The House | “The Consensus Is Being Challenged”: Inside Reform’s Plans To Scrap The Equality Act

Suella Braverman (PA Images/Alamy)

10 min read29 min

In February 2018, a junior minister in Theresa May’s government stood up in Parliament to make one thing very clear: post-Brexit Britain would not be a place in which rights and equality laws are rowed back on.

Citing the UK’s “proud record, history and tradition” of “supporting workers, protecting civil liberties and championing human rights”, then-Brexit minister Suella Braverman proudly declared: “Our gender pay gap reporting requirements and our public sector equality duty are world-leading initiatives that go beyond EU law in many ways”.

Braverman was referring to measures enshrined in the 2010 Equality Act – a statute that, eight years later and in a new party, she is now determined to abolish.

Until relatively recently, the Equality Act was not a controversial piece of legislation, and no major political party was proposing changes to it.

“Originally, the Tories resisted it, but then the consensus grew – with [David] Cameron and with Theresa May… about the role of the state in promoting equality,” says Baroness Harman, the architect of the legislation. “There were arguments about how that should be done, but there was a consensus that it should be done.”

When Braverman, now Reform UK’s equalities spokesperson, announced in February that Reform would scrap the Equality Act if it won the next general election, she was re-committing the party to a policy that had already featured in its 2024 manifesto. Removing the legislation, she said, would allow Reform to “build a country defined by meritocracy, not tokenism” and “personal responsibility, not victimhood”.

In June, the Conservatives then set out their own stall on the issue by promising to ditch the Equality Act’s public sector equality duty. The duty requires public bodies to have “due regard” to the legislation’s overarching aims of eliminating unlawful discrimination, advancing equality of opportunity and “fostering good relations” between groups of people with or without different protected characteristics.

Braverman said this “half-baked and half-hearted attempt to copy Reform” was “embarrassing”, but shadow equalities minister Claire Coutinho counters that Reform’s plan would backfire.

“White men have successfully fought discrimination claims under the Equality Act because it protects everyone on the basis of race and sex, not just ethnic minorities and women,” she tells The House. “They would lose this protection under the plans Reform has announced, as would disabled people.”

Coutinho continues: “Reform’s plan would also make positive discrimination and race quotas in the workplace legal. We want to maintain protections against genuine discrimination whilst getting rid of the grievance culture which says minority groups are worthy of special treatment.”

But she confirms that other parts of the Equality Act would also be amended by the Conservatives, as party leader Kemi Badenoch has said removing the duty would only be the start of a wider “overhaul”.

“People should be judged on merit, protected from discrimination and abuse, and free to live their lives with everyone equal under the law,” Coutinho says. “There are other elements of the Equality Act, such as positive action and ‘work of equal value’ pay claims, which are social engineering in a way that undermines those principles.

“We will be rooting out anything that is incompatible with our values, but that doesn’t mean just binning the entire act without properly understanding what’s in it. Just to get a political headline, Reform was willing not just to throw out the baby with the bathwater but pregnant women, new mums and disabled people as well.”

It is a line of attack that Reform is clearly conscious of the need to counter. To replace the Equality Act, the party has pledged to introduce a Workplace Fairness Act that will treat people “as individuals”.

The Equality Act consolidated more than 116 pieces of pre-existing equalities legislation into one statute and Braverman has said that “much of what was valuable” in it stems from those earlier laws.

The Workplace Fairness Act, therefore, would re-consolidate the pre-2010 legislation into a new statute – including, Reform says, protections which apply “both inside and outside the workplace”, despite the proposed legislation’s name. But it will not carry over provisions like positive action or the public sector equality duty.

Braverman has pledged to repeal the Equality Act on “day one” of a Reform government and the party says its Workplace Fairness Act would be implemented on the same day. “The repealing and replacement legislation will be in the same act,” a Reform spokesperson tells The House.

One source familiar with Reform’s political operation says the policy is not so much about broadening the party’s appeal with new voters as it is about firing up its base and the commentariat. It also stems from a concern within the party that the Equality Act could prove an obstacle to parts of its agenda in government.

“The second-order issue is, of course, that the Equality Act can be used to frustrate a whole lot of legislation Reform would want to bring in,” the source says, pointing to the party’s plans to ban foreigners from accessing social housing as an example of a policy that could be challenged under the current equalities framework.

“The big issue for Reform is making it clear – particularly to female voters, where they’re aware they have a weakness – that getting rid of the Equality Act doesn’t therefore mean they want women to go back to the kitchen, or that they’re going to dump maternity rights.” The insider believes Reform has “not successfully communicated that”.

