15 Comments

• Andrew Tennant 24th May '11 - 10:53pm

  The Act has created massive headaches for the government though – see the government being taken to court for cuts ‘disproportionately affecting women’. How do you make any change to anything without some people being affected differently to others? How do you make a judgement call without discrimination? How trivial need a matter be before you can dispense with the need for a equality impact assessment?

  You can support the aims of the act and still say that it is overly burdensome, poorly drafted and substantially unworkable. We shouldn’t let Labour’s crys of ‘wolf’ stop us from improving their shoddy regulation.

• Richard 24th May '11 - 11:08pm

  I am surprised to see the Lib Dems defending an Act containing what is known as “socialism in One Clause”.

• Chris Jenkinson 25th May '11 - 1:18am

  Which clause would that be Richard?

• jedibeeftrix 25th May '11 - 7:48am

  shame, this poorly drafted travesty was harriets present tol the coalition, and here i thought land-mines were banned ordinance!

• Ian James 25th May '11 - 9:15am

  The act was needed.
  The coalition are welcome to improve on the provisions contained within the act but for it to be included in a review where the option is not to amend and improve the working of the act but rather have the default position that it should be repealed is a betrayal of those who are disabled, those who are from different ethnic minorities and those who are not heterosexual.

• g 25th May '11 - 9:22am

  Clegg hasn’t ruled out changing the Equality Act, nor did he say that the Coalition wouldn’t. All we can infer is that he, Nick Clegg, thinks that equality legislation won’t be undermined. It’s personal opinion, nothing more. Disingenuous to imply otherwise.

  Oh, and looks like abortion rights are under attack…
  http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/may/24/abortion-sexual-health-coalition

  @Andrew Tennant
  How do you make any change to anything without some people being affected differently to others?

  The point of equalities legislation was to discourage discrimination against groups based on innate attributes such as their gender, sexuality or ethnicity. Not based on their income, employment, location or other non-innate attribute.

  Legislation which negatively impacts on somebody because of an innate characteristic, something they cannot conceivably change, is unfair and illiberal and it would be shocking if government watered down equalities legislation to permit this..

• Henry 25th May '11 - 10:14am

  ‘Clegg hasn’t ruled out changing the Equality Act’, technically and semantically correct ‘g’. But that is all.

  @Andrew Tennant – I understand what you’re saying, but the Government is not being taken to court for cuts disproportionately affecting women. It is because they did not even assess whether or not this is the case. You have mis-understood the Act if you think it stops anyone making changes, it just requires local authorities, central government and other bodies to at least be aware of the impact they could be having.

  What I love, most of all, is that only two tories voted for the Equality Act – Ken Clarke (aside from his recent mis-speaking, the most liberal justice minister in at least 20 yrs), and John Bercow.

• Andrew Tennant 25th May '11 - 12:58pm

  @Henry

  And what if it did? Would that be acceptable if they knew about it?

  If not, what measures disproportionately affecting men would to add or use to replace those disproportionately affecting women?

  Is the aim of the exercise to cut spending or to give the same experience to everyone? Is it preferable to cause least harm, most accurately target waste, or to make sure two arbitrary sides of an equation are appropriately in balance?

• Henry 25th May '11 - 1:34pm

  @Andrew – well, the point I was making was that the massive headache was probably the Government’s fault rather than the Act, and yes, I think policy making in full possession of the facts is better than not 🙂

• Alec Macph 25th May '11 - 1:34pm

  Unless the Act remains unaltered, Clegg will have arguably failed in his stated objective. Plus, as Swinson’s question was impossibly vague – what is “water-down” and who defines this? – I cannot see it as anything other than a polyfiller-type question to stroke Clegg’s ego.

  ~alec

• Andrew Tennant 25th May '11 - 3:45pm

  @Henry
  The point is, rather than simply deciding the government didn’t comply with the act, it would make sense to decide if compliance is desirable or indeed possible.

  Is equality a government’s sole priority? If not we must ask whether this prevents higher priorities from being achieved.

• g 25th May '11 - 4:51pm

  @Andrew Tennant

  Is equality a government’s sole priority? If not we must ask whether this prevents higher priorities from being achieved.

  What, in your opinion, are higher priorities than ensuring that people are not unduly discriminated against as a result of government policy?

• Andrew Tennant 25th May '11 - 5:24pm

  @g
  Define unduly; or alternatively, any desirable discrimination. Higher taxes on higher earners for instance?

  It seems to me quite obvious that remaining a viable state e.g. not being insolvent would take precidence over making sure that the highest earners should keep their child benefit?

• Ruth Bright 25th May '11 - 7:03pm

  Poor old Coalition having to summon its collective genius to work out that abolishing Pregnancy Grants disproportionately affects women.

• Henry 25th May '11 - 9:37pm

  @Andrew – your second point, namely that equality is Government’s sole priority was not at all what I was implying. I am a Lib Dem. So there are plenty of bigger priorities! I didn’t realise we were trying to pick the sole one.

  I see the point in your first paragraph, but I think as it stands the EA it is best not to leave the judgment about appropriateness to the body that is having to make that assessment… Thus I think it is right that it is not up to the government to choose whether to consider – when spending its money – the impact on all individuals. [If I were trying to spin it, I would say that this might be an impact on their liberty, which of course should ideally be equally dished out – to everyone.]