Nobody doubts the importance of protecting people from discrimination for example. Nobody should be denied a job because they are black. Nobody should be sacked because they are a woman. Those protections are not just necessary, they are fundamental, and they must remain firmly in place.
But a series of recent cases have revived an important debate about whether we have ended up accidentally treating people unfairly or unequally in efforts to combat discrimination like racism. That doesn’t mean we have solved these problems like racism – they still exist. But the case of Henry Nowak, where an innocent 18-year-old boy’s life was tragically taken and the police were so focused on an accusation of racism that they didn’t notice a victim bleeding to death in front of their eyes has provoked a wider debate.
Sadly, this isn’t the only example.
A security guard at Manchester Arena didn’t stop the bomber because he was afraid of being accused of racial profiling. Axel Rudakubana’s headteacher was accused of playing to a stereotype of a young black man with a knife when raising concerns. Victims and politicians highlighting the fact men from the Pakistani community were targeting young white girls for rape were attacked for stoking community tensions and people in positions of power and influence refused to look at this element.
Across the public sector, significant time and resources are now devoted to not just avoiding discrimination but creating an overbearing focus on equality and diversity issues and a culture where even the suggestion of getting that wrong is seen as the worst of all mistakes to make. There is now a climate of fear which is also combined with a whole range of campaign organisations playing a disproportionate role in deciding how these issues should be handled. This raises an important question - has a well-meaning desire to tackle discrimination, in some cases, led unintended consequences that risk doing more harm than good and what can be done about it?
This is something we can’t fix overnight and covers more than just the public sector. But Kemi Badenoch and the Conservative Party is clear that something needs to change. Most people will never have heard of the Public Sector Equality Duty but it shapes how decisions are made across government and public services. Introduced under the Equality Act 2010, it requires public bodies including councils, the NHS and police to consider how their policies and actions affect people with protected characteristics, such as race, sex, and disability.
In principle, it is straightforward and sensible: public authorities should think about fairness when making decisions. But what was intended as a safeguard against discrimination has, over time, become a driver of the problems I have described.
Public services should always be focused first and foremost on delivering good services to everyone. Everyone benefits if our NHS, Police, Councils and Schools is not distracted from the day job in a disproportionate way. But we now have roughly 10,000 equality, diversity and inclusion staff across the public sector, costing an estimated £427 million a year.
We expect public bodies to focus on solving problems, not completing paperwork. That is why Conservatives are proposing to scrap the Public Sector Equality Duty. This is not about removing protections against discrimination. We want people to be treated equally. But we need to bring common sense back to how we approach that and this is an important first step to doing just that.
