Statutory duty under the Public Sector Equality Duty (Kemi says there are no hierarchies!)

[IwantToRetire]

Public authorities should consider all individuals (including their own employees) when carrying out their day-to-day work – in shaping policy and in delivering services. The duty requires public authorities to ensure that equality issues are actively considered in order to remove or minimise disadvantage and to meet the needs of and encourage greater participation in public life by those with protected characteristics. As part of the Equality Act 2010 (the act), the Public Sector Equality Duty also requires public authorities to have due regard to the need to foster good relations between people who share and do not share a relevant protected characteristic.

I wish to make it entirely clear that public authorities must provide leadership and remain steadfast in maintaining the legal obligations in the act. The act provides protection against discrimination, harassment, victimisation and unfair treatment associated with any of the protected characteristics it covers.

Many people are under the misconception that the act protects groups. It does not. It is about protected characteristics. It is important to remember that every single person has a protected characteristic therefore the act protects all individuals.

The 9 protected characteristics in the act are:

• age
• disability
• gender reassignment
• marriage and civil partnership
• pregnancy and maternity
• race
• religion or belief
• sex
• sexual orientation

I would like to be clear that there is no ‘hierarchy of rights’ under the act, therefore we should not hold one protected characteristic in higher regard than another.

Part of a longer letter here https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/public-sector-equality-duty-guidance-for-public-authorities/letter-to-public-authority-leaders-from-the-minister-for-women-and-equalities

The Public Guidance is here https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/public-sector-equality-duty-guidance-for-public-authorities/public-sector-equality-duty-guidance-for-public-authorities

(I've posted these links on a couple of thread, but thought as this is so important would start a thread just to alert those on FWR that this duty has now been clarified. Well maybe not everyone thinks it has clarified the EA.)

Yes! This has needed saying for a long time.

That's a good letter.

Come on Kemi, get men out of womens prisons, you can do this

It's so sad that it takes a pretty right-wing Tory to hold out for equality and lack of hierarchy.

“Someone has the protected characteristic of gender reassignment if they are proposing to undergo, are undergoing or have undergone a process or part of a process to reassign their sex by changing physiological or other attributes of sex. Authorities should take care to undertake their assessment by reference to the protected characteristics set out in the act. They should not use concepts such as gender or gender identity, which are not encoded in the act and can be understood in different ways. “

Someone has the protected characteristic of gender reassignment if they are proposing to undergo, are undergoing or have undergone a process or part of a process to reassign their sex by changing physiological or other attributes of sex.

Which is only legal for someone 18 and over?

Thanks for posting this.

As far as I can see, this guidance on the “general“ Public Sector Equality Duty applies to the Welsh Government. And to public bodies in Wales.

“The Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED, or “the duty”), which applies in Great Britain (England, Scotland and Wales), requires public authorities to have due regard to certain equality considerations when exercising their functions, like making decisions.”

“The general duty requires decision-makers to have due regard to the need to eliminate conduct prohibited by the act, advance equality of opportunity, and foster good relations in relation to activities such as:

• recommending new or revised public policy to a minister
• publishing a consultation document
• designing and providing a public service

The specific duties help decision-makers to perform the general duty more effectively.” ^^ “As a public authority, you are bound by the general duty if your organisation is listed in schedule 19 of the act. Schedule 19 lists almost 200 public authorities and categories of public authorities in Great Britain, including state schools, police forces, and local councils. ^^ If listed in schedule 19, the general duty applies not only to your organisation’s public-facing decisions, like providing services to members of the public. It also applies to all its functions (unless otherwise specified in schedule 19), like human resources.”

The Welsh Ministers are listed in Schedule 19. Therefore this guidance on the general Public Sector Equality Duty applies to them.

However this guidance on “the specific duties” doesn’t apply to the Welsh Government. Or to devolved public bodies in Wales.

“Unlike the general duty, the specific duties are devolved in Scotland and Wales.”

There is separate EHRC guidance on “the specific duties” in Wales. https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/guidance/public-sector-equality-duty/public-sector-equality-duty-specific-duties-wales

Perhaps it's obvious, but could anyone clarify who will receive this letter?

do 'public authority leaders' include leaders of local authorities, health authorities (at Trust or regional level), police authorities, or judiciary? Or is this a letter for govt and civil servants?

I love the content of the letter, just wanted to clarify who will get it and when....so I can refer to it in future comms.

I don’t know who the letter has been sent to, but the organisations covered by the guidance are listed in Schedule 19 of the Equality Act 2010.

Section 19 covers the NHS (if your user name is relevant to why you’re asking….)

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/schedule/19

Someone has the protected characteristic of gender reassignment if they are proposing to undergo, are undergoing or have undergone a process or part of a process to reassign their sex by changing physiological or other attributes of sex.

So someone undergoing gender reassignment should not be treated worse than anyone else. Good.
The guidance doesn't seem to say anything like "pander to them, and give them everything they demand", which is basically Stonewall's line.

I sometimes forget that sex is also a protected characteristic, and as stated there in no hierarchy. So anything trans people demand for their safety and dignity women (and men) should be able to demand as well.

There is a logic to that, though.

The left has pretty consistently tended to interpret this kind of legislation just as she is saying we shouldn't - as applying to groups. That pretty clearly comes out of the tendency to see things through the lens of class analysis. So you get people thinking that equality, or what is often called equity, is about redistributing harms and advantages so that various groups are equally advantaged or disadvantaged.

So you can justify, for example, giving scholarship placements to kids in underprivileged groups even if the individual getting the placement comes from a wealthy background, which means fewer placements for kids in what are considered to be privileged groups, even if some of those kids are actually poorer than the kid who gets the scholarship.

From a more traditionally conservative approach to equality that would be discrimination against an individual on the basis of race or sex or whatever, and could never be justified just because a lot of other individuals in the group are in some way disadvantaged. Rights inhere in people, not groupings of people, whatever the basis for the group is.

Of course most people are really centrists, even in political parties, but left parties seem now, among their core members, to have a very strong emphasis on group identification as the basis of rights.

Someone has the protected characteristic of gender reassignment if they are proposing to undergo,
It's the proposing to undergo which causes me the most difficulties and has skewed this debate. I assume those advising the May government intended this as the gateway to self i-d. It's a very unclear line and instead of meaning someone has sought medical advice, it seems to mean that someone has thought about it. Out LA wouldn't have the wherewithal to deal with that sort of nuance

It's the proposing to undergo which causes me the most difficulties and has skewed this debate.

The other thing that has skewed the debate (apart from Stonewall lobbying and their policy of #nodebate) is that what people don't understand - or choose to ignore - is that discrimination against those undergoing or intending to undergo gender reassignment is in comparison with others of their birth sex.

So transwomen claiming it is discriminatory not to treat them like women have misunderstood the 2010 Equality Act. The comparator for determining discrimination against a transwoman is a man.

So transwomen claiming it is discriminatory not to treat them like women have misunderstood the 2010 Equality Act. The comparator for determining discrimination against a transwoman is a man.

This has happened because of this new catchall phrase a "legal woman" which allows them to disregard the protected characteristic of sex. (which is the only way "legal woman" is useful as it makes it clear they aren't part of the female biological sex.