Campaigns
Key equality gains under threat, April 2011
The Government has recently made a number of announcements, each of which is a serious threat to equality, and to our recently hard-won freedoms.
--- Updated, 27 April ---
1. Protect the Equality Act!
The Government is consulting about whether the Equality Act 2010 should be repealed or revised.
Incredibly, the Government appear to think the Equality Act is just a matter of so-called "red tape", and only affects businesses and the commercial sector! In fact the Act underpins all the individual freedoms that LGB and Trans people have been fighting for over the last hundred years.
Please have a look at the consultation page on the Cabinet Office website, and make your voice heard. (There's a feedback form.) Tell the Government that this has nothing to do with any so-called "red tape". The protections in the Equality Act are vital, and the social costs of watering down the Act would be appalling. Basic equality, and fundamental freedoms, are at stake.
2. Protection from Dual Discrimination!
In another incomprehensible move, the Government has decided to abolish the new Protection from Dual Discrimination, before it has even come into force (!). Without this protection, businesses and other employers will continue to escape scot-free from the most serious and complex discrimination claims. For instance, where a woman is being discriminated against in the workplace for a combination of being a woman and being lesbian or Asian, or being African-Caribbean and having a visual impairment or mental health issue.
The Government's decision was made almost silently, behind the scenes. (You will find it tucked away in the middle of a sentence on page 7 of a Treasury document called "A Plan for Growth", March 2011.) It seems designed solely for the purpose of protecting the worst employers from having to treat their most vulnerable staff as real human beings. The Government is not even bothering to consult the public about this! — so to make your voice heard, please write direct to:
- the Government Equalities Office (enquiries@geo.gsi.gov.uk) and
- the Secretary of State for Business, (enquiry.enquiry@bis.gsi.gov.uk); include the words "Attn: Rt Hon. Vince Cable" in the subject.
If you can possibly find a moment, do urge the Government to rethink, and to implement this badly-needed protection for some of the most vulnerable people in the UK.
And finally, many of you have already joined the campaign to...
3. Save the Specific Equality Duties!
The Government only allowed a worryingly short public consultation period on this proposal: the consultation period closed on Thursday, 21 April. You can click here to read the response that Intercom sent to the Government about this.
"Save the public sector Specific Equality Duties" doesn't sound like a great rallying cry, but it's critical to us all. The Government's proposal would remove our best hope of ever being able to hold public services to account. ("Public services" include local government, the police, the CPS, the NHS, the Benefits Agency, etc.)We would have none of the key information that would make it possible for us to scrutinise prejudiced / ignorant / discriminatory decisions.
Without the Specific Public Equality Duties, we will all be the losers: not only ourselves and our families and friends, but also public services themselves. The public services need us to be able to work with them, and scrutinise their work, and challenge the process by which they have made a stupid or dangerous decision.
Between us, we can make change happen.
Make your voice heard!