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Has the Treasury ignored equality laws?

1 September 2010

DfT, the Treasury, indeed all departments are bound to obey equality duties.

It seems though that when the emergency budget was being prepared the Treasury did not properly check the equality impact of its proposals.

As we reported in an earlier posting the Fawcett Society has filed papers with the High Court seeking a Judicial Review of the Government's recent emergency budget.

The Guardian reports on 25 August that "the government has so far failed to answer whether it carried out an assessment as required by law, showing it had considered whether women, ethnic minorities, the disabled and the elderly would be disproportionately affected by the cuts".

Anna Bird, the head of policy and campaigns at the Fawcett Society said: "Under equality laws, the government should have assessed whether its budget proposals would increase or reduce inequality between women and men.

"It is our belief that the Treasury did not do this, and so did not follow the law when drawing up their plans. Their continued failure to produce any evidence showing they considered the gender equality impact of the budget only adds weight to this concern."

We shall see how the Treasury responds to this legal challenge. What we can say is that DfT, at least as regards staff matters, does not properly comply with its equality duties. The Union is strongly pushing the department to obey the equality duties.


 

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