Reform plans threaten maternity leave and job security for half a million pregnant women, analysis shows

[IwantToRetire]

In February, the party’s equality spokesperson Suella Braverman unveiled plans to repeal the act “on day one” if it wins the next election, claiming that Britain is being “ripped apart by diversity, equality and inclusion” policies.

The Equality Act 2010 – which replaced previous anti-discrimination laws with a single act – legally protects those with protected characteristics, including pregnancy and maternity, from discrimination in the workplace and in wider society. It makes it unlawful to fire, harass, or disadvantage women because they are pregnant, have a pregnancy-related illness, or are on maternity leave.

Losing protections from the Equality Act would remove the legal requirement for employers to treat pregnant women and new mothers fairly, likely leading to discrimination.

Protected characteristics under the Equality Act also include age, disability, gender reassignment, marital status, race, religion or belief, sex and sexual orientation.

Ms Braverman described protected characteristics as being “pernicious” and “divisive”.

Full article https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/reform-uk-nigel-farage-equality-act-pregnant-women-maternity-b2967253.html
and https://archive.is/foM0D

Well alll that bother, money and women's time, to get the Supreme Court ruling about sex being biological in the EA,will be pointless as Reform thinks to have sex as a protected characteristic is pernicious and divisive!

The problem is that people are so used to a relatively civilised life, with protection from discrimination and dismissal, health and safety law and paid maternity leave and the welfare state safety net and free health care and the right to vote that they simply cannot envisage losing it. You'd think they might have learned a lesson or two from Trump, but apparently they want a UK Trump.
Americans have far less than we do in lots of ways - very little in the way of maternity rights, healthcare, holiday entitlement, protection against dismissal. We had some protection from our own government when we were in the EU, but Farage gave us Brexit and now he's going to finish the job.

The UK has had enforced borders throughout our lives.

That's not a matter of belief as anyone knows if they've ever attempted to return to the UK having left it.

It'll be more than half of the country. Men are black, older workers and disabled too.

Reform and their close friends UKIP have spent the last few years inviting their American religious/conservative friends in to the country to share infrastructure and experience. Culture wars that were never a thing here are suddenly a regular topic of press and worthy of debate.

Reform cultivates a belief that the every day citizen deserves a right to be consulted and provide personal consent for the acceptance of refugees into the country.

You don't repeal an Act and then spend 5 years arguing about and consulting on and drafting and amending another piece of legislation and taking it all the way through the House of Commons and House of Lord stages before it finally comes into force. You do all that work before repealing the existing Act. Otherwise you have 5 years in which women have no right to maternity leave or pay, can be discriminated against at will, etc.
Reform have made it very clear that they have absolutely no intention of replacing the Act.
As I've said, if they wanted to do anything about the trans issue, they could simply make an amendment to the existing Act. They don't give a toss about the trans issue. In fact I think Farage has actually said that.

Farage has even started talking about what a good idea guns are, hasn't he?

@SingleSexSpacesInSchools I've just seen your post showing lots of legislation that was revoked when the Equality Act came in. I think you're really struggling here. The Equality Act replaced a lot of law because it was all brought into the one Act, for the sake of simplicity. Those other Acts etc. stayed in place until the new law was in final form and had gone all the way through Parliament and actually came into force. So there was no gap between the right to maternity leave, for instance, existing in one piece of legislation and that right then moving to the Equality Act.
What Reform have announced is that they will repeal the Equality Act immediately - having done nothing at all to prepare replacement legislation. Women will lose all their rights overnight. There is every likelihood that they will lose them permanently. That's exactly why Reform is getting rid of the Equality Act - they don't want women to have rights.

SingleSex doesn't seem to understand that in order to replace legislation with something else, you need to spend a long time getting the something else drafted and into law. Reform have said that they will get rid of the Equality Act (and the role of Equality Minister) on Day 1. SingleSex is talking nonsense and simply living on hope / the assumption that the nice Farage people couldn't possibly mean to do something so terrible. Farage has just been given £5 million to live on for the rest of his life and he doesn't give a fuck about the rest of the population.

She said they would repeal on day 1. No mention of a replacement and absolutely no time to replace. There is clearly no intention to replace.
If it's "very very clear" then provide the evidence for all to see please.
If they wanted people to retain their rights the very last thing they would do would be to repeal the Equality Act. They would tinker with the bits they didn't like, while most of it stayed in place. But they want all our rights gone. I imagine that maternity rights are right at the top of the list. Women in the US have almost no maternity rights, and Farage worships the US.

Just to be pedantic the OP is based on a news paper article.

The article is based on comments made by various people in Reform.

Probably more to impress each other than anything they might do.

