Equality Bill passed by Parliament

The Equality Bill has been passed and will now go for Royal Assent to become the Equality Act 2010.  It is intended to harmonise, simplify and extend discimination law, and address recent case law which is generally seen to have weakened discrimination protection.

Key areas:

• Provides powers to extend age discrimination protection outside the workplace
• Clarifies protection against discrimination by association, for example in relation to a mother who cares for her disabled child
• Extends protection from discrimination on the grounds of gender reassignment to school pupils
• Extends discrimination protection in the terms of membership and benefits for private clubs and associations
• Creates a unified public sector duty, intended to promote equality in public policy and decision-making, existing provisions being extended to the protected characteristics of sexual orientation, age and religion or belief, and proposes a new public sector duty related to socio-economic inequalities
• Provides for legislation requiring that employers review gender pay differences within their organisations and publish the results
• Provides for changes to the way that individual claims are enforced, and gives employment tribunals wider powers to make recommendations for the collective benefit of employees
• Allows a Minister to amend UK equality legislation to comply with European law without the need for primary legislation
• Extends the period for which all-women shortlists may be used for parliamentary and other elections until 2030 and allows parties to reserve places on shortlists of candidates for people on the grounds of race or disability.

There may be changes after the election on May 6th, but the expected timetable is:

October 2010, main provisions in force

April 2011, Integrated public sector Equality Duty, socio-economic Duty and dual discrimination protection to be in force

2012, age discrimination ban in provision of goods, facilities, services and public functions

2013, private and voluntary sectors gender pay transparency regulations expected if existing actions considered insufficient.