In June 2008 the Government Equalities Office published ‘Framework for a Fairer Future – The Equality Bill’, outlining further details of the content of the proposed Equality Bill.

Follow the links in the right hand bar to the TUC briefing document and others. A short sumamry of the Bill content is included below - the actual Bill has not yet been published.

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The bill will consolidate the current discrimination legislation into one Act, and the Government has indicated that it will be written in ‘plain English’ to increase understanding of the rights and responsibilities it creates. The bill will also:

extend positive action so that employers can take under-representation into account when selecting between two equally qualified candidates;

outlaw pay secrecy clauses in employment contracts and make it unlawful to prevent employees from discussing their pay, in an attempt to reduce the gender pay gap;

introduce wider powers for employment tribunals to make recommendations in discrimination claims, so that recommendations can apply to the whole workforce and not just the successful claimant;

create a single equality duty on public sector employers. This will include duties in relation to gender reassignment, age, sexual orientation and religion or belief, in addition to the current duties in respect of race, disability and gender; and

outlaw age discrimination in the provision of goods and services.

There will be a push for greater transparency involving the publication of equality statistics such as gender pay gap, % BME staff and % disabled staff. The document discusses continued support for equality reps but does not mention statutory rights.

A further paper will be published during July setting out additional detail on the bill’s content, as well as giving the Government’s response to last year’s consultation on detailed proposals for consolidating existing discrimination legislation into one Act.

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