The New Equality Bill.

The Government has published a White Paper entitled 'Framework for a Fairer Future - The Equality Bill'. The Bill is expected to be introduced in the next Parliamentary session, commencing in November 2008.

When enacted, the new law will replace nine major pieces of discrimination legislation and around 100 other measures that have been introduced over the last forty years to protect people from unfairness and discrimination on grounds of race, gender, religion, age, sexual orientation and disability. The Government's aim in consolidating the existing legislation is to make the discrimination laws simpler to use and to provide more consistent anti-discrimination legislation.

The Equality Bill contains measures to:

  • impose a new 'Equality Duty' on public bodies to tackle discrimination and promote equality for age, disability, gender, gender reassignment, race, sexual orientation and religion or belief;
  • outlaw unjustifiable age discrimination by those providing goods, facilities and services. There will be further consultation before the new legal protections from age discrimination are implemented;
  • require public bodies to provide information on pay by gender, ethnic minority and disability employment;
  • ensure that public bodies tackle discrimination and promote equality through their purchasing functions;
  • ban secrecy clauses that prevent people discussing how much they are paid;
  • introduce a new 'kite-mark' for private sector companies that demonstrate openness on equality issues; and
  • extend positive action so that employers can, when selecting between two candidates who are equally qualified, take into account groups that are underrepresented in their work force - for example women or those from ethnic minority communities.

In addition, when dealing with discrimination cases, employment tribunals will be able to make wider recommendations, which go beyond dealing with an individual claim, in order to benefit the rest of the workforce of the employer concerned.

The Government also wishes to allow discrimination claims to be brought on 'combined multiple grounds' and is exploring how best this might be achieved in practice. It will consider introducing representative actions in discrimination law so that where discrimination is systemic and a number of employees are being treated unfairly, actions can be brought by trade unions, the Commission for Equality and Human Rights and other bodies, on behalf of a group of individuals, as a single claim.

Telephone: +44 (0) 1753 486 777 (Slough Office)
Telephone: +44 (0) 1189 596031 (Reading Office)