Proposed legislation to simplify and harmonise current equalities legislation.

The Equality Bill was introduced to the House of Commons on 24 April 2009.

Aims of the Bill

The stated aim of the Bill is to ‘harmonise discrimination law, and to strengthen the law to support progress on equality’. The Bill will replace all existing equality legislation, including the Equal Pay Act.

The Bill looks to strengthen the law in a number of key areas by:

• creating a general public duty. HEIs will have to consider how their policies, programmes and service delivery will affect people with the protected characteristics;
• extending the range of lawful positive action to overcome or minimise a disadvantage arising from a protected characteristic;
• extending the circumstance in which a person is protected against discrimination, harassment or victimisation because of a protected characteristic;
• allowing employment tribunals to make recommendations in discrimination cases which apply to the whole workforce.
• Protected characteristics

The following are classed as protected characteristics:

• age
• disability
• gender reassignment
• marriage and civil partnership
• pregnancy and maternity
• race
• religion or belief (including lack of belief)
• sex
• sexual orientation
• Timescale

The Bill is expected to receive Royal Assent in spring 2010. The majority of the Bill is expected to come in to force in autumn 2010, with the general public duty following in 2011.

Taken from the the government equalities office website:

http://www.equalities.gov.uk/equality_bill/introduction.aspx 

“The Government is committed to creating a fair society with fair chances for everyone. For society to be fair people must have the chance to live their lives freely and fulfil their potential. To achieve this we need to tackle inequality and root out discrimination.

Equality not only has benefits for individuals but for society and the economy too. A more equal workforce is a stronger workforce. A more equal society is one more at ease with itself. To help us create the equal and fair society we all want to see we will introduce an important new package of measures. At the heart of this package is the new Equality Bill which was announced in the Queen’s Speech on 3rd December 2008.

The Government committed, in its 2005 General Election manifesto to introduce an Equality Bill in this Parliament to review, simplify and modernise discrimination law. To make this happen, the Discrimination Law Review (DLR) was launched in February 2005 to consider “the opportunities for creating a clearer and more streamlined equality legislation framework which produces better outcomes for those who experience disadvantage …while reflecting better regulation principles.”

The DLR culminated in June 2007 with the publication of the consultation paper: A Framework for Fairness: Proposals for an Equality Bill for Great Britain which outlined the DLR’s proposals to simplify, modernise, and increase the effectiveness of discrimination law.”

For more information about the Equalities Bill please remember to keep coming back to Inclusion for updates.