“The genius of the Equality Act is that the branding’s very good. Most people in the modern world are in favour of equality. But, on the other hand, what it creates by [introducing] special categories [of people] is a whole lot of inequality,” they add.

Earlier this month, Reform announced plans for a Women and Motherhood Protection Act, which will consolidate the pre-2010 legislation pertaining to women’s rights, while also building on them, they say – such as by increasing the time limit for pregnancy and maternity discrimination claims from three months to 12 months.

The Trades Union Congress criticised the proposals as “shameless and deceptive”, as Reform’s press release appeared to cast doubt on the Equality Act’s principle of equal pay for work of equal value. Reform said its changes would ensure that “genuine cases of pay discrimination” would be tackled but avoid “allowing courts and tribunals to determine the relative value of fundamentally different occupations”.

“Just to get a political headline, Reform was willing not just to throw out the baby with the bathwater but pregnant women, new mums and disabled people as well”

The Women and Motherhood Protection Act would confer “explicit breastfeeding rights” for mothers. Reform’s spokesperson clarifies for The House that, in practice, this will not necessarily mean women gaining any new rights to breastfeed. Rather, breastfeeding rights that currently exist “across employment legislation and the Equality Act will be brought together and, where necessary, made explicit or further codified”.

In the case of older people, meanwhile, regulations introduced in 2006 were limited to employment. It was only under the Equality Act that older people gained additional rights in other areas like the provision of services.

Caroline Abrahams, charity director at Age UK, tells The House that scrapping the Equality Act “would be a disaster for older people”.

“We would strongly oppose any repealing of this act, because it would legitimise age discrimination, in a way. It’s bad enough with the act – it would be a lot worse without it,” she says. “It’s totemic and it gives a signal to society that we think it’s important to respect different people’s rights.”

The 2010 legislation, she argues, has played an important role in governing how NHS treatment decisions are made, for example.

“Certainly, digital exclusion is another issue that arises here – your ability to physically access or in other ways access a service,” Abrahams adds.

“Older people already have to pay more for things like travel and motor insurance, but without the Equality Act they would have total freedom to be very discriminatory in who they sold their products to.”

Asked whether Reform intends to carry over rights that were introduced for the first time in 2010, a party spokesman replies: “We are considering what additional protections would be needed for genuinely vulnerable groups in society.”

When Disability Rights UK raised similar concerns about protections specific to the 2010 legislation being lost, in an article published by Disability News Service, Reform was adamant that no protections would be removed.

“Of course these protections won’t be scrapped and all provisions for disabled people will be kept,” a spokesperson said. “A Reform UK government will always support protections against discrimination based on disability, including in services. Neither Suella nor the party have ever made any suggestion that we will water down provisions for disabled people.”

At the same time as the Equality Act is under fire, Labour is under pressure to fulfil its manifesto pledge to expand the legislation’s reach.

Section One of the Equality Act – the socio-economic duty – has never been implemented, as Theresa May cancelled its planned enactment within months of taking office as women and equalities minister in 2010.

The duty, which requires public bodies to consider how their decisions might help reduce inequalities associated with socio-economic disadvantage, has since been implemented in Scotland and Wales – but not in England. 

In 2024, Labour promised to enact it, but Keir Starmer’s government never confirmed when this would happen.

“It was good that it was in the manifesto, but we should have done it straight away,” Harman, who was appointed as Starmer’s adviser on women and girls in May, tells The House.

“I’m a bit frustrated that two years in, we haven’t set a time for implementing it,” Harman says – not least, she adds, because when she was in government in 2010, working on the Equality Act with the then-chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission Trevor Phillips, they drew up draft guidance for implementing the duty. “We were ready to go but we lost power. So, that guidance is still there and still ready.”

With the Equality Act’s principles being more politically contested than ever before, she urges: “It’s important for the government to recognise that that consensus is being challenged, and they need to remind everybody why it’s the right thing for this country to be done – and get on with the socio-economic duty.”

Labour says it remains “proud” of the Equality Act and will “robustly” defend it in government.

“It’s fair to say we will be talking more about the importance of it and defending the core principles of it,” says one party source, speaking prior to Starmer’s resignation announcement, “but where it’s challenged, we’ve pushed back pretty firmly.”

When it comes to implementing the socio-economic duty, they admit that the legislative timing is ultimately “a decision of the centre”, though they insist it will be delivered.

In answer to a written question in April, equalities minister Baroness Smith said: “We are currently working toward commencement of the duty, which includes drafting statutory guidance that will clarify how the duty can be applied effectively. As part of this process, we are working with listed public bodies to ensure the guidance supports them effectively.”