The Equality Act epitomises Westminster's mindless Utopianism

Telegraph

19 hours ago

It is impossible to calculate the total financial cost of the Equality Act to the taxpayer.
The 2010 legislation requires all public sector bodies — as well as any organisation in receipt of public funds or carrying out a public function — to integrate equality and anti-discrimination considerations into their operations. The costs are therefore diffused across budgets in the form, for example, of Diversity Equality and Inclusion (DEI) roles, equality impact assessments and legal costs.
Reform UK has claimed that abolishing DEI schemes across Government would save an estimated £7 billion a year, which is about a billion pounds short of our annual budget for national roads. Research carried out by the TaxPayers' Alliance last year revealed spending on DEI roles in local authorities rose from just over £12m in 2020-21 to almost £23m in 2022-23.
It was the Equality Act under which Birmingham City Council was taken to court by its employees claiming unequal pay. The £1.35 billion incurred by the Council as a result has contributed towards its bankruptcy. While previously the case might have been decided based on the courts' interpretation of 'equivalent work', the 2010 Act has introduced the additional consideration of work 'of equal value'.
The financial costs are therefore clearly enormous. But to what end are taxpayers shouldering them? What impact has the legacy of Harriet Harman had on our workplace, and by extension, our society?
The Equality Act Isn't Working is the title of a report launched this month by the campaign group Don't Divide Us. With the help of a dossier of audited records from over 5,000 Employment Tribunal cases, the report concludes that the Equality Act is, in fact, 'not fit for its stated purpose' and 'should be reviewed immediately and repealed eventually'.
The Act, claim the authors of the report Dr Alka Sehgal Cuthbert and Dr Anna Loutfi, contains 'profound contradictions in respect of the protected characteristic of race that render its provisions largely unworkable in real life.'
From authoritarian overreach, effectively awarding 'the state carte blanche to regulate all social relationships' in its legally ordained quest for advancing equality or eliminating discrimination to 'legitimising principles of racial thinking and segregation', the Act in practice contradicts principles of equality as commonly understood, that 'we stand as equal individuals subject to a universal law'.
The report captures the muddled thinking behind the Act in one devastating sentence: 'While the Equality Act ostensibly proscribes discrimination on the basis of ethnic group identity, it tacitly prescribes that the law identify us all in terms of ethnic group identity.'
This has introduced a specific brand of toxicity into our lives, by causing a 'breakdown of informal civility in the workplace' where 'discontent and complaints are being increasingly experienced, and presented, as problems of racism'.
This is borne out by the findings of the report, which reveal that out of the 5,523 cases which have included race-based discrimination jurisdictions between 2017 and 2024, only 281 or 5 percent of race discrimination claims have been upheld in employment courts.
Some of the unsuccessful claims, given the opportunity, may well have been resolved through traditional mediating channels between colleagues, with perhaps a greater chance of salvaging a workplace relationship following a dispute without the stress and the unpleasantness of being embroiled in a lengthy legal process.
Published in the same month as the 25th anniversary of the Equality Act receiving Royal Assent, this report provides a long overdue audit of a piece of legislation which epitomises Westminster's mindless Utopianism.