The Equality Act 2010

More than five years in the making, the Equality Act finally came into force on Friday 1 October 2010.

The Labour Party's 2005 manifesto commitment aims to bring together various strands of equality legislation and create a fairer society, outlawing discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation, age, race, gender reassignment, disability, or gender.

Read the Equality Act 2010 >>

The coalition government have now gone ahead with the introduction of the Equality Act with the aim of making Britain a more equal society. It will impact all UK employers, regardless of size, and apply across both the public and private sectors.

Paul Martin, Chief Executive of The Lesbian & Gay Foundation said: "We welcome the announcement of the passing of the Equality Act. It symbolises a huge step forward in providing people with the same chances and opportunities, regardless of their sexual orientation, age, race, gender, gender identity, disability status or religion or belief.

"This Act will require public authorities for the first time to think about and act upon the needs of lesbian, gay and bisexual people in everything that they do.

"Still, it is disappointing that the Act fails to recognise sexual orientation in the ban on harassment by providers of goods and services. The Act represents progress, but also highlights the challenges still facing lesbian, gay, and bisexual people as we continue to work to reach full equality."

What does the Equality Act mean to the LGB&T community?

• The Act introduces a duty that requires the public sector to actively promote equality that will be extended to cover LGB&T equality. This new duty will come into effect in April 2011, and it applies to all the public sector, including the NHS, schools, local councils, the police.

This means public bodies have a duty to take account of the needs of lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) people. The new Equality Duty means that public bodies will need to think about the needs of LGB people when designing and delivering services.

This could mean a health centre running a promotional campaign to encourage more lesbian and bisexual women to attend clinics for cervical screenings, or a school working with parents to tackle homophobia in their school.

• The Act will mean that lesbian, gay and bisexual people will be able to hold their civil partnership ceremonies in England and Wales on religious premises.

This means that religious organisations that want to host civil partnership registrations on their premises will not be prevented from doing so, but no religious organisation will be forced to host a civil partnership if it does not want to do so. This is a huge step forward particularly for LGB people of faith.

Employers will be permitted to use positive action to select candidates from under-represented groups when two people applying for a job have the same qualifications.

• The Act also prohibits the use of pre-employment healthcare questionnaires prior to an offer of employment.  At the moment, employers have been able to ask job applicants whether they have a disability, are taking medication or have a medical condition - even if it has no relevance to the role.

The prohibition of pre-employment medical questionnaires will remove this barrier to people living with HIV entering the workplace.

• The Act also includes protection from discrimination for people perceived to be, or associated with, someone who is HIV positive.

The stigmatised nature of HIV means that many people who live with or care for people living with HIV face discrimination. In addition, groups particularly affected by the virus, such as gay and bisexual men, can experience discrimination because they are thought to be HIV positive. (Pink Paper)

• The Act will also prohibit private members' clubs from discriminating against members or guests based on their sexual orientation or gender reassignment. (Pink News)
• The Act introduces the concept of "dual discrimination", where people can show they were discriminated because, for example, they are both a woman and a lesbian, or because they are gay and from an ethnic minority.
• The Act also extends trans rights, it will ban discrimination by schools on the grounds of gender reassignment. It also bans discrimination against people because they are mistakenly thought to be transsexual, or because they are connected with a transsexual person.
• The Act slightly extends the definition of gender reassignment, so that transsexual people who do not have medical treatment will be protected from discrimination, so long as they intend to transition, or have transitioned gender.

Could it go further?

• The Act bans harassment by providers of goods and services on grounds of age, disability, gender, gender reassignment, and race, it does not ban such harassment on grounds of sexual orientation or religion and belief. 

The Government say that all such harassment would be a form of discrimination, and so is unlawful anyway. However, in such an important piece of equality legislation, one would think that all equality strands would be given the same protections.

• The Government backed down over an Equality Act amendment which sought to stop religious organisations from denying jobs to lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans people.

The House of Lords defeated the government, meaning that churches are still free to discriminate against lesbian, gay and bisexual people. Faith schools are also exempt from certain parameters of the Act.

• Transgender people who do not intend to transition are not protected by the Act (except if the discrimination happens because they were thought to be transsexual).

What do you think about The Equality Act? Is it Equal? Does it go far enough? Post your comments in the box below.

To find out more about your LGB&T rights, click here.