But in terms of media quotes, it is get rid of the EA, replace it was Fair Work framework. I doubt any of them have thought about the process.

And given that even when elected to being a Representative Farage never turns, its unlikely he understands.

On the other hand, rather than talking about quotable quotes for the media and easily swayed potential voters you could instead look at their actual manifesto.

A bit more toned down than slogans created for media attention by the egos involved.

Never thought I would do it but here if the web like to their manifesto.

https://www.reformparty.uk/policies#policies-section

Although of course the headline seaking comments to the media may well be the eventual intent as opposed to the published Manifesto.

^ This

I think this is correct and I also think that whatever their intention, they won't be able to do anything "on day one".

I would actually be really interested to see someone take a really hard look at the differernt types of equalities legislation and what their effects have been, bad, good, and especially, unexpected. These kinds of laws have existed in various forms across the west for a while now and there has been enough time to see where they have been really successful and where they have had some issues.

There do seem to be fads that happen in international lawmaking - we see it now with the fad towards laws against "conversion therapy." and I suspect that these kinds of laws don't always get the care and scrutiny they should.

I don't really see any evidence they are making any kind of careful approach though, or have any detailed analysis.

"having protection from our own government" in this context just means "is a way to keep the laws I want even if most of the country doesn't want them."

And it just kicks the can up the road, why would the EU, or any other organisation made up of people, be more likely to get things right than the national government? It's not, it's just as likely to fuck up, but it will then be the fuck up of people in other countries who have very tenuous accountability.

Responsible government and supremacy of Parliament are foundational democratic concepts, making your government subject to an outside organisation is not that.

I'm no economist, but I would assume the draw to the EU was to homogenise culture, increase opportunity and grow economies. Reform wedged into that environment by selling a domestic vision that the UK was stronger and better outside, alone.

No, the choice is between normal decent if flawed humans, having discussions, developing and trying to understand things, and slowly figuring things out in law and society.

Or the worst scum of society in all ways.

I meant to say "Reform/Brexit Party." sleeep time.

I've already pointed out this isn't in their manifesto.

You are just responding to shouty media sound bites.

Look at their manifesto.

I've posted the thread.

This is absolutely ridiculous.

there are 1000 very reasonable reasons to put the boot into Rwform, but this is wilfully misunderstanding a situation

Again you just look ridiculous to saving things like that. There’s plenty of good things to say about right wing positions. Plenty of good things to say about left-wing positions to be so tribal about it and say the other side are evil is insane. It’s not true obviously

How on earth can you have a discussion if you have already painted one half of the people involved in the discussion as the worst scum of society?

Stop telling us we're completely wrong without providing any evidence at all that we are wrong.
You quite clearly have absolutely no idea at all how making law works.
Where is the evidence that Reform have a serious intention to replace the Equality Act with something better? Any evidence at all? Please link to it here.

Sure. Took about ten seconds to find.

Reform UK’s 2024 manifesto, Our Contract with You, explicitly states: “Replace the 2010 Equalities Act”, arguing that the Act “requires discrimination in the name of ‘positive action’.” In later public statements, Reform spokespeople said the party would introduce a new “Workplace Fairness Act” to replace the Equality Act, which they claimed would “restore fairness, protect women, and rebuild public trust in the law” while “re-asserting the rights of individuals rather than groups under the law.”

https://assets.nationbuilder.com/reformuk/pages/253/attachments/original/1718625371/ReformUKOurContractwithYou.pdf

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/reform-uk-nigel-farage-equality-act-pregnant-women-maternity-b2967253.html

And given that I literally gave you a line by line list of the previous laws which were repealed or revoked on the day that the equality act came in I don’t think it’s a fair accusation that I don’t know how the law works

One of those links is to the Independent article about the Equality Act being repealed, which is what this whole thread is about.
The other link, from Reformuk, doesn't work - there's just an error message.

How many times do I have to tell you that you have to have a new law set up, passed by Parliament and ready to go before repealing the current law? Reform have said that they will repeal the Equality Act on Day 1 of their government. They won't even be able to start work on a new law until they're in government.

If they're saying they don't want to protect "groups" under the law, that's a clear message that they want to get rid of discrimination law. Discrimination law is all based around groups - women, disabled people, black people, etc.

By the way - under UK law there is almost no right to discriminate positively. Positive discrimination is in almost all cases unlawful. The big exception is that employers are required to make reasonable adjustments to enable disabled employees to do their jobs. I can't imagine Reform putting that into any new legislation. Disabled people are going to be absolutely shafted.

What is happening now is like shutting the windows whilst leaving your front door wide open. No one who seriously wants to enter the uk illegally would have any difficulty doing so.