As noted on our Reform Hub, the Employment Rights Bill is considered ‘phase one’ of the Government’s ‘Plan to Make Work Pay’, with other reforms anticipated alongside. Such other reforms include changes to equality laws, which could be included in the Equality (Race and Disability) Bill (‘Equality Bill’),anticipated later this year.
In this article, we set out the latest developments on the Government’s wider proposals to reform equality laws following a call for evidence on this subject, launched in April 2025. Separately, we have written on the equal pay enforcement and pay transparency aspects of the call for evidence.
Background
A key tenet of the Government’s Plan to Make Work Pay is equality at work. As part of this, the Government promised to publish an Equality Bill in draft in the King’s Speech 2024. In March 2025, a consultation was launched on reforms to ethnicity and disability pay gap reporting, followed by the Government publishing a broader call for evidence on its proposed reforms to equality law, which considers wider equality policies, in April 2025. Responses to both of these will help shape the Equality Bill.
The call for evidence states: “Equality is at the core of this government as it is central to its missions to break down barriers and make work pay.” The call for evidence seeks views on a number of areas of equality policy and, in some cases, it is looking for evidence and views on areas of the existing legal framework – in others, it is seeking evidence and views on areas of possible equality law reform.
Summary
In summary, the call for evidence focuses on seeking views on:
- Equal pay, including:
- extending the equal pay regime to make the right to equal pay effective for ethnic minority and disabled people;
- measures to ensure that outsourcing of services “can no longer be used by employers to avoid paying equal pay”; and
- improving the enforcement of equal pay rights by establishing an Equal Pay Regulatory and Enforcement Unit.
- Improving pay transparency
- Strengthening protections against combined discrimination
- Creating and maintaining workplaces and working conditions free from harassment
- Certain public sector related changes, which are outside the scope of this article, but for completeness include:
- ensuring the Public Sector Equality Duty is met by all parties exercising public functions; and
- commencing the socio-economic duty in the Equality Act 2010 (EA 2010) for England (it is currently in effect in Scotland and Wales and some councils in England have voluntarily adopted it).
The call for evidence in more detail
Equal pay
The call for evidence notes that patterns of inequality and discrimination on the basis of race, disability and sex differ across the economy. It comments that, in almost all cases, ethnic minority groups receive lower average wages than would be expected given their demographic, educational, occupational, family and health characteristics. Further, after accounting for selected personal and work characteristics that affect pay, a disability pay gap exists across most impairment types. Given this, it seeks evidence to understand how discrimination may be contributing to these inequalities and puts forward several key early policy proposals – although these are not set in stone, and following the call for evidence it could be that areas are reconsidered or amended.
Race and disability
- One of the areas in respect of equal pay that the Government is looking at in the call for evidence is extending the right to bring equal pay claims to race and disability. Currently, such equal pay claims are limited to sex, although individuals have recourse by bringing a direct or indirect discrimination claim for the protected characteristics of race and disability, depending on the circumstances.
- The Government is considering whether the existing equal pay scheme provides the right model for these expanded equal pay rights, whether these rights should instead be given force by an amended version of the scheme or whether a different approach may be best. As part of this, the Government has said it is giving particular attention to whether the rules of procedure that govern how equal pay claims are heard and the use of job evaluation schemes could be simplified or adjusted for these claims.
- Given the complexity of the equal pay rules and the numerous potential comparators, it will be welcomed that the Government is seeking a broad set of evidence before making any firm decisions.
Outsourcing
- Another area the Government is looking at is changing equal pay law to ensure that outsourcing of services can “no longer be used by employers to avoid paying equal pay.” The detail of this has not been set out but the call for evidence indicates that the Government is exploring “enabling comparisons between outsourced workers and ‘in house’ employees in equal pay claims.” The Government explains that the term ‘outsourced workers’ could cover a broad range of scenarios, including traditional outsourcing of services through an external service provider, the use of arrangements such as subcontracting, umbrella companies, labour providers and employment agencies.
- In addition, the call for evidence seeks views on where liability should lie for equal pay claims made by such outsourced workers – for example, with the employee’s direct employer or whether in some situations it should also arise where workers’ contractual terms are “effectively dictated” by another company.
- This would be a practical challenge for many employers who simply may not know how employees employed by another entity are paid (or why), nor have a right to know this information under existing contracts between the companies to be able to do any initial risk analysis – particularly if liability is determined as a result of this call for evidence by the non-employing entity.
Equal pay regulatory and enforcement unit
- The call for evidence suggests that the Government is keen to establish an equal pay regulatory and enforcement unit with the involvement of trade unions. We discuss this further in our separate article here.
Pay transparency
The Government is considering a range of steps to expand and strengthen equal pay rights and pay gap reporting requirements, including pay transparency measures. The Government wishes to build its evidence base before deciding changes in this area but is seeking to better understand the impact of increased pay transparency on women, people from ethnic minority backgrounds, people with disabilities and other groups in the workplace.
We cover these proposals in more detail in our separate article here. As noted above, the Government is consulting separately on the introduction of mandatory ethnicity and disability pay reporting, which we have written about here.
Combined discrimination
The call for evidence notes that the Government is “concerned that the current legislative framework does not provide adequate protection for people who experience discrimination based on a combination of protected characteristics.” It gives the examples that Muslim women or women experiencing menopause may be treated less favourably by an employer or service provider because of their particular combination of protected characteristics.
Accordingly, the Government is proposing to bring section 14 of the EA 2010 into force, which protects against dual discrimination (e.g, where discrimination is because of a combination of two relevant protected characteristics). This provision has been sitting dormant on the statute books since the EA 2010 became law but has never been brought into force.
It is worth noting that section 14 EA 2010 is only in respect of direct discrimination and excludes discrimination on the ground of the protected characteristics of (a) pregnancy and maternity and (b) marriage and civil partnership. However, the call for evidence asks a question about the prevalence of discrimination in respect of indirect discrimination, harassment, victimisation and the two excluded protected characteristics – so there may be plans to see if the current drafting should be amended.
Anti-harassment
Some changes to harassment are already included in the Employment Rights Bill (see our Reform Hub for details), including:
- Strengthening the new legal duty on employers to take reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment of employees (under the broader EA 2010 definition) in the course of their employment to taking all reasonable steps – a higher hurdle; and
- Introducing liability for third party harassment.
However, the call for evidence is considering aspects of implementation of this, including:
- Introducing regulations to specify the steps that employers must take to prevent sexual harassment and to specify matters to which employers must regard when taking steps. However, it says it will only “bring forward such regulations where this is proportionate and there is a clear evidence base supporting the efficacy of particular steps in preventing workplace sexual harassment.” To some extent, depending on what the regulations end up saying, employers may find guidance by way of regulations setting out steps to help give a better understanding of what will be required to satisfy the higher duty being introduced.
- Extending legal protection from sexual harassment to volunteers, which are not currently covered by such protections in the EA 2010. Extending