Equality Legislation Summary

Equality legislation – a summary

The following is a guide only to the legislation currently in place that impacts on equality and diversity issues, and is not a comprehensive list.

1970 The Equal Pay Act (EPA) (as amended), makes it unlawful for employers to discriminate between men and women in terms of their pay and conditions (including pay, holiday entitlement, pension etc) where they are doing the same or similar work; work rated as equivalent; or work of equal value.

1974 The Health and Safety at Work Act places a general duty on employers to protect the health, safety and welfare of their employees. Employers may also be in breach of contract for failing to protect workers’ health and safety.

1975 The Sex Discrimination
2003 The Employment Equality (Sexual Orientation) Regulations make it unlawful to discriminate on grounds of sexual orientation in employment and vocational training. The Regulations protect homosexuals, heterosexuals and bisexuals.

2004 The Civil Partnership Act defines a new legal relationship, which can be registered by two people of the same sex. It gives same-sex couples the ability to obtain legal recognition for their relationship and affords them equal treatment to married couples in a wide range of legal matters.

2004 The Gender Recognition Act 2004 gives legal recognition to a transsexual’s acquired gender. For example, a male-to-female transsexual will be legally recognised as a woman in English law.

2005 Disability Discrimination Act makes substantial amendments to the 1995 Act. It introduces a duty on all public bodies to promote equality of opportunity for disabled people. In particular, public bodies have to produce a Disability Equality Scheme to promote disability and to explain how they intend to fulfil the duty to promote equality. It also extends the definition of disability. Part four of the DDA now largely supercedes the SENDA
It makes changes to the definition of harassment at work and indirect discrimination, and also prohibits discrimination on the grounds of pregnancy and maternity leave.

2006 The Employment Equality (Age) Regulations make it unlawful to discriminate against employees, job seekers or trainees on grounds of age in employment and vocational training. They prohibit direct and indirect discrimination, victimisation, instructions to discriminate and harassment. They introduce a minimum retirement age of 65; a duty on employers to respond to requests to work beyond retirement age; and remove the upper age limit for claiming a redundancy payment or unfair dismissal.

2006 The Equality Act makes provision for the establishment of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) by merging the Equal Opportunities Commission, the Commission for Racial Equality and the Disability Rights Commission. The EHRC is responsible for promoting equality and diversity and will work towards eliminating discrimination on the usual grounds (including religion and belief, sexual orientation, age, gender, disability, race and gender reassignment. It also creates a duty on public authorities to promote equality of opportunity between men and women by requiring