What would be the implications for feminism if the Equality Act, Human Rights Act & EHCR go, as Reform apparently want to get rid of them? if

[AliasGrace47]

Found this out very recently, I'm just thinking now about potential implications.

I can see there would be potential good & bad consequences. The Human Rights Act has been criticised for enabling hate preachers, for one, so reforming those elements would be a v good thing.

Otoh what implications would repeal of the Equality Act have? Wasn't that one of the things the Supreme Court used to show that women (& incl minority groups like lesbians) are legally entitled to single-sex spaces?

Bad.

No more court cases to protect women's rights. No more court cases to protect freedom of belief.

Google the Equality Act.

It pulls together a range of anti discrimination laws into one place. Without it you can be sacked for being female or disabled or black or foreign or gay, just to list a few. And you would have no rights to equal pay or access to services.

Its not just reform Labour peers are starting to say the same so far its only David Blunket and Jack Straw
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It would be disastrous unless other law was drafted to replace it which protected women’s rights. Agree it’s a possibility in future that Reform will get in and do this. I’m sure women will get the blame whatever happens.

That's worrying.. I've noticed a lot of people on MN generally seem to support Reform, or at least feel that they might have a positive influence. Obviously they're not the devil incarnate or anything, but it did suprise me to find out their stance on the Equality Act, etc when many people here seemed to be positive about them.

Bad...but I thought for equal pay we had the Equal Pay Act already, for women?

This relates to the ECtHR and is presumably because it is felt that rights are not being correctly balanced, particularly re Article 8.

I think this view is shared by other countries in the EU, so I suspect there will be changes, but that the court will still exist.

However, that is not the same as scrapping Equality Law in the UK.

It’s bad enough at the moment if you’re female or disabled, ditching the EA would be a disaster. No maternity protection, no requirement to make reasonable adjustments for disabled people, equal pay has been in place in law for many years but still companies try it on when they can. It would be like being in the USA where they can fire you on a whim. Which of course is what Reform really wants. They pretend to be for the common man, laying blame for all problems on ‘others’ in reality they want to ditch employee and environmental protection policies to make life easier for the super rich.

Exactly, we need to be clear on this thread whether we mean the ECHR, the Human Rights Act or the Equality Act. All have different implications.

I doubt that their goal is to scrap the EA, but keep all the preceeding legislation.

I assume you ment race or ethnic background?

foreign is not covered as the right to work in the UK is only a right for citizens and those who have been given a right by some other legislation.

You think they want to repeal equal pay? Are they that bad?

I don’t think they’d repeal equal pay, they are populist and that wouldn’t be popular. I do think they’d make it much more difficult to make a claim for pay discrimination. Which would effectively reduce the legal protection.

I think yes, they would argue that an employer should be free to pay what they want.

It removes a legal duty from State actors to balance the rights of all groups when making decisions about how tax funds will be spent and what public works should be carried out.

So without it LAs would run like little fifedom and policy would depend in which party/policy had a majority vote.

Who on FWR is “generally positive” about Reform? Some women (not me) see them as the lesser evil of all the parties, not sure anyone is a Farage fan.

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The Equal Pay Act has already been repealed and its provisions written into the Equality Act.

Growing babys takes doctors appointments, reasonable adjuatment before birth, time off after birth and fair promotion when back in work etc then time needed to manage the babys growth to adulthood.

All of that cost a business money.

And a whole lot of people would save money if they could get rid of the legal checks and balances as ET after ET still deal with employers trying to get rid of female staff who grow babies.

I loathe Reform. The ideas of repealing the HRA and removing ourselves from the ECHR are both awful. But I have a doomed feeling that just as he demonstrated with Brexit, Farage’s ability to tickle the darker edge of this country’s funnybone over a period of years will lead to further national harm.

I guess I might as well say that from my POV Farage and his ideas are the reasons why the British economy has only very limited growth and record immigration of types that apparently we now don’t like despite voting for it, and that we are spending so much on it. Him. Despite everything that grown ups can do in government (I think Reeves is doing bloody well so achieve at least some growth), Farage is under the floorboards hacking away at the support structures. And he’s continuing to do it. As a woman, I need the rule of law like the HRA and the EA to support my full participation in society and to underpin mutual trust. Farage gives absolutely not a shit about that. His policy statements are whipping his supporters up and they are enjoying providing a depressing summer of civil unrest. The only good thing about him is that it should stop old statements about the British ability to resist demagogues. We’re just like everywhere else in our vulnerability to toxic shit like him.

Ah....just read an article which says both Jenrick and Braverman support repealing the Equality Act. Jenrick also wants to repeal the Human Rights Act & Climate Change Act, among others.

The article suggests that if the Tories got into coalition w Reform, the scrapping could well happen.

Scrapping the Equality Act 2010 would be disastrous as it pulls together all previous equality legislation, (so the Equal Pay Act, Race Relations Act, Sex Discrimination Act, Disability Discrimination Act etc, etc). Those existing pieces of legislation were repealed and replaced by the EA2010. So get rid of EA2010 and there’s nothing left. I’m not sure what the status of case law would be, but discrimination in employment and provision of services would no longer be illegal. So you could be fired for being pregnant, employers could choose to not employ women, offer unequal pay etc, with no legal come back.

In the Act, race includes colour, nationality, citizenship, and ethnic or national origins. There are some exceptions around non-uk citizens and employment, national security, etc.

You can be a perfectly legal working in the UK foreigner (like all the Irish who need no visa or permit) but abandoning the Equality Act would take the UK back to "no Dogs, no Blacks, no Irish" in no time at all.