Member Article

Single Equalities Bill

A model that fits into the big picture

Samantha Latif, Director at Equality and Diversity Services Limited, offers advice around the Single Equalities Bill.

This year is proving to be an exciting time for organisations and Equality and Diversity Practitioners, with new opportunities opening up. Firstly the Single Equalities Bill has been announced in April which will have a package of measures to tackle multi-strand problems.

By radically streamlining and strengthening current equality legislation, the bill will give an opportunity for organisations to incorporate all the equality strands into their overall business strategy and culture and build in a standardised approach.

The new Single Equality Duty on the Public Sector will give a fairer and more responsive public service, promoting the ideas of cohesion and learning from others. It covers the already established equality legislation strands: race, disability and gender; but also age, sexual orientation, religion/belief and gender reassignment. This Bill is more pragmatic, workable, permissive and enabling as well as setting basic standards. This initiative can help the public sector to achieve their equality and diversity strategies and should be considered as part of an overall package for the best results. There is a risk that an equality scheme can end up with organisations not looking at it.

In line with the European Directive this country will now see an end to Age Discrimination in goods, facilities and services. It is already banned in workplaces but there is evidence of problems elsewhere such as health, social care and financial services. There will be a ban on unjustifiable discrimination.

The public sector is not harmonised on reporting and transparency. We cannot tackle inequality if it is hidden - an organisation needs to reflect the diversity of its workforce, and constantly deliver against its aims. Pivotal to the success of this is a thorough understanding of your employee base, a commitment to narrowing the gender pay gap and BME/disability employment gaps.

Positive action will open up opportunities by extending possibilities. Giving more equal political representation, women only shortlists, speakers’ conferences and councillors’ taskforces will improve the diversity of public appointments and tackle the root causes behind unfair representation.

So how will this all work? By strengthening enforcement and regulation. By enabling effective enforcement of the duty we should see a reduction in the amount of bureaucracy involved in conforming to equality law. There will be a raft of measures to help: recommendations for employment tribunals, more support for equality representatives, closer assessment of representative actions and better quality guidance through the encouragement of successful everyday practice.

This is longed-for news to those of us who choose to change things at a grassroots level rather than ticking relevant boxes on forms. This is a time of extensive change in the law and for the 60 million people in the UK this means fairer workplaces.

If you would like more information on how the Single Equalities Bill will affect your organisation please contact us at www.equalitydiversityservices.co.uk.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by BookingLive .