All things being equal - July 08
On 26 June 2008 the government issued its white paper setting out details of the planned Equalities Bill. The purpose of the Bill is to bring all current discrimination law together under one simplified Act.
As well as “de-cluttering” the law, the Bill, if implemented as proposed, will make the following important changes:-
• Equality duty on public bodies – the Bill will remove the race, disability and gender duties currently imposed on public bodies and replace them with one Equality Duty which will also include gender reassignment, age, sexual orientation and religion or belief. The duty will mean public bodies must consider how their policies, programmes and services affect different factions of their communities.
• Age discrimination – the Bill will make it illegal for providers of goods, facilities, services and those carrying out a public function to discriminate against over-18s based on their age. Much discrimination is suffered by older people and, with the population of over-85s set to double in the next twenty years, the aim is to stop such discrimination from taking place.
• Transparency – in order to diminish the gender pay gap and the ethnic minority and disability employment gaps the government proposes to increase transparency so that areas where improvement is needed are more easily seen and thus more easily tackled. Proposals to aid this include a ban on secrecy clauses which prevent employees discussing their salary, publication of clear information by public bodies and working with the Equality and Human Rights Commission to improve equality practice.
• Positive discrimination – where an employer is faced with two or more equally qualified candidates, they will be permitted to discriminate positively. This means they will be able to justifiably choose a woman or someone from an ethnic minority group over other candidates where their aim is to redress an imbalance within their workforce.
• Strengthened enforcement – the government recognises that simply establishing these rights is not enough, there needs to be sufficient support to enforce them. To ensure this support exists it is proposed that, among other things, the Bill will give additional powers to the employment tribunals whereby they can make recommendations in discrimination cases to benefit the wider workforce.
The draft Bill is currently being prepared with a view to introducing it at the next parliamentary session and it is therefore not yet known how the government will action the implementation of the above proposals. However, they will need to consider not only how these changes can be implemented into domestic law but also how it can fall in line with EU law.
For more information on this subject, please contact Rickerbys' Employment team on 01242 224422.
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