Legal equality duty for public services should be scrapped, says Badenoch

Rules requiring public bodies such as schools and hospitals to promote equality when making decisions should be scrapped, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch will say in a speech on Tuesday.

In what the party says is the first step in a wider programme to "restore common sense", Badenoch will argue that the Public Sector Equality Duty has been used to promote "dangerous and divisive agendas".

She will say it has "become a minefield that exposes almost every significant public decision to legal challenge".

The Labour government, meanwhile, is promising a new equality and diversity strategy with a primary focus on getting working class people joining and progressing in the civil service.

Badenoch's speech comes after the murder of Henry Nowak and the police's response fuelled questions about equality policies and laws.

The Conservatives are trying to forge a distinct response from both Labour, who have strengthened equality protections, and Reform UK, who want to go further than the Tories and scrap the Equality Act altogether.

The Public Sector Equality Duty, which applies in England, Scotland and Wales, requires public bodies and bodies carrying out public functions to eliminate unlawful discrimination.

It also states that public authorities should "advance equality of opportunity between people who share and people who do not share a relevant protected characteristic".

Protected characteristics include age, disability, race, pregnancy, sex and sexual orientation.

Government guidance says the duty should "always be applied in a proportionate way" depending on the circumstances of the case and that organisations should avoid an "overly bureaucratic and burdensome approach".

The duty was introduced in 2010 as part of the Equality Act which merged previous anti-discrimination laws such as the Equal Pay Act and the Disability Discrimination Act.

Since its introduction, organisations and individuals have been able to take public bodies to court for failing to abide by the duty.

In 2011, the High Court ruled that Somerset and Gloucestershire County Councils had not complied with the duty when they sought to withdraw funding for more than 20 libraries.

A year later, a court ruled that Devon County Council had failed to meet its duty when setting the fees it pays to private care homes.

A group of around 100 care home owners argued that the fees did not cover their costs and took legal action against on the grounds that the council had not fully considered the impact on vulnerable residents.

In 2020, the Equalities and Human Rights Commission concluded that the Home Office had not complied with the duty in relation to how its "hostile environment'" policies would impact members of the Windrush generation.

Ahead of the speech, the Conservatives argued that the duty was the "legal foundation that has allowed identity politics, DEI [Diversity, Equality and Inclusion] bureaucracy and ideological box-ticking to spread across public services".

The party argued the duty had led to the Bank of England taking Winston Churchill off bank notes and produced police training that advised officers not to treat people the same way.

In her speech, Badenoch is expected to say: "We are going to scrap this duty altogether. We do not need to replace it. We need to explain to people that they should do their jobs."

A spokesman for the Equality and Human Rights Commission said: "The purpose of the Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED) is to make sure public authorities think about how they promote equality throughout their day-to-day business.

"The PSED is not a barrier to these organisations doing the job the public expects them to do.

"It's there to help them make good decisions, based on an understanding of the impact those decisions have on everyone that they affect."

Reform UK said Badenoch's suggestion was "classic Conservative politics: too little, too late, and nowhere near enough".

Liberal Democrat Women and Equalities Spokesperson, Marie Goldman MP, said the speech was "a desperate attempt to fan the flames of culture war politics from a Conservative party completely out of ideas".

She said: "Instead of exploiting division, the Conservatives should focus on coming up with ideas to fix an NHS and economy that they left in tatters."

Details of the Labour government's new strategy are expected to be published shortly, but the government said it would place a "major, explicit emphasis on socio-economic background as a primary driver of unequal opportunity".

A government press release said the strategy would aim to address an "over-representation of people from more well-off backgrounds" in the civil service.

It also said it would try to ensure that "people from working class and regional backgrounds do not feel they need to alter their behaviour, accents or language to fit in with the civil service".