The Conservative Party has said it would scrap the legal duty requiring the public sector to promote equality if it wins the next general election. The party's leader, Kemi Badenoch, presented the move as part of a wider plan to, in her words, restore common sense to the way the state goes about its work.
The public sector equality duty is an obligation on bodies such as hospitals, schools, prison services and police forces to consider and promote equality when they make decisions. In principle, it is meant to ensure that public institutions weigh the impact of their choices on different groups before acting.
Badenoch, however, argues that in practice the duty has become fraught with difficulty. In a speech due to be delivered later today, she is expected to describe it as a minefield that exposes almost every significant public decision to legal challenge, producing outcomes she characterises as ludicrous and as a kind of madness.
The Conservative leader frames the change as a matter of restoring proportion rather than rolling back protections. The Equality Act, she argues, should serve as a shield to protect people from discrimination, not a sword used for social engineering or to attack others. It is only this part of the act that she wants to remove, and she does not propose putting anything in its place.
Not everyone accepts that the duty is the problem. The equalities regulator, the Equality and Human Rights Commission, has insisted that diversity rules do not prevent public bodies such as schools and the police from doing their jobs, pushing back against the suggestion that the obligation gets in the way of everyday decisions.
The proposal has also exposed divisions across the political spectrum. Reform UK says Badenoch does not go far enough and wants the Equality Act scrapped in its entirety, while the governing Labour Party does not appear keen to take the policy on board, leaving the Conservatives somewhat isolated in pushing the idea forward.
Some have questioned whether the announcement is connected to the wider political debate around the death of Henry Novak, but Badenoch's team says it is not, insisting the policy has been in development for many months. With opinion polls suggesting the Conservatives are unlikely to return to power soon, any such change would in any case remain some way off.