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Tees Valley News You Can Use

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Equality Act Implementation                                                                                                     21 June 2010

    

The Government Equality Office (GEO) has on 18th June withdrawn the timetable that detailed when and which parts of the  Equality Act would come into force. Some elements were due to come into force in October 2010. The GEO had published a timetable online but that has been withdrawn. A GEO spokeswoman said that the withdrawal was due to the recent change in government and that the new government had yet to finalise its own legislative timetable. “An announcement on scheduling for implementation of the Equality Act will be made in due course," said the spokeswoman, who confirmed that the new government is not bound by the timetable set by its predecessor.

Experts say

  • the government may end up not implementing many of the Act's provisions.
  • they are unlikely  to repeal the law. They will just implement the parts of the Act they like and not the parts they don't. Elements of the Act might just sit on the statute book awaiting another change of Government.
  • Three parts of the Act were highlighted by the Conservatives in the run up to the recent election as being elements they would not introduce.The first is a provision that when hiring, companies could discriminate in favour of people from under-represented groups such as women, ethnic minorities or disabled people, but only if candidates were equally well qualified.The second area was the requirement that companies report the gap between the amount they pay women and the amount they pay men. The third part of the law that the Conservatives said they would not introduce was a provision forcing public authorities to take socio-economic factors into account when allocating their resources..
  • the more managerial elements of the Act are likely to make it into law.
Official Change to Government Equalities Website  reads:-   The Government is currently considering how the different provisions will be commenced so that the Act is implemented in an effective and proportionate way. In the meantime, the Government Equalities Office continues to work on the basis of the previously announced timetable, which envisaged commencement of the Act's core provisions in October 2010.

 

 

 
 
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