Badenoch wants to bin the Public Sector Equality Duty

[Slothtoes]

Badenoch wants to bin the Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED) because she wants to ‘bring back trust in public institutions’. She will replace it with ‘common sense’.
That’s always worked out so well for women...

She says everyone should be treated equally. Just talking now on Radio 4 Today programme.
Badenoch is trying to chuck the baby out with the bathwater in a very dim-witted dangerous way.

No, but she can still contribute to the wider debate in a meaningful and purposeful way. Countering the blunt instrument style of Reform.

"Badenoch said the Tories would scrap the public sector equality duty (PSED), which is a legal requirement under the act that compels all public bodies to carry out detailed assessments of how their functions affect people with different protected characteristics. Badenoch, who served as equalities minister in the last Conservative government, will say that the legal obligation has fuelled “identity politics” and an obsession with diversity, equality and inclusion (DEI) policies to spread across public services.

The Conservatives argue that “box-ticking” requirements to comply with “ideological schemes” have led workers in core public services, including police officers, NHS staff and teachers, to become distracted from their jobs.
Badenoch will blame the PSED for creating “tribal politics” and will pledge to “restore common sense across public life by ensuring every citizen is treated equally under the law”.

Labour introduced the Equality Act to protect people from discrimination based on a list of nine protected characteristics: race, religion, disability, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender reassignment, marriage and pregnancy. Badenoch will warn that those principles are being eroded by “expansive use” of the act and by activists who have hijacked its “open-ended requirements”. "

Luckily talk like this isn't putting women off voting for the Tories or Reform. Imagine if it did.

I agree with Badenoch ⬆️

Badenoch is right in questioning the efficacy of the Equality Act.

Following on from my last post where I said that the wording of the Act currently makes it too easy for public bodies to interpret it in line with their own subjective beliefs. Cases such as Forstater, Bailey and Peggy etc indicate that tribunals have increasingly had to remind institutions that protected beliefs cannot be treated as misconduct merely because others find them offensive.

What would your solution be to address the ways that the act has been manipulated to give greater protection to some over others - thereby privileging certain groups?

We've even had total fabrications whereby the act was being wrongfully used to give males access to female only spaces, services and sports that they didn't actually have - and in a way whhich prioritised them over the actual group that 'single sex provisions' were meant to protect?

The PSED is particularly vulnerable to subjectivity because its key terms are broad and open to interpretation rather than being defined by clear, measurable standards.

Public authorities are required to have "due regard" to advancing equality of opportunity and fostering good relations, but the law does not specify precisely what level of consideration is sufficient or what outcomes demonstrate compliance.

As a result, different officials can reach very different conclusions while all claiming to have fulfilled the duty. One authority may view targeted programmes for certain groups as necessary to advance equality, while another may see equal treatment of everyone as the correct approach. The absence of objective criteria leaves considerable room for personal judgment.

This subjectivity becomes particularly apparent in policy decisions involving competing priorities. For example, when allocating funding, designing public services, or conducting equality impact assessments, officials must often predict how different groups might be affected and decide which factors deserve the greatest weight. Concepts such as "fostering good relations" are especially difficult to measure objectively, allowing decision-makers to justify a wide range of policies based on their own interpretation of what promotes social cohesion.

This leads to inconsistent decision-making across public bodies and allows political or ideological preferences to influence outcomes under the broad umbrella of compliance with the PSED.

There is little point in debating with an opponent who has already stacked the deck.

She’s right but Labour vote will likely continue to tank and people shift further right to Reform and Restore.

It's not necessarily a simple left-versus-right shift. Some voters are reacting to what they perceive as unfairness or inconsistency in institutions, including policing and the implementation of equality policies.

Concerns about perceived two-tier policing, subjective enforcement of public order laws, and the way some public bodies apply the Equality Act and PSED may be influencing voter behaviour. The question is less about ideology and more about trust in institutions and whether people feel laws are being applied equally.

Ultimately, if Labour wants to counter the perception that is driving some voters towards parties such as Reform, it will need to focus on rebuilding trust in institutions. That means showing through actions rather than rhetoric that public institutions serve everyone fairly.

My point is that she is not in a position to implement anything, not now and probably not in the future. She will be like Ed Davey. Their only hope is coalition.

So be it. She’s better than the others but if the public want Reform then what can one do.

The regulatory body for the EqA, the EHRC, already provide detailed guidance for public bodies on how to carry out the PSED.

Good

You haven't even attempted to debate. I've given you an actual example of how the Act has be manipulated using falsities to the detriment of one group.....how would you prevent that from happening again?

Being influential in a debate is important for any leader. She has put forward some ideas and solutions that will now be taken into account.

But the point is the tribunals DID remind them of that. The law was on Maya etcs side. If the Equality Act didn't exist there would be nothing for certain groups to ignore and then eventually be forced to pay attention to.
It's like there are laws against theft but people still go to court for stealing. The fact we have court cases around theft doesn't mean there is no need for laws against theft (or that those laws aren't working). Indeed it means the opposite.

For balance I think it was Zia Yusuf who cited a recent case where the RAF was effectively discriminating against white male pilots as a reason we needed to get rid of the equality act. Except it wasn't the Equality Act that had led to the discrimination. In fact, some of those affected actually went to court arguing that the discrimination was in breach of the Act and won because of the act. It's a fence. The fact a large bull is on the other side of a fence to you and keeps trying to push it down is not a good reason to remove the fence "because it seems to be encouraging the bull to headbut it".

Here’s Kemi Badenoch’s speech from today. It’s worth listening to in full in order not to misconstrue what she says.