Is the single equality project about to go critical? Charles Pigott investigates
The long-running project to draft a single Equality Act is about to reach its critical phase. The government's response to the consultation launched by the Discrimination Law Review's green paper, published last summer, is expected shortly. According to the Women and Equality Unit it has attracted around 4,000 responses. If dealing with these were not a daunting enough task, recent cases illustrate just how difficult it will be to establish and preserve consistency between the various discrimination strands.
The Scale of the Task
At present British discrimination law could be divided into four groups of measures:
- ● The Sex Discrimination Act 1975 (SDA 1975) and Race Relations Act 1976 (RRA 1976) which follow the same basic model.
- ● The Disability Discrimination Act 1995 (DDA 1995) which, although sharing some common features with its precursors, has some significant points of divergence.
- ● The regulations dealing with the three latest strands to be added to the discrimination portfolio: religion,
