What to do about the Equality Act

Among people of a conservative disposition, it’s long been accepted that the Equality Act needs to be repealed. This legislation, passed in 2010 in the dying days of Gordon Brown’s premiership, was designed to embed Labour’s egalitarian ideology into the fabric of the British state, yet none of Brown’s successors have done anything about it. In July, Rishi Sunak told a group of Conservative party members at a leadership hustings in West Sussex that he would ‘review’ it if he became prime minister, but don’t expect major surgery. The most we can hope for is a bit of light cosmetic work.

One thing about the Equality Act not widely understood is that it didn’t create much in the way of new law. Rather, it grouped together several laws that were already on the statute book, such as the Equal Pay Act 1970, and put them all in a single act of parliament. It’s doubtful the public has much appetite to repeal laws that in some cases have been around for more than 50 years. Indeed, the most recent British Social Attitudes survey found that support for equality laws is increasing: 73 per cent of people surveyed thought rights for lesbians, gay men and bisexuals ‘had not gone far enough’ or were ‘about right’, compared with 62 per cent in 2011.

It was never intended to shut down debate on campus, but is being misinterpreted in that way

True, the Equality Act did include a new legal duty for public authorities to reduce socioeconomic inequality, which one Labour cabinet member at the time described as ‘socialism in one clause’. But the provisions of the act were brought in at different times which gave David Cameron’s government the opportunity to kick that one into the long grass.

Another thing about this act that isn’t widely appreciated is that the legal duty it imposes on public authorities to promote equality – between different groups in possession of protected characteristics, not social classes – isn’t particularly onerous.