Equality Act

The Equality Act, which is due to come into force in October 2010, will be the most significant change to the law in 2010. It will bring together the existing discrimination legislation concerning sex, race, disability, sexual orientation, religion or belief and age, and seeks to adopt a single approach where appropriate. Some of the reforms include laws which will cover discrimination and harassment based on association and perception; it will introduce a power to require large employers to report on their gender pay gap which will require companies with over 250 employees to publish annual reports on gender pay gaps within their own organisation.

While the Equality Bill was at the Report Stage in the House of Commons last week, the government has now added a new clause which will prohibit employers asking candidates questions about their health which are unrelated to the job role. The clause was added as a result of campaigners stating that pre-employment health questionnaires are discriminatory against disabled people (especially those with mental illness) which put people off even applying for a job in the first place. It is unclear how this clause will work in practice if it survives the final stages of the parliamentary process.

For more information on pre-employment health questionnaires, please see a recent article on medical questionnaires by Howard Hymanson and Catherine McGrath of our Employment Practice.

Action Steps

We will prepare a more detailed guide to the changes later this year but at present employers should be aware of this radical change to discrimination law and review and update their policies and procedures.