Government decides against implementing socio-economic duty

The controversial socio-economic duty created under the Equality Act 2010 would have been “just another bureaucratic box to be ticked” and so will not be introduced, Home Secretary and Minister for Women and Equality Theresa May has announced.

The government said it would look into repealing the law which created the power for the Secretary of State to introduce the duty.

The duty – contained in clause one of the 2010 Act – required a relevant authority “when making decisions of a strategic nature about how to exercise its functions, [to] have due regard to the desirability of exercising them in a way that is designed to reduce the inequalities of outcome which result from socio-economic disadvantage”.

In a speech at the Coin Street Community Centre in south London yesterday, the Home Secretary said: “Equality has become a dirty word because it has come to be associated with the worst aspects of pointless political correctness and social engineering.

“Just look at the socio-economic duty. In reality, it would have been just another bureaucratic box to be ticked. It would have meant more time filling in forms and less time focusing on policies that will make a real difference to people’s life chances.

“We need to move away from this old approach and make equalities work for everyone. We need equalities policy to work with the grain of human nature, not against it. Legislation on its own is not enough. Government will no longer dictate how people should behave. Instead we will put in place an architecture to support business and wider society to do the right thing.”

The government said its approach meant it would not issue top-down targets, but instead encourage greater transparency so that the public have the power to hold organisations to account.

“Instead of trying to engineer equal outcomes for all, the government will, in line with its commitment to fairness, seek to create a level playing field where everyone has equal access to opportunity,” the Government Equalities Office said.