The Equality Bill and equality practitioners

Nicola Dandridge, Equality Challenge Unit,

16 July 2009

Equality Challenge Unit

• ECU promotes equality and diversity for staff and students in higher education institutions in the UK

• Implications of the Bill

• Implications of the public sector duty

• Ongoing consultation on the specific duties

• Feedback and issues raised by the sector: positive and negative

The Equality Bill

• Purpose: harmonise and strengthen• 9 protected characteristics• Direct discrimination: association and perception• Indirect discrimination: simplified comparison• Equal pay: gender pay gap and ban on secrecy• Positive action• Socio-economic status• New public sector duty• Employment Tribunals: new powers to make

recommendations to benefit workforce

Positive action

• General clause 152: will cover students o Overcome or minimise disadvantageo Meet needso Participate in activities

• ‘Having identified its white male pupils are underperforming at maths, a school could run supplementary maths classes exclusively for them.’

• Recruitment and promotion clause 153: employers will be able to use equality characteristic as ‘tie break’ between equally qualified candidates

• What does ‘equally qualified’ mean?

Socio-economic status

• Clause 1: When making decisions of a strategic nature …[an authority must] have due regard to the desirability of exercising them in a way that is designed to reduce the inequalities of outcome which result from socio-economic disadvantage

• Only applies to bodies with strategic functions: not higher education institutions

• But positions SES within Equality Bill

Example 1: GCSE attainment at age 15 % with 5 GCSEs grade A* to C,

by ethnicity and eligibility for free school meals, 2002/03

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

Bangladeshi Indian Pakistani Asian Other Black African BlackCaribbean

Black Other Chinese Mixed White British Irish White Other Other

Ethnicity

% o

f p

up

ils a

chie

vin

g 5

GC

SE

s g

rad

es A

* to

C

Free School Meals

Non Free School Meals

Source: LSC/ DFES

Public sector duty: clause 143

• Extends to all equality characteristics

• Requires due regard to the need too Eliminate discriminationo Advance equality of opportunity (remove or minimise

disadvantage; meet different needs; encourage participation in public life)

o Foster good relations (tackle prejudice; promote understanding)

• Ongoing consultation on specific duties

Consultation on specific duties: feedback

• Overall positive response to proposals• Concern about implicit hierarchy of equality

characteristics (clauses 4.29 and 5.17 – data and reporting to relate to gender pay gap and race and disability employment rates)

• Concerns that requirement for data and reporting relates solely to staff not students

• Moving away from impact assessments being mandatory: what does this mean in practice?

• Need for guidance on procurement• Responses by 30 September 2009

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