Introduction: Equality and Human Rights in Britain

Abstract

The first ten years of the twenty-first century has seen the British Government introduce radical change to its equality policy. These changes have included the creation of a single equalities body, the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC); the expansion of the equality terrain to include age, sexuality and sexual orientation and faith and belief in addition to gender, race and disability as protected grounds; the decision to coalesce human rights and equality legislation under the direction the EHRC; the development of an Equalities Framework; the promulgation of a new Equality Act (2009) with the aim of creating a single legal framework to cover all equality legislation together with the development of specific Equality Duties for the public sector around the areas of gender, race and disability with the aim of ‘mainstreaming’ equality. Barbara Roche, the then Minister responsible for equality co-ordination across the UK Government described these changes as ‘the most significant review of equality in over a quarter of a century’.