The WNC Position Paper and Briefing on the Equality Bill is now available to view. This paper informs WNC partners about the Bill and about the WNC position so far, taken after discussion amongst WNC Commissioners and some of our partner organisations.  Thank you to all our partners who contributed to this document, your collective voices are informing this important debate.  
 

For more information on the content of the Bill please click here.

The Equality Bill was published on Monday 27 April.

The Bill aims to replace nine major pieces of legislation and around 100 statutory instruments into one single Act. It will include measures to fight discrimination on the gender pay gap where women still earn on average 22.6% less than men: it will introduce a new public sector duty to consider reducing socio-economic inequalities: place a new Equality duty on public bodies, replacing the three existing duties on gender, race and disability; use public procurement to improve equality, ban age discrimination form the workplace; introduce gender pay reports; extend the scope to use positive action; strengthen the powers of employment tribunals; protect carers from discrimination, protect breastfeeding mothers, ban discrimination in private clubs; and strengthen protection from discrimination for disabled people.

The full text, including explanatory notes, is available via the parliamentary website.  Information about the stages the bill will go through is available here.

Also published on 27th April was the Government Equalities Office publication ‘A Fairer Future: The Equality Bill and other action to make equality a reality’. This guide to the Equalities Bill outlines the measures in the Equalities Bill and where it will apply.

Progress of the Equality Bill

The First Reading of the Equality Bill in the House of Commons was on 24 April 2009 and Second Reading followed on 11 May.  WNC gave evidence to the Public Bill Committee on 2 June.  The Committee considered amendments to the Bill from 2 June to 7 July.

The Equality Bill successfully passed through the report stage and final reading in the House of Commons and entered the House of Lords on the 3rd December. First reading took place on the 4th December; this stage is a formality that signals the start of the Bill’s journey through the Lords. Second reading, which is when the general debate on all aspects of the Equality Bill will take place, is scheduled for the 15th December.

We would therefore expect Royal Assent to be in March or April 2010, unless prevented by a general election.  It is expected that if this timetable is followed, the majority of the Act would come into force by autumn 2010, with other parts of the Act such as the socio-economic duty on public bodies and the public sector equality duty coming into force by spring 2011.


WNC Commissioners’ Equalities Bill Group

The WNC Commissioners’ Equalities Bill Group meet regularly to discuss the Bill and the WNC also held a Ministerial round table with the Equalities Bill Minister, Vera Baird on 14 May 2009 to consider and discuss key concerns along with GEO officials and key stakeholders.

A letter was sent to Ministers for Women Harriet Harman and Maria Eagle and Bill lead Minister Vera Baird on 5 March, setting out WNC’s welcoming of the Bill and the opportunity for debate it presented. The letter explored ways forward, highlighted any areas of concern, and gave examples of good practice particularly from the Northern Ireland experience. It is available here.

If you have any views on the Equalities Bill you would like us to know about or to pass on, please let us know by E mail on This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

On 26 June 2008 the Government published 'Framework for a Fairer Future - The Equality Bill' containing key proposals for the Equality Bill. On the same day the Rt Hon Harriet Harman QC MP, Minister for Women and Equality, made a statement on the Bill to the House of Commons.

In response, in July 2008, the Equality and Human Rights Commission published 'Fairness. A new contract with the public'.

Background

The current equality legislation has become complex and difficult to use. Over the last ten years the Sex Discrimination Act 1975, Race Relations Act 1976, and Disability Discrimination Act 1995 have been expanded, and new laws have also been introduced to cover discrimination on grounds of religion or belief, sexual orientation and age.

In February 2005 the government announced the arrival of the Discrimination Law Review. The aim of the Review was to consider the opportunities for creating a more streamlined equality legislation framework.

When the Interim Report was published in 2006 the WNC prepared a response raising a number of issues which we were concerned about. A copy of our response can be downloaded here (Word 50 Kb). Amongst other areas, we were concerned about its use of an unrecognised definition of equality and the concentration on trigger events in causing inequality.  

The Review also ran alongside the Equalities Review, which published its final report, Fairness and Freedom: The Final Report of the Equalities Review on 28 February 2007. 

The Government published a green paper in June 2007, setting out its recommendations for a single equality act for Great Britain.

A year later, on 21 July 2008, the Government published their response to the discrimination law review - 'The Equality Bill – Government Response to the Consultation'. The publication gives further details of the content of the proposed Equality Bill as well as summarising the responses received to the Discrimination Law Review consultation held in 2007.

The Equality Act 2006 gained royal assent on 16 February 2006. It relates to equality law in Great Britain as a separate legislative framework exists for Northern Ireland. The Act had four main purposes:  

• to provide support to individuals experiencing discrimination or prejudice on the basis of race, gender, disability, age, religion or sexual orientation and to provide advice to business, through a single Commission for Equality and Human Rights;
• to make unlawful (subject to the exemptions of the Act) discrimination on the grounds of religion or belief in the provision of goods, facilities, services, premises, education and the exercise of public functions;
• to provide powers to outlaw discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation in the provision of goods, facilities, services, premises, education and the exercise of public functions; and
• to introduce a duty on public authorities to promote equality of opportunity between men and women (the Gender Equality Duty) and to prohibit sex discrimination in the exercise of public functions