Equality Bill

There are certain areas of life that, although unlegislated, have developed their own strictly adhered-to codes of conduct.

Certain codes define national cultures. For example, reflecting on the observation that “an Englishman, even if he is alone, forms an orderly queue of one” the social anthropologist Kate Fox found that not only was this true for the vast majority of the people she observed for her book “Watching the English”, she also found herself unconsciously adopting the same irrational behaviour. 

“When waiting alone for a bus or at a taxi stop I do not just lounge about anywhere roughly within striking distance of the stop, as people do in other countries – I stand directly under the sign, facing in the correct direction, exactly as though I was at the head of a queue.”

Me too.

Other codes, however, appear to be rather more personal. For example, what is the right way to file paperwork? I wish someone could tell me, because everywhere I’ve ever worked seems to have three mutually disdainful factions.

The first are the ‘meticulous hoarders’; individuals who carefully file away every single document that crosses their desks in an ever-expanding library of gently yellowing paper.

The second are the ‘diligent editors’; individuals who strive for a clear desktop, wafer-thin briefcases, and a bulging wastepaper bin.

And finally, there are the ‘conscientious abstainers’; individuals who appear to lack any formal systems, but who can unfailingly lay their hands on exactly what they are after.
These are the people who often have a sign on the office wall which informs their incredulous colleagues that “a cluttered desk is the sign of genius”.

All three factions argue that their approach is the right one. And all of them are correct – but only partially correct. To see why, look no further than the Equality Act.

Since the Race Relations Act was passed in 1968, equality legislation seems to have sat with the legal equivalents of the ‘conscientious abstainers’. The result was a sprawling mass of 116 Acts of Parliament, regulations, codes of practice, and guidance. Getting your head around that lot truly was a sign of genius.

Enter the ‘meticulous hoarders’ of the Equality and Human Rights Commission who have, with great success, pulled all of these disparate strands together to create a single Act of Parliament. A single Act which not only harmonises existing discrimination law, but in some respects extends it. For example, the ban on “discrimination by association” is extended to apply to all of the “protected characteristics” covered by the Act, thereby offering further protection to partners, parents and carers.

However, the very act of consolidation and extension has prompted the ‘diligent editors’ of Westminster to begin looking at how the inevitable bulges and wrinkles of the new Act can be challenged and eliminated to further simplify its implementation.

And guess what? None of the factions is entirely happy.

The ‘conscientious abstainers’ complain that a single Act is daunting for employers and that the separate, more-focused pieces of legislation were easier to manage.

The ‘diligent editors’, on the other hand, are concerned about the extensions to the law encompassed in the Act. In particular, they are sounding the warning bell about the implications of Equal Pay Transparency and “multiple discrimination” where, for example, someone who thinks they've been discriminated on the basis of three protected characteristics will be able to bring a claim based on a combination of two, plus separate claims based on all or any of the other five characteristics.

Meanwhile,  the ‘meticulous hoarders’ are pushing back on the other factions by arguing that we should neither go back in time to a less orderly approach, nor do anything that actually reduces the amount of protection people have from discrimination.

This is exactly as it should be. As Albert Einstein once observed, “everything should be as simple as possible – but no simpler”, and I believe that the three factions provide a healthy set of checks and balances to ensure that HR practitioners will ultimately have the best possible legislative framework to work with.

Indeed, for me, the sooner they can get to work on the rest of UK and European employment law the better. I’d only ask that they form an orderly queue while they wait.

Published in HR Magazine June 2010