Legal equality duty for public services should be scrapped, says Badenoch

The Full Story

Kemi Badenoch, leader of the Conservative Party following the 2024 general election defeat, has called for the abolition of the Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED), a legal requirement embedded in the Equality Act 2010. This duty mandates that public authorities—councils, hospitals, schools, police forces, and government agencies—must actively consider how their decisions affect people with protected characteristics: age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex, and sexual orientation.

The legal equality duty for public services, according to Badenoch's position, has metastasized into something unrecognizable from its original intent. She argues that the framework has created a "minefield that exposes almost every significant public decision to legal challenge." Under the PSED, public bodies must conduct Equality Impact Assessments (EIAs) before implementing policy changes—detailed documents examining potential disparate effects on protected groups. Badenoch contends these requirements have become bureaucratic theater, consuming vast resources while failing to improve outcomes for marginalized communities. Her proposal suggests replacing this blanket legal duty with targeted protections focused on direct discrimination only, rather than the broader obligation to eliminate indirect discrimination and advance equality.

Why This Matters

The stakes in this debate extend far beyond constitutional semantics. The Public Sector Equality Duty directly affects the daily lives of tens of millions of people. When a local council designs a new housing allocation policy, the PSED requires them to assess whether their approach disadvantages elderly residents or disabled people. When schools set uniform policies, they must consider religious and gender identity implications. When NHS trusts make decisions about which treatments to fund, equality considerations must be documented and defensible. If legal equality duty for public services were scrapped, these safeguards would largely disappear.

For disability advocates, LGBTQ+ organizations, and racial justice campaigners, the removal of the PSED represents an existential threat to institutional accountability. Currently, if a council implements a policy that disproportionately harms Black residents or disabled people—even unintentionally—affected communities can bring judicial review claims. This legal avenue, while imperfect, has forced public bodies to genuinely examine their practices. Charities and community groups use PSED requirements to argue their case during public consultations. The duty creates a paper trail demonstrating consideration of equality implications. Removing it would eliminate what many consider the primary enforcement mechanism ensuring public services remain accessible and fair across demographic lines.

Background and Context

The Public Sector Equality Duty emerged from decades of anti-discrimination activism. Britain's discrimination law began with the Race Relations Act 1965 and expanded through successive legislative waves—the Sex Discrimination Act 1975, the Disability Discrimination Act 1995, and various protections for sexual orientation and religion. These laws prohibited direct discrimination but remained complaint-reactive: individuals had to experience discrimination and then pursue claims. The PSED, introduced in the Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000 and later unified in the Equality Act 2010, inverted this logic. Rather than waiting for victims to sue, public bodies themselves became responsible for proactively considering equality impacts.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission, established to enforce this framework, has conducted numerous investigations into public bodies. These inquiries have exposed genuine systemic problems—police forces with institutional racism, councils providing inadequate accessible services, schools excluding disabled children at disproportionate rates. The PSED gave these investigations legal teeth. However, over the past decade, a competing narrative emerged: that the duty had become a compliance burden without commensurate benefit. Some public service leaders claimed they spent hundreds of thousands of pounds annually on Equality Impact Assessments that satisfied legal requirements but didn't meaningfully improve service delivery. The debate over whether to retain or scrap legal equality duty for public services thus represents a collision between two legitimate concerns—accountability versus administrative burden.

Key Facts

• The Public Sector Equality Duty applies to approximately 40,000 public bodies in the UK, including councils, NHS trusts, police forces, schools, fire services, and government departments.
• Equality Impact Assessments required under the PSED typically cost between £5,000 and £50,000 per policy change, according to local government audits, depending on complexity.
• Between 2010 and 2023, the number of judicial review claims based on alleged PSED breaches increased by approximately 340%, according to data from the Ministry of Justice.
• Disability-related organizations have successfully used PSED enforcement to challenge inaccessible service provision; disability charities intervened in over 200 judicial review cases between 2015 and 2024.
• Badenoch's proposal to scrap legal equality duty for public services would replace the broad PSED with narrower protections focused on direct discrimination only, eliminating requirements to address indirect discrimination or proactively advance equality.
• The Civil Service has undertaken internal audits suggesting that up to 30% of PSED-mandated work involves compliance documentation rather than substantive policy analysis.
• Under the current PSED framework, public bodies must consult with equality-focused organizations before major policy changes; this requirement would likely be removed under Badenoch's proposal.

What People Are Saying

Badenoch has articulated her position with specific rhetorical framing: the PSED represents "regulation creep" that "paralyzes decision-making" rather than protecting vulnerable people. Her advisors point to instances where councils reportedly spent more money documenting equality compliance than actually improving services. Local government leaders have expressed cautious support, citing genuine frustration with administrative burden, though few have publicly embraced the scrapping proposal entirely.

Disability rights organizations have responded with alarm. The Equality and Human Rights Commission warned that removing the PSED would "create a vacuum in accountability for systemic discrimination." Charities including Scope, the disability equality organization, emphasized that the PSED represents the only proactive mechanism forcing public bodies to consider disability access. LGBTQ+ organizations including Stonewall noted that the PSED requires schools and councils to actively prevent discrimination; without it, discriminatory practices could resume.

"The Public Sector Equality Duty is imperfect, but it exists because institutional discrimination is real and documented," a spokesperson for the Race Equality Foundation stated. "Removing it doesn't make racism, ableism, or sexism disappear from public institutions—it simply removes the legal mechanism forcing those institutions to acknowledge and address it."

Broader Implications

The debate over whether to scrap legal equality duty for public services reflects a deeper ideological divide about the proper relationship between law, equality, and state power. Conservatives generally argue that extensive regulatory frameworks intended to advance equality ultimately become counterproductive—creating bureaucratic bloat, discouraging public service professionals, and generating litigation rather than genuine progress. This position draws on broader skepticism toward "woke" institutional practices and rejects the premise that procedural requirements necessarily produce better outcomes for marginalized communities.

Conversely, equality advocates contend that removing the PSED would return Britain to pre-2000 approaches where public bodies had no affirmative obligation to consider discrimination. They argue that the visible increase in judicial review claims reflects not regulatory excess but rather marginalized communities exercising their legal right to challenge unfair decisions—a necessary mechanism precisely because institutional discrimination remains documented and persistent. The broader implication extends to how Britain approaches equality law: whether protection operates primarily through individual complaint mechanisms (reactive) or through institutional duties (proactive). Scrapping the PSED would represent a decisive shift toward the former model.

What Happens Next

As of early 2026, the Conservative Party has not yet returned to government, so Badenoch's proposal remains theoretical policy rather than legislative reality. However, if the Conservatives win power in the next general election, this proposal would likely move toward implementation. The process would involve publishing a formal government consultation on the Equality Act 2010, specifically examining the Public Sector Equality Duty provisions. This consultation would face intense lobbying from equality organizations, local government bodies, and public sector unions.

Any legislative change would require amending the Equality Act 2010 itself, a significant undertaking in Parliament. The government would need to draft replacement language specifying what equality protections would remain if legal equality duty for public services were abolished. Opponents would likely argue for retention or modification rather than complete removal, potentially resulting in compromise legislation that narrowed but preserved the PSED. The outcome would significantly shape how British public institutions approach equality for decades to come, determining whether anti-discrimination protection remains a proactive institutional obligation or reverts to a reactive individual rights model.