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.

What’s this reply?

In brief my point is that The Public Sector Equality Duty employs open-textured language that confers a broad discretion on public authorities. As a result, compliance is often assessed through subjective evaluative judgments rather than by reference to fixed, objective criteria.

Comments such as this from PPs make me wonder whether the PSED is in fact, not just a command to diligently obey EA2010 (as we all must), but a veiled exhortation to maximise use of the exemptions from strict equal treatment in the Act, in order to maximise the social goods that those exemptions serve.

For example, the Positive Action exemption, by boosting representation of underrepresented groups (defined by protected characteristic), will, in the longer term, supposedly promote, both equality of opportunity, and excellence (by giving selectors access to a wider range of candidates). The RAF got it wrong by discriminating against better-qualified white men. But they were not wrong to make the attempt.

The PSED should be rewritten to tie it explicitly to the relevant sections of the Act, making it more objective.

(Corrected an error.)

If you look through the very detailed threads on Stonewall here a lot their advice was based on companies/charities getting ahead of the law. Some might call that a fancy word for breaking the law but either way they were aware that the existing legal framework didn't justify their recommendations. I think TRAs also exploited an ambiguity in the wording of the EA around what was meant by "sex". Along with the definition of woman, definition of man. This ambiguity was likely not anticipated by the people first drafting the law as I think they would have assumed everyone knew what sex was.
The solution was that inevitably there needed to be some clarity on what "sex" meant. And there was. Largely because women took it to court and sued under the EA and now we have a legal ruling that under the EA sex is biological and characteristics are not hierarchical.
So the solution.has already happened. Now it's just a matter of not letting companies get away with breaking the law or political parties abolish it.

For there to be a solution, on all issues, not just on the protected category of 'Sex' there first of all needs to be widespread consciousness of the malpractices that have been going on; and on the way that policy and practice have been outsourced to activist groups of one stripe or other.

It took years of campaigning for FWS to bring their case before the Supreme Court - and even now we still see ( for example, at yesterday Q&A with the ECHR) that many MPs, even, are still refusing to accept the ruling on how the act was meant to be interpreted. Still insisting on Stonewall law. So, i suggest the solution has not already been fully secured.

i think Kemi Badenoch's speech ( above) is very clear and very thorough on what has been going awry, resulting in the sorts of plain injustices we have seen in recent years. The manipulations of activists groups need to be rooted out.

This report from 'Prosperity' has just been published. I haven't read it in its' entirety but seems a coherant analysis and challenge to Eq Act even if I am not actually endorsing.
However Claire Coutinho MP, Shadow Minister for Women and Equalities is.

“The Equality Act has never lived up to its name. Quite the reverse. Rather than ensuring that everyone in Britain is treated equally, it has created a system of discrimination across the public sector and in the workplace. Groups such as white working-class boys are now denied opportunities purely because of the colour of their skin. The British people never consented to this divisive legal regime; it was thrust upon them by a dying New Labour government, under the influence of distant European judges and lawyers. And we never needed it: British law was and is already perfectly capable of protecting people from discrimination. This new Prosperity Institute paper makes an inarguable case against the Equality Act. It lays bare the Act’s origins, dysfunctions, and incompatibility with Britain’s legal tradition, and clearly lays out the possible routes back to a system of genuine fairness based on merit and equality under the law. Anyone serious about delivering Britain from the grip of identity politics should read it.”

https://www.prosperity.com/media-publications/some-more-equal-than-others/#foreword

But white working class boys can't be denied opportunities based on the colour of their skin, legally, under the equality act. It doesn't protect black people as a group. It protects race as a characteristic. White men have successfully sued under the act for discrimination on the basis of their race/sex. They can't complain on the basis of class discrimination because class isn't in the Act. (Maybe it should be. On the other hand that could interfere with attempts to rectify existing class differences by creating schemes targeted at class/family background. Eg grants for the first person in a family to attend uni etc/attempts to make unis take a proportion of pupils from State schools).

Now whether the Act isn't always followed is another matter. Maybe there needs to be additional legislation or clarification to ensure it is applied evenly or that people are aware of what it says.

But a lot of the debate especially online seems to be culture war stuff by people who don't realise that UK law is different to US law. It's understandable when it's online, it's very strange when government ministers are pushing it. It's like someone endlessly talking about how the Jaywalking laws in the UK need to be changed.

Now whether the Act isn't always followed is another matter. Maybe there needs to be additional legislation or clarification to ensure it is applied evenly or that people are aware of what it says.
If there is misinterpretation by government ministers it is a more systemic problem.

https://x.com/i/status/2066857288971755569
Nick Timothy;

David Lammy’s new diversity plan is almost certainly unlawful.

I have referred him to the Equality and Human Rights Commission.

Then let's get rid of the equality act and David Lammy can do what he wants 💪💪💪
Everyone's happy

What a waste of time. The PSED isn’t the problem if you think there are issues with equalities. It’s the Act. Reform will just junk it in all likelihood. Why would you vote Conservative on a measure that would do very little and already is so malleable as to make little difference to government action

Problems are with the interpretation of law, by non-lawyers. Sir Trevor Phillips when head of Equalities tried to explain that racism can be by black people, against white, but he was ignored. As he was when he tried to explain that discrimination against disabled people is "in some ways, in it's effect on people's lives, worse than racism".

The eagerness to be 'captured' by Stonelaw is extraordinary, as is the reluctance/refusal to give up, Supreme Court or no.

On the topic of EIA's, one astounding example accompanied consideration of a proposal to change planning laws, in order to improve the dire shortage of disabled-friendly UK housing stock. The EIA concluded that having nowhere to live is a "positive advantage" to disabled people.

Stonewall were very specifically advocating getting "ahead of the law". Most people would consider that to be breaking the law, even if it was in anticipation that the law would later change. That's not how the law works!!!

Likewise, I think a lot of people, even those who should have known better, confuse American and UK law and culture. Of course we have lots of similarities but not only is the legal framework around positive discrimination/positive action very different but even the history of racism in the UK versus the US. I have seen people referring to historical racial segregation in toilets in the UK. Which nevery happened, it isn't the American South. The Trevor Phillips point about racism was being misread because in the US they started defining racism as what we would call structural or systemic racism. And it spread here. But legally he was right. Any race can be racist against any other race.

Plus, American companies trying to apply American law to other countries they work in. And being genuinely confused when told it's not allowed.

All of which has led to a lot of stupidity. But that's not the fault of the law. If Darren's mate tells him it's not really stealing if you do it when the shops are closing and Darren is later caught shoplifting at 9.50 pm it's not the fault of the law against theft. It's Darren's fault for listening to his mate. Likewise it's not a reason to abolish property law.

Indeed. And, for disability, USA wins. Probably 'thanks' to Vietnam, the Americans With Disabilities Act was clear and is observed. The general public as well as officials will simply not permit a crutches-using tourist to be frightfully British and join at the back of a queue. Everyone protests until the disabled person is hustled to the front, at a tourist attraction. There is sure to be a special arrangement to get them smoothly into an access lift, ahead of everyone. Disconcerting and embarrasing for a Brit, of course, but quite right.

PS Your point about foolish Darren listening to his mate's version of law would be well made to everyone still clinging to Stonelaw. But, notably in Scotland, and the Greens, the solution is seen as changing the law to comply with Darren's version.

Of course. The irony there is that getting rid of the Equality Act would save the Scottish Greens a lot of trouble in thisnregard.
I will say I've seen disabled people asked to join the front of queues in the UK. Maybe it's less insistent than in the US. But when it comes to organisations - I think it shows the difference between the two legal environments and how they evolved. In the US it is much easier to positively help disabled people into employment by actively discriminating in their favour (eg select the disabled applicant over the able bodies applicant or have quotas for disabled employees). In the UK that's harder precisely because of the idea the law should always go two ways. That's a double edged sword because it means you can't do as much to help historically discriminated against groups (ethnic minorities, disabled people, women) by tipping the scales in their favour. It's exactly the opposite problem to what Reform imagine it to be. It's also why I feel meh about attempts to add class/social status to the act.

But this set up also helps to protect those historically discriminated groups being continued to be discriminated against. Personally as a woman I think the trade of is worth it. The other advantage to our laws is that, in theory, it should prevent the overcorrection/backlash occurring in the US where now anyone who isn't a white able bodied male gets accused of being a "DEI placement". Unfortunately because some people are stoopid (or willfully ignorant) you are still seeing the same backlash in the UK.

I'm not anti-US by the way. But I am against the mindless import of culture war arguments from there that don't even fit the UK context. Reforms crusade against the EA is part of that.