Yesterday I discovered a brilliant article by Graham Stewart about the legal challenges to the Coalition budget launched by the Fawcett Society:
successive anti-discriminatory legislation, culminating in Harriet Harman’s statutory behemoth, the Equality Act (which received its Royal Assent in April), forces all government departments to undertake an impact assessment on the likely outcomes for ‘protected’ groups in society before implementing policy. Where such an assessment shows a policy may widen rather than close inequality gaps, the government is expected to take corrective action. The Equality Act defines the ‘protected’ groups as those who suffer discrimination on grounds of age, race, disability, sex, sexual orientation, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, religion and belief, pregnancy and maternity.
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But the cuts must go through or the United Kingdom faces ruin. And it will be a ruin that will not discriminate between men and women, the able bodied and the disabled, the unisexuals from the transsexuals or whatever other section of society the Equality Act wishes to ring fence as exceptional. So the choice for the Government is clear. Either the budget must be enacted in full or the obstructive passages of the Equality Act must be repealed.
I recommend the whole article, available at Critical Reaction.
