupy a distinct position in a number of different contexts. For example, a 16-year-old may enter employment and enjoy statutory protection against unjustified age discrimination in the workplace, but when the same person leaves work and accesses an ordinary service, the equivalent general protection is absent. Members should reflect on that inconsistency. There is a reasonable argument for extending the underlying principle to services that young people increasingly access in their own lives. I also recognise that including 16- and 17-year-olds represents a deliberate development beyond the general framework that already operates in Great Britain and Ireland. Although I do not want to overlook that fact, it is not an entirely unfamiliar proposal. It reflects the approach that was previously developed by Northern Ireland's Executive. It would extend the established equality law concept to a defined additional age group. There will be issues requiring consideration, particularly concerning safeguarding, contracts and the interaction with existing legislation. However, the Bill would not give 16- and 17-year-olds unrestricted access to every service. For example, existing licensing restrictions, safeguarding obligations and other legal requirements remain relevant. The Bill is intended to prohibit unjustified discrimination within its statutory scope. We are not simply copying legislation from elsewhere, nor are we attempting to create an entirely new system of discrimination law; we are adapting an established framework to Northern Ireland's circumstances and taking a considered opportunity to extend protection to 16- and 17-year-olds. I have also engaged with representatives of the children's sector, including Children in Northern Ireland (CiNI) and the Children's Law Centre (CLC). I recognise their argument that protections should extend to children of all ages, but there is an important distinction between supporting that objective and determining how the legislation necessary to achieve it should operate. Extending the Bill to include those who are below the age of 16 would require us to examine a wider range of statutory relationships, including the Children (Northern Ireland) Order 1995, parental responsibility, safeguarding, consent, capacity and contractual arrangements. We would also need to consider services that are specifically designed around children's developmental needs and the ways in which existing statutory age distinctions operate. For example, there are circumstances in which a parent makes a decision or enters into a contractual arrangement on behalf of a child and services where a child's age is relevant to safeguarding, eligibility or consent. There may be questions about who can pursue a claim and how a child's interests are represented. Those issues are not necessarily reasons why all-age protection cannot be achieved, but they require careful policy development; we cannot assume that simply removing the age threshold in clause 9 would resolve them. The exceptions and enforcement provisions would need to be examined in a wider context. I am conscious of the capacity and timescale associated with a private Member's Bill, and I believe that there is a difference in scale between extending established concepts to 16- and 17-year-olds and constructing a comprehensive framework that covers every stage of childhood. That is not a statement about whose rights matter more; it is a judgement about legislative scope and implementation. During my engagement with the children's sector, a concern was raised that limiting protection to those aged 16 and over amounted to writing younger children out of equality law. I understand the concern behind that statement, but we need to distinguish between the legal effect of the Bill and the argument over how far its protections should extend. The Bill does not remove an existing statutory protection afforded to children, reduce children's rights under the Children (Northern Ireland) Order 1995 or disapply existing safeguarding, welfare and other legal protections. Children under the age of 16 will continue to benefit from the statutory frameworks that already apply to them. I would not suggest, however, that those frameworks provide an equivalent general prohibition on age discrimination in relation to goods, facilities and services. They do not, and that is precisely why the children's sector is concerned. There is, however, an important difference between saying that children are not included in a new statutory protection and suggesting that an existing right is being taken away from them. They are not being written out of an existing protection or being written into this particular new protection. I recognise that that distinction does not resolve the argument about whether the Bill should extend to all ages, but it accurately describes what the legislation does. I want to avoid creating a debate in which the rights of older people are set against those of children, because both deserve appropriate legal protection — of course they do. My motivation has always been to address a long-standing gap that affects older people in particular. While older people may benefit from other statutory protections such as disability discrimination law where it is applicable, older age does not in itself attract the general services protection that the Bill seeks to establish. That is the gap that I am seeking to address. Ultimately, the scope of the legislation is a matter for the Assembly, and I am not suggesting that 16 is the only possible threshold or that it is some perfect dividing line. It is a deliberate policy choice, informed by a legislative history, the statutory framework and the practical considerations associated with bringing the Bill forward. I will be candid about the risk. Having spent many years engaging on this issue, I remain concerned that seeking to extend the Bill to all ages could result in the legislation becoming stalled once again. That is not a certainty or a reason to dismiss the arguments for all-age protection, but it is a risk that Members should consider. I would regard establishing meaningful protection for people aged 16 and over as an important step forward. I would also welcome further consideration of extending it further. Clause 45, for example, establishes a statutory review mechanism. As drafted, it does not expressly require consideration of extending the age threshold, but I am open to strengthening that provision so that an examination of all-age protection becomes part of that review. That would allow the relevant Department, informed by the experience of implementing the legislation and engagement with the children's sector, to examine the wider statutory framework and bring forward its own recommendations. I remain open to the Assembly's consideration of the threshold during the legislative process, but I ask Members to reflect upon the consequences of failing to secure any protection. I would much rather see the Assembly establish meaningful protection that can be developed further than allow another decade to pass without addressing the gap. Part 2 of the Bill defines the conduct that is prohibited. It addresses direct and indirect discrimination, harassment, victimisation, instructions and pressure to discriminate and responsibility for unlawful acts. Those concepts are familiar from established equality law, but I will explain briefly what they mean in practice. Direct discrimination concerns less-favourable treatment on the grounds of age. Take, for example, an older person who approaches a service provider: they meet the ordinary requirements for accessing a service and are otherwise eligible, but they are refused because they have reached a particular age. The question would be whether that treatment could be justified under the legislation. If there is no lawful justification, it may constitute direct age discrimination. Similarly, a hotel might refuse accommodation to everyone below a particular age. There may be legitimate reasons for restrictions in some circumstances, but where the statutory test requires justification, the provider must be able to demonstrate that its approach is proportionate. An unsupported assumption that everyone within an age group will behave irresponsibly is not necessarily sufficient. Indirect discrimination is different. It can arise where a policy applies, apparently equally, to everyone, but places people of a particular age group at a disadvantage. For example, a service provider may introduce a requirement that all customers use a smartphone application — a rule that applies to everyone. However, depending on the circumstances, it may disproportionately disadvantage older customers who cannot easily access or use that technology. That does not automatically make the policy unlawful. The issue arises where a relevant disadvantage occurs and whether the policy can be justified. Could the same objective be achieved through a less-restrictive approach? Could an alternative means of access reasonably be provided? Those are the kinds of questions that arise.
Yes, go ahead.

6,068 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

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