Equality Act 2010: key changes

The Equality Act became law in October 2010.The Equality Act is a single piece of legislation replacing a multitude of anti-discrimination legislation. It replaces the following previous legislations such as:

• The Equal Pay Act 1970;
• The Sex Discrimination Act 1975
• The Race Relations Act 1976
• The Disability Discrimination Act 1995
• The Employment Equality (Religion or Belief) Regulations 2003
• The Employment Equality (Sexual Orientation) Regulations 2003
• The Disability Discrimination Act 2005
• The Employment Equality (Age) Regulations 2006
• The Equality Act 2006, Part 2
• The Equality Act (Sexual Orientation) Regulations 2007

The Act’s purpose is to strengthen the law in the progress towards equality, and, to harmonise discrimination law. It gives protection against discrimination on the grounds of:

• Age

• Disability
• Gender re-assignment
• Pregnancy and maternity
• Race
• Religion or belief
• Marriage and civil partnership
• Sex, and,
• Sexual orientation

The following provisions of the Act came into force on 1 October 2010:

• The basic framework of protection against direct and indirect discrimination, harassment and victimisation in services and public functions; premises; work; education; associations and transport.
• Changing the definition of gender re-assignment, by removing the requirement for medical supervision.
• Levelling up protection for people discriminated against because they are perceived to have or associated with someone who has a protected characteristic, so providing new protection for people like carers.
• Clearer protection for breastfeeding mothers.
• Applying the European definition of indirect discrimination to all protected characteristics.
• Extending the protection from indirect discrimination to disability.
• Introducing the new concept of “discrimination arising from disability”, to replace protection under previous legislation lost as a result of legal judgement.
• Applying the detriment model to victimisation protection (aligning with the approach in employment law).
• Harmonising the thresholds for the duty to make reasonable adjustments for disabled people.
• Extending protection from 3^rd party harassment to all protected characteristics.
• Making it more difficult for disabled people to be unfairly screened out when applying for jobs, by restricting the circumstances in which employers can ask job applicants questions about disability or health.
• Allowing claims for direct gender pay discrimination where there is no actual comparator.
• Making pay secrecy clauses unenforceable.
• Extending protection in private clubs to sex, religion or belief, pregnancy and maternity and gender reassignment.

For more information visit: Employment policies | Equal opportunities policy

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