The Equality Act

The Equality Act is the most significant piece of legislation to be introduced for many years. It is there to strengthen protection, advance equality and simplify the law. The main provisions of interest to local government are:

• the introduction of new strategic socio-economic duty to reduce socio-economic inequalities
• a new public equality duty that will extend the public duties to age, sexual orientation, religion or belief, or transgender status
• clarification that procurement can be used to drive equality
• extending anti-age discrimination rules to include goods, facilities and services, stopping people being unfairly refused insurance or medical treatments based on their age, for example.

Age discrimination provisions do not come into force until 2012 for the private sector and later for health and social care. Chief executives of the South West Strategic Health Authority and Bristol City Council are leading a review on practical action to tackle discrimination in health and social care.

In addition, there is order making power for the private sector in relation to employers with 250 or more employees, requiring publication of their gender pay gap. The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) is there to develop metrics for gender pay reporting with businesses and unions.

There is also order making power for public sector bodies with more than 150 employees. This will require public authorities to report on their gender pay gap, ethnicity employment rate and disability employment rate.

Secrecy clauses on pay are banned.

Positive action to allow employers to select candidates from under-represented groups is also provided. Where there is a choice between two or more equally-qualified candidates, provisions make it clear that positive action can be used in service delivery.

Employment tribunals will have powers to make recommendations in discrimination cases which benefit the whole workforce.

Useful links: where to find out more

More information about the Equality Act – on the Government Equalities Office (GEO) website

Framework for a Fairer Future: The Equality Bill (PDF, 40 pages, 1MB large file) – on the GEO website

The Equality Bill Factsheet (PDF, 4 pages, 41KB) – on the GEO website

The EHRC’s response to the Equality Act – on the EHRC’s website

Employment law implications – on the Local Government Employees (LGE) website

Page published June 2010.