On Friday 24th April, the Government introduced The Equality Bill to the House of Commons for its first reading. Lord Alli has launched a site to drum up public support and discussion for this bill. I have downloaded the two volumes of this bill with interleaved explanatory notes and am slowly reading through all 552 pages of it... I've already put some comments on twitter (@penwing) but this is the first of my longer comments on the bill.

1. Introduction

The Bill has two main purposes – to harmonise discrimination law, and to strengthen the law to support progress on equality.

This bill aims to consolidate the current discrimination legislation under one act and create a single, consistent legal framework. Discrimination legislation covers many aspects of civil life. This bill does not address motivation in criminal acts - "hate crimes".

It's also important to bear in mind the second part of the aim quoted above - "to strengthen the law". This should come naturally with the harmonisation of the legal framework - for example, the Equality Duty is strengthening the law to provide a duty to all minorities similar to the Disability Equality Duty under the Disability Discrimination Act.

Alex
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