You’ve probably never heard of the so-called ‘socio-economic duty’, and nor should you have. It’s a left-over clause from the Equality Act passed by Labour in 2010, which was so obviously misguided that we Conservatives blocked it from being enacted for 14 years.
The clause demands that when local and public bodies make a decision, they must assess whether it increases or decreases inequality resulting from socio-economic disadvantage.
It is ideological dross. Worse than that, it threatens to submerge the nation in a bureaucratic nightmare dressed up as progress.
How so? It means your council obsessing over ‘impact assessments’ while local roads decay, schools spending money on ‘equality training’ instead of textbooks, government departments taking more time analysing postcodes than fixing real problems.
When Labour came up with ‘socio-economic duty’ during its last period in government, its own ministers called it ‘socialism in one clause’. They weren’t joking.
We know it’s bad policy because it’s already been enacted in Scotland and Wales. The results were exactly what you’d expect: More red tape and no constructive results.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission reviewed its effectiveness north of the border and couldn’t find a single tangible benefit.
But this Labour government doesn’t care. Looking busy matters more to it than being effective. The ‘socio-economic duty’ clause ticks all the boxes – literally! It gives civil servants and consultants endless forms to fill in, reports to write and new jobs in such voguish fields as ‘class-equity strategy’.
Your taxes will fund more consultants, more HR seminars, more circular discussions about ‘lived experience’ – all while frontline services are stretched to the limit. When I was Equalities Minister, I fought this sort of nonsense every day. When I tried to protect women’s spaces by legislating to enforce female-only toilets, I was told by civil servants that doing so might be ‘hostile’ to other groups.
Time and again, I found common-sense decisions were being held up by an impact assessment drawn up by a diversity officer who’d never set foot in a women’s shelter.
The ‘socio-economic duty’ is more of the same. It will paralyse our public services and hand more power to unaccountable quangos. The state needs to do less, and do it better. We need schools pushing children to achieve, not consulting on how ‘class background’ affects their homework. We need doctors focused on saving lives, not paperwork. We need police stopping criminals, not second-guessing who might be offended.
But this government is bereft of ideas. With the economy nose-diving due to a toxic cocktail of tax rises and billions in bungs to the public sector, it is busying itself with ideological rubbish nobody asked for.
Giving away British territory in the Chagos Islands while paying £30billion for the privilege. Decriminalising abortion and euthanasia. And changing its mind about how many pensioners to deprive of their winter fuel allowance.
Labour has four more years to dig up every bad idea it has had and force it through Parliament. I will keep calling it out. Loudly, clearly, and without apology – because Britain deserves better than this.
