Tom Stocks At Eton. The Acting Class. Insideflim. All rights reserved.In 2010, the then Home Secretary of the UK’s new Conservative-Liberal Coalition government announced that she would be repealing part one of the Equality Act that had been passed in the last days of the Labour government. Her name? Theresa May. Part one of the Act mandated public authorities such as government ministers, departments, local borough councils, health authorities and others, to develop strategies ‘designed to reduce the inequalities of outcome which result from socio-economic disadvantage’.
Interestingly, socio-economic disadvantage was not seen as part of the protected characteristics listed in part two of the Equality Act. These characteristics were protected against discrimination and nine were identified: age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex and sexual orientation.
It is not hard to see why the question of socio-economic disadvantage was separated from the question of discrimination in the Act. How can a society structured around socio-economic inequalities admit that this amounts to discrimination against those crowded at the bottom end of the distribution of economic rewards? In a market-based society it simply cannot be illegal to discriminate against people on the grounds of their economic resources. Still, the original provisions of part one, carefully contained as they were, was a potentially useful starting point in at least acknowledging the reality of socio-economic disadvantage and requiring the collection of relevant data that could feed into strategic decision-making to improve things.
