Latest Legal News - Equality Bill (July 2009)

The Equality Bill was published in late April to mixed reviews from the media, NGOs and trade unions. Its objective is to combine all existing legislation on discrimination into one single statue, an ambitious aim on any view. Inevitably is it of considerable length and not for the faint hearted. It is likely to evolve signiticantly during consultation before it reaches the statute book.

It is however clear that the legislation will have significant impact for employees, workers and employers over the next few years. Some interesting inclusions cover:

• allowing positive discrimination during recruitment so that disadvantaged groups may be preferred where candidates are equally qualified;
• allowing people to bring claims under several heads of discrimination whereas you can only currently bring a claim under one head;
• preventing secrecy clauses in employment contracts regards remuneration packages; and
• allowing the Secretary of State to order the transparency of pay between women and men in businesses of over 250 employees.

Positive discrimination has been an inflammatory phase for a number of years. The purpose of its insertion into the Bill is to enable employers to appoint under-represented and have a fully diverse work place. The problem that we may face however is that those candidates who are adversely subjected to positively discrimination may bring a discrimination claim against the employer. The tribunals will have to keep the floodgates tight here to ensure that employers are only positively discriminating where the candidates are equally qualified; they must ensure that under-represented groups are not jumping the queue where others are better qualified.

Clearly one of the most widely talked about provisions is regards the new power for the Secretary of State to order businesses to publish information about disparities in pay between men and women. The Government indicated that this will not be in force for another 4 years in orde to allow larger businesses to ger their houses in order. The Guardian's Hilary Osbourne notes that "the government claims that unless action is taken it will take until 2085 to close the gender gap entirely". This proposal appears to be a step in the right direction.

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