Socio-economic Equality Duty

Fiona Mactaggart Excerpts

Thursday 18th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Minister to make a statement on the announcement yesterday outside Parliament that the Government intend to drop section 1 of the Equality Act 2010, which places duties on public bodies to act in respect of socio-economic disadvantage.

[The Minister for Equalities (Lynne Featherstone)]

Equality is at the heart of what this coalition Government are all about. We have come together as a coalition to govern on the principles of freedom, fairness and responsibility.

In Britain today, those growing up in households that have fallen too far behind still have fewer opportunities available to them and they are still less able to take the opportunities that are available. We need to design intelligent policies that give those at the bottom real opportunities to make a better life for themselves. That is why we are devoting all our efforts and energies to policies that can give people real opportunities to make life better for themselves, and not just to new and unnecessary legislation.

We do not need new laws to come up with policies that open up opportunities, and we do not need new laws to come up with policies that support and protect the most vulnerable. We have already begun to implement them. That is why over the course of the spending review, we will spend over £7 billion on a new fairness premium. That will give all disadvantaged two-year-olds an entitlement to 15 hours a week of pre-school education, in addition to the free entitlement that all three and four-year-olds already receive. It also includes a £2.5 billion per year pupil premium to support disadvantaged children.

Those measures, combined with our plans for extra health visitors and a more focused Sure Start, will give children the best possible start in life. That is why we are extending the right to request flexible working to all, helping to shift behaviour away from the traditional nine-to-five model of work, which can act as a barrier to so many people and often does not make sense for many modern businesses, and why we will implement a new system of flexible parental leave, which will end the state-endorsed stereotype of women doing the caring and men earning the money when a couple start a family.

We do not need laws to make choices that protect the most vulnerable. When we have had to make difficult choices about how to deal with the record budget deficit left by Labour, we have done so in a way that protects the most vulnerable. We will increase child tax credits for the poorest families, protecting against rises in child poverty; we will increase spending on the NHS and schools in real terms every year; we will lift 880,000 of the lowest-paid workers out of income tax altogether; and we will protect the lowest-paid public sector workers from the public sector pay freeze.

All those policies were designed by the coalition to protect those most at risk and to give opportunities to those most in need. They are real action, not unnecessary empty gestures. That is why we are scrapping the socio-economic duty. I said during the passage of the Bill that this was a weak measure, that it was gesture politics, and that it would not have achieved anything concrete. The policy would only have been a bureaucratic box to tick—another form to fill in. It would have distracted hard-pressed council staff and other public sector workers away from coming up with the right policies that will make a real difference to people’s chances in life.

We cannot solve a problem as complex as inequality in one weak legal clause, and we cannot make people’s lives better by simply passing a law saying that they should be made better. We believe that real action should be taken to address the root causes of disadvantage and inequality. We do not need empty gestures, and we do not need the socio-economic duty, to do that.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

It is very disappointing that I had to ask the Minister to come here. I would have expected at least a written ministerial statement or a statement to the House on a decision of this nature.

Dropping the socio-economic duty was not in the coalition agreement. It was a major part of the Equality Act 2010, which Parliament passed only this year. While we know that the Conservatives have never wanted Government to take responsibility for building a more equal society, that is not the view that the hon. Lady herself has previously taken. In fact, despite her words just now, on Second Reading of the Equality Bill she called for more legislation:

“The Government should have made legislative proposals to tackle socio-economic inequality in a Bill of its own”.—[Official Report, 11 May 2009; Vol. 492, c. 579.]

Given the importance of narrowing the equality gap, does she still think this?

What proposals will the Minister now bring forward to assess the impact of Government policies on the most disadvantaged? Despite her fine words, is it not true that this Government simply do not care about socio-economic inequality? The Institute for Fiscal Studies has proved that the Government are hitting the poorest hardest. If there is no duty, how will people know about the impact of Government decisions on the most disadvantaged?

With this duty in place, public bodies would have had to think about what they should be doing to improve life chances. We all know about Sure Start; indeed, the Minister referred to it. We know its fantastic work, and how its impact is greatest on the most disadvantaged children. Councils would have had a duty to take that into account if they were thinking of closing children’s centres, but she is now saying that they will not. Does she think that is right?

The hon. Lady said that the duty is bureaucratic, but the truth is that the Government have the power to decide how it is implemented. Did the Government even attempt to draw up a flexible way of introducing it?

The Minister said that we cannot deliver equality by legislation, but the simple truth is that the Government do not believe that they have any responsibility to deliver a fairer society. Of course, legislation does not work like magic, but it is a key way that Government can change things. Road safety legislation does not stop all accidents, but it does make our roads safer and it does save children’s lives. This duty would have helped to make our society fairer, and it would have given poorer people a fair chance, so why is she scrapping it?

[Lynne Featherstone]

After 13 years of a Labour Government who left behind them a more unequal society with a widening gap between rich and poor, the idea that an exceptionally weak clause in an Act that has not been enacted or implemented was major legislation, when it contained only a duty to consider, is everything that is bad about politics. [Interruption.] It has not been implemented.

The public sector equality duty that will be introduced in the spring is the strongest measure possible. It will allow for transparency, and it will allow people to hold the authority to account in their locality. What the Government are doing is far more important than the duty the hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) mentions. We are taking 880,000 lower-paid people out of tax, and spending £7 billion on the fairness premium and £2.5 billion on the pupil premium, which is additional money and the single most important measure for changing children’s life chances.

What is more, let me read to the hon. Lady what the last Government’s social mobility tsar Alan Milburn said:

“The challenges of the future call for a different relationship between the state and the citizen…It will mean…not just passing laws.”

But that was all the Labour party did—pass laws. What we are doing is about outcomes, not ticking boxes.