Section 149 of the Equality Act 2010 imposes a General Duty on public bodies, in the exercise of their functions, to have ‘due regard’ to the need to:
§ eliminate unlawful discrimination, harassment and victimisation;
§ advance equality of opportunity between different groups; and
§ foster good relations between different groups
Section 153 of the Act permits Ministers to impose ‘Specific duties’. The current consultation is about what specific duties should be imposed on English public bodies and those that undertake functions which have not been devolved. The Scottish & Welsh government will undertake their own consultations, so it is possible that three different approaches will be implemented. The Coalition’s proposals represent a significant watering down of the previous government’s plans, which had been consulted about in 2009 and outlined in January 2010. Now public bodies will essentially only have to publish data and information about:
§ The equality goals they are seeking to achieve – there will no centrally imposed goals
§ How well they are meeting these goals in relation to their services and workforce
The Equality & Human Rights Commission will set some standards for data formats and for what are called ‘standard requirements’ for particular types of public body, to allow comparison across similar bodies.
Gone are: any mandatory specific duties on Procurement processes and practices; any centrally defined priorities; any need to produce/publish action plans; a specific ‘disability reporting’ requirement on particular Secretaries of State; any duty to produce what was known as an ‘Equality Scheme’; any external assessment of public bodies.
The consultation runs to November 10th – the plan is to implement the new regulations as from April 2011. See the full document http://www.equalities.gov.uk/pdf/402461_GEO_EqualityAct2010ThePublicSectorEqualityDuty_acc.pdf
