Any experts around - help needed

[jerin]

My company is making a large number of redundancies. They have asked for volunteers at government rate.
They are restructuring and completely changing our pay & t&cs.

I have been working part time but they are abolishing part time contracts. The only option will be part year or full time. There are only a few full time positions available.
Most part timers are parents.
Is this legal? Discrimination?
If I don't take VR is redundancy inevitable? (Just wanting to gain time)

If redundancy now is at government rates only I can see no advantage at all for going now unless you have a better paid job waiting in the wings elsewhere.

Redundancy is legal if the work is not there to justify all those workers of course.
Whether a company can abolish part time roles only which discriminate against parents more of who mare women than men I am not sure about. As parents are male and female arguably abolishing part time is not discriminating against one sex so I suppose there might be an argument about that. Discrimination law does not include discrimination against parents but it does against sex discrimination, race discrimination etc. so it might be indirectly discrimination against women if more women are part time than men at your place. On the other hand it is presumably more time consuming and complex to employ part timers so it might be a justifiable business decision.