I’m mildly amused this morning, having run across this private members bill by Tory MP Philip Davies that’s being debated in parliament today. The bill makes positive discrimination unlawful for most protected groups, and in addition to the seven strands includes nationality and socio-economic status.
But he forgets about Trans people – so by implication, it’s OK to positively discriminate in favor of trans folk.
I’ll guess that’s not what he intended!
(The commons briefing paper produced to go along with this bill also points out the discrepancy, so it’ll no doubt get fixed – assuming the bill goes anywhere, which is unlikely)
Was it ever legal to positively discriminate in favour of trans folks in the first place, though? I seem to recall not, courtesy of the Equality Act 2010.
makomk is correct. It’s OK to positively discriminate against Trans people, but not for them.
Equality Act 2010 (c. 15)
Schedule 9 — Work: exceptions
Part 1 — Occupational requirements
(3) The references in sub-paragraph (1) to a requirement to have a protected characteristic are to be read—
(a) in the case of gender reassignment, as references to a requirement not to be a transsexual person
That relates to requiring a Genuine Occupational Qualification (An absolute requirement) for a role – i.e. you can require that someone is cisgendered, or gay, or female etc. for a particular role, but you cannot require that someone is transgender.
This bill relates to stopping positive action in terms of providing additional training or support to marginalised/under-represented groups, or appointing someone from such a group to a position to improve equality assuming that they are equally good as some other candidate. (I.e. being an under-represented group can help win in a tie-break situation)
The Equalities Act also specifies when positive discrimination is allowed and for which of the groups covered by the Act. Unless my memory’s playing tricks on me it doesn’t allow positive discrimination towards transgender people at all in any of the areas it covers.
The one-sided occupational qualification bit just makes things worse.
Sections 158 and 159 of the act are the bits permitting “positive action” as they call it – all diversity strands are covered.
ok slightly late, just found this , I’m not a usual contributer, 1st time actually, but the one thing this goverment should know about is how to discriminate, after all, I was told when i changed my name, as required for any transition to be taken seriously, if i didnt change it back i would starve or become homeless. they since appologised then sent me a bereavement exspenses form, by mistake of course lol so negative or positive discrimination, discrimination is discrimination and with these in power any words are easy and rules dont apply to them