Why we should scrap the Equality Act
New Labour’s flagship equality law has let identity politics run amok for the past 14 years.
Before Nigel Farage entered the fray yesterday, Kemi Badenoch’s declaration that a newly elected Conservative Party would rewrite the Equality Act was the highlight of the UK General Election campaign. At very least, the promise to protect single-sex spaces by making ‘biological sex’ a protected characteristic put some clear water between the Tories and the Labour Party, which hastily labelled Badenoch’s intervention ‘a distraction’. As Lauren Smith has pointed out on spiked, Labour Party higher-ups might be happy to disregard sex-based rights, but they really do matter to women. Still, the Conservative Party’s talk of reforming the Equality Act now, having failed to act while in office, rings hollow.
Back in 2010, the newly elected Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition inherited the Equality Act from the previous Labour regime. It was one of the final pieces of legislation from the New Labour era. It came about after years of campaigning by activists and human-rights organisations. It brought together numerous existing laws such as the Equal Pay Act 1970, the Sex Discrimination Act 1975 and the Race Relations Act 1976. The new combined act offered legal protection against discrimination on the basis of nine ‘protected characteristics’, including sex, race, disability, pregnancy and religion. It also defined discrimination as direct or indirect, and specified that this could include harassment and victimisation on the basis of these characteristics.
The Equality Act represented a shift from ‘formal’ to ‘substantive’ notions of equality. In other words, it passed into law the contested notion that equality does not mean treating people identically, but is instead about accommodating differences. This legal expectation was first introduced with the Sex Discrimination Act 1975 and a similar approach was adopted in relation to race from 2000, following the inquiry into the death of Stephen Lawrence. This move from equal treatment to what is now often called ‘equity’ was then formalised by the Equality Act.