Perspectives on Labour’s Respect and Equality for All Commitments

We are about one month into a new Labour government.  

There are some pressing issues around culture in all of its senses, and equality and equity. High on our list is a review of the Equality Act.

Here are the key points we notice in the Respect and Equality for All section of the manifesto: 

A focus on women’s equality 

1. They have a plan to ‘make work pay’ 

2. Strengthening rights to equal pay 

3. Protections from maternity and menopause discrimination and sexual harassment 

4. Reduce the gender pay gap 

5. Supporting the Equality Acts rights and protections for single sex exceptions. 

These are nothing more than hope at this stage as there is no ‘how’ sitting behind these sentences. How will you make work pay? How will you strengthen rights to equal pay? What’s the difference between the right to equal pay, and actually making unequal pay illegal? What do protections look like and how will then be enforced?  

Race Equality Act enshrined in law 

1. The full right to equal pay for ‘Black, Asian and other ethnic minority people’ 

2. Strengthen protections against dual discrimination 

3. Root out other racial inequalities 

4. Reverse the decision to downgrade the monitoring of antisemitic and Islamophobic hate 

5. Introducing ethnicity pay gap reporting for large employers 

It’s disappointing that Labour have clung to fairly outdated terminology and are referring to ‘other minority people’. However, it is a positive step to see an acknowledgment of intersecting identities and challenges. This could have been improved by simply referring to intersectionality or ‘multiple discriminations’ rather than dual. Those of us who work in this space recognise that often people will have multiple factors linked to their identities which provide barriers to a person thriving and progressing as they would like.  

Referring to ‘other’ racial inequalities isn’t particularly helpful. It would have been good for them to go into some specific detail. Perhaps they could have at least mentioned the disparity in maternal and post-partum deaths for women of the global majority, the prison pipeline, deaths in police custody etc. The vagueness here isn’t particularly helpful and allows them to not address some fairly horrendous statistics.  

It is also positive that they are keeping a focussed eye on hate directed at Jews and Muslims. We’d like to see this extended to schools where reporting on the behaviour of children can be too ‘catch all’ where these sorts of behaviours can be described as bullying and reported as such which doesn’t allow us to see the scale of the challenge and intervene accordingly.  

Championing the rights of disabled people 

1. Capturing the views and voices of disabled people 

2. Introduce the right to equal pay  

3. Introducing disability pay gap reporting for large employers 

4. Improving employment support and access to reasonable adjustments 

5. Tackling the Access to Work back log 

6. Allowing work trials without immediate benefit reassessment 

7. Making hate crime towards disabled people an aggravated offence. 

It is good that the ‘nothing about us, without us’ mantra is contained within these commitments. There are some obvious benefits in addressing the back log and ensuring that disabled people are not disadvantaged by trying work out.  

However, as with the previous commitments, the ‘how’ is really missing. What does improved employee support look like? How will the views and voices of disabled people be captured? Who will be involved in this? How will it be communicated? At what point will benefit reassessment kick in?  

Treating LGBT+ people with dignity and respect 

1. Making hate crime towards LGBT+ people an aggravated offence 

2. Referring to conversion therapy abuse 

3. Delivering a trans inclusive ban on conversion practices 

4. Protecting the freedom for people to explore their sexual orientation and gender identity 

5. Modernising and simplifying the gender recognition process 

6. Removing indignities for trans people 

7. Retaining the need for specialist doctors to diagnose gender dysphoria 

8. Enabling access to the healthcare pathway. 

Again, there are some significant positives here, especially around the physical and psychological protection of trans people and making space for people to be able to explore their own identities. However, it is hard to pin down what they mean by and therefore how they will address ‘indignities for trans people’. Which indignities? How will they be removed? What will the consequences be if they aren’t? Will the difficulties and delays around gender dysphoria continue? What does enabling mean? Will the enabling be accessible in itself? 

What can we do with these commitments? 

Well, the Equality Act and inclusion best practice is anticipatory. There are some quick wins here which people can get on to straight away, such as: 

• Changing systems for gender, ethnicity and disability pay gap reporting. It looks like it will be obligatory for large organisations, but this data is useful for smaller ones too, and it’s a good idea to hold ourselves to a high standard, not the minimum 

• Hold listening activities to identify the types of inequalities and discrimination people in at least the groups above are facing, so you can address them 

• Introduce and embed learning and development on racism, antisemitism, Islamophobia and disability awareness as a minimum 

• Review and refine your policies on pregnancy and maternity, flexible working and menopause 

• Consider how work trials might benefit your recruiting processes 

• Create a system for learning about and delivering on people’s access needs and add a system of checking in on the efficacy of these at regular intervals 

• Check language use to remove gendered language unless it is absolutely necessary 

• Communicate how you support people who may be gender questioning or transitioning.  

In addition, you may want to consider other identities which are likely to be included in the next iteration of the Equality Act, such as care leavers, class, and socio-economic background.  

Try to be as anticipatory as possible, thinking about how we prevent exclusion, deal with issues in the moment, and follow up. 

To speak to us about how we can support your organisation access the link here

Further resources and information:

Challenging Microaggressions

Training and Development  

Introduction to EDI