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The New Equality Bill Published

The government’s Equality Bill has been published (27th April, 2009); aimed at tackling "entrenched discrimination" the long-awaited statute targets inequality in the workplace and beyond and replaces more than 100 existing pieces of legislation covering gender, race and disability equality. 

Harriet Harman, the minister for women and equality, said: "The Equality Bill is part of building a strong fair future for Britain out of the downturn. That means fairness and opportunity. Especially in tougher economic times, we need to face the problems fairly and we need to look for a fairer future.

"Though we have ensured new rights and opportunities for disabled people, for women, black and Asian people and older people - there is still unfairness and discrimination to tackle. And this Bill will take the action necessary to tackle it."

“This is sure to simplify equality legislation for employers and employees alike”, says Michael Pitt, partner in employment law at solicitors Pearson Hinchliffe Commercial Law.

The Bill includes new basic definitions of discrimination, outlaws discrimination by association (giving effect to recent European case law), expands the public sector equality duties, allows positive discrimination in certain situations and will make pay secrecy clauses in employment contracts unlawful.

Mr Pitt added, “The Bill contains just 205 clauses one of which, intended to tackle pay discrepancies between genders at senior level, allows the Secretary of State to order employers with more than 250 employees to publish their average male and female pay. Although the government has said that it will not exercise this power in the next four years, critics have speculated that publishing these statistics may have the opposite effect by deterring female candidates.”

In Summary

• Introduction of new generic equality duty on public bodies bringing together existing public duties on race, disability and gender and extended to age, sexual orientation, gender reassignment and religion or belief
• Allows positive discrimination during recruitment in favour of disadvantaged groups when faced with candidates who are otherwise equally qualified
• Powers to outlaw unjustifiable age discrimination in the provision of goods, facilities and services. There will be further consultation on the design of the legislation to allow public authorities and businesses to prepare and to ensure that the law does not prevent justified differences in treatment based on age.
• Reverses Malcolm v London Borough of Lewisham, and abolishes the list of areas in which a disability must impact (eg mobility, manual dexterity, memory or ability to learn, concentrate or understand etc.)
• Outlaws any clauses in employment contracts which impose a secrecy obligation stopping employees discussing their pay packages
• Introduces a new duty for some key public bodies to pay due regard to socio-economic disadvantage in making strategic decisions, and extends public sector duties to ensure equality to age discrimination
• Gives effect to recent European case law by outlawing discrimination by association;

Whilst it will no doubt be subjected to great discussion in committee, the first draft can be viewed here.

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