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!

Do intelligent, well read people vote reform? I can’t help thinking that it’s linked to intelligence and education. Who in their right mind, or even have a mind, would vote reform?

There is evidence that less educated voters are much more likely to vote Reform.

But I'm sure there are probably some highly intelligent and educated sociopaths amongst their supporters too

This seems like a non sequiter, maybe you meant to quote someone else?

I've just heard, on radio 4, a woman explaining that she voted Reform because Labour cut winter fuel allowance, and she's been on an NHS waiting list for too long.

Seriously, is it time for a compulsory test on all parties' policies before voting papers are handed out?
[Not actually seriously. But...]

As opposed to voting green because the support Gaza?

Or thinking you shouldn’t vote Reform in local elections because Reform want to replace the Equality Act?

Or because of their stated policies on the environment, public ownership, social care, housing etc which lean more towards my views?

Or because it's always been about what you can accept and can't. For me, it's climate change, the global march to the right and increasing brinkmanship risking ww3. With that framing, the Reform party who call Ner Zero a con, have strong links with American organisations like Turning Point and who's senior members express very conservative views on abortion, women's roles and teaching our children to be proud of the Empire and who explicitly said we should join the (illegal) Iran war are the biggest threat to all three of those, so I'll vote for whoever will beat reform in my constituency.

Other people have other priorities, whether that be stopping what they see as illegal immigration or blocking trans rights. Someone on this site once told me (in his first term) that stopping all abortions including medical intervention for ectopic pregnancy, which I'd pointed out would increase maternal death rates, was an acceptable price to pay for protecting womens spaces.

We all have to choose our lines and I think as long as we research issues and aren't voting because a Facebook post told me that Muslims want to cancel Christmas, I think that's fair.

Hopefully the 3 traditional parties will do some research on people's priorities and come up with a unifying offer.

Reform is not women friendly or worker friendly. They are interested in unfettered capitalism that benefits their backers. Anyone voting for them should consider themself at the very least misled.

Ad hominem attacks are not arguments. Proof that Reform voters think this or don't realise this? Many are worried about unfettered immigration, school waiting lists, the impossibility of getting a GP appointment, long NHS waiting lists and grooming gangs. Some are also not at all pleased by the trans agenda espoused by Greens and Labour and the LibDems but can't stomach voting for the Tories because they also espouse unfettered neo-liberalism. Where are they supposed to go? And they won't have read Braverman's remarks - because I have only seen them on here (not that they surprised me) and they are not widely known. That Farage wants a US style insurance based health industry has been known since he shot his mouth off about it c. 2017 and was told to stfu by his colleagues - he won't have changed his mind and his spokesperson very carefully avoided answering whether Reform would privatise the NHS, saying that it would still be free at the point of access, which are weasel words and do not preclude US style insurance and privatization.
NB I voted for Brexit - the EU is also neo-liberal to its fingertips among other stupidities and technocratic follies.
NB If you are suggesting that Reform voters don't care about losing basic rights this suggest most of them must be filthy rich, surely?

You don’t think importing eg steel from china rather than smelting it here and not counting the CO2 produced in its smelting and transport because it wasn’t produced here is not a con? Or not counting CO2 from Norwegian oil and only that from British oil?

What rights do trans people not have that other people have?

You think we should be ashamed of the Empire but you support Islamic colonialism including the colonial dictatorship by Arabs of Persians in Iran, including the ruling Arabs massacring tens thousands of Persians? Or their repeated terrorist attempts within the UK?

Yeah, I think good environmental stewardship has always been important, and that holds whatever people think about climat change and emmissions.

But a lot of the proposals that have been made by various parties and government bodies are a con, or at least do not make sense. They are trading one problem for another (EVs) or massively simplifying complex systems (environmental veganism).

Accusing anyone who points these problems out as being anti-environment has really hollowed out the environmental movement.

The environmental movement if full of ideologues rather than scientists. They are blinkered to anything that doesn’t suit their ideology including basic science. But Labour’s Net Zero is a total con merely exporting CO2 production to hugely more polluting countries whilst totally undermining local industry and making us even more reliant on goods transported across the globe (producing more CO2).

Reform is an MLM set up ultimately making a few people very rich and the greens are Momentum on steroids.

HTH

White WC boys are not the most deprived demographic in society.
White WC boys are the demographic that has the lowest educational achievement in the UK.
Its a very important difference.

Read the Policies on their website.
Stop repeating fiction.

Because the most deprived areas in the uk, Jaywick and Blackpool, are both not over 95% white…

I'm not sure of your point?
Those areas are not populated exclusively by white WC boys, are they? White WC girls will be living there too. And white WC class adults. And white WC people with disabilities, on benefits, heading single parent families, chatacteristics known to compound deprivation; so why would you from this single out white WC boys as the most deprived demographic in the uk?
Plus a concentration of a demographic in a particular area is not reflective of the national picture for that demographic.

In fact the most deprived demographic by ethnicity in the UK are Bangladeshi and Pakistani people. There is no breakdown of deprivation by sex of child. Presumably because deprived households will have both boy and girl children.

This is so true. Unfortunately they used the illegal immigrant approach to get votes. But what they have planed is worse, remove human rights, this will affect maternity rights, time off work for women on Maternity leave , this give employers free reign to prevent women from coming back to their jobs, and it will affect all of us, Black,asian & White. The repercussions will be huge. So those who voted for Reform are not exempt. Alot of things will start to surface and none of them are good.

I have.
Stop confusing fantasy with reality.

I’ve just read their polices and they don’t say how they’re going to achieve all these things.

Farage and Polanski have capitalised on the modern psyche for following influencers; they’re both very clever populist influencers. They’re manipulating all those people who are either gullible or don’t have a level of interest, caution, intelligence or practical understanding that helps them to untangle what these policies actually mean in the longer run.

It’s interesting that the first are all stop the boats. The amount of money needed to do their first few polices will scupper the rest.

Also, they want families to have more children. Only polices deeply rooted in social care will enable that. Apart from anything, the level of SEND is increasing due to a range of factors but does include better neonatal care. How will that fund this?

Deeper analysis of their ideas about the nhs illustrate a two tier approach using private healthcare. This is already happening and what happens is that the nhs drs get soaked up for private healthcare leaving very little expertise and time available for everyone else.

One of the reasons the nhs was on the past really good in the Norrh East is that very few used private consultants which meant that the best were actually working in the nhs.

"NB I voted for Brexit - the EU is also neo-liberal to its fingertips among other stupidities and technocratic follies."

This is absolutely true, to it's core the EU is a Neo-liberal monopolistic trading block, it wears the outer trimmings of a few left policies - but it's there to make money, at whatever the cost. Openboarders is not about freedom it is and always has been about money and squeezing every drop from human capital. It is not AT ALL the liberal democracy some short sighted remain voters think it is.

And JUST LIKE the accusations above of Reform voters being uneducated or stupid - and I cannot believe they have been allowed to stand. It is a matter of record that people voted for remain on gut without looking at the actual good and bad points of staying in the EU. I DID vote to stay, just. The Common Agricultural policy ALONE is enough reason to leave.

Anyway, point is, being black and white about all this stuff is mad.

Plenty good about the EU, plenty absolutely awful.

Plenty good in Reform, plenty awful

Plenty good in the Greens, plenty awful

Tribalism and polarisation of our politics will kill us.

Well done for recognising exactly who Farage is.