Kemi Badenoch is expected to reveal the Conservative party’s new approach to equality law in a speech today. Most prominent will be an announcement that the Conservatives will scrap the public sector equality duty (PSED). This is designed to ensure that when making decisions, public bodies consider the need to eliminate discrimination; advance equality of opportunity; and ‘foster good relations’ between people who have protected characteristics and people who do not.
Critics have argued that the PSED has promoted divisive agendas. Badenoch is expected to say that it has ‘become a minefield that exposes almost every significant public decision to legal challenge’.
Unlike Reform UK, which is vowing to replace the Equality Act entirely, it appears that Badenoch is instead promising targeted reforms. This is a wise approach. The 2010 Act also merged a number of previous anti-discrimination laws on equal pay and race, sex and disability discrimination. Some of these laws dated back to the 1970s and it is hard to imagine a modern party wishing to head into an election in the face of claims that it wished to allow a return to discrimination against pregnant women or ethnic minorities.
Instead, it appears that the Conservatives are taking aim at some of the more contentious parts of the legislation that has allowed diversity, equality and inclusion schemes to proliferate. While supporters argue that such initiatives are necessary to tackle persistent inequalities, critics contend that they have often expanded far beyond the original purpose of anti-discrimination law and have become an exercise in ideological box-ticking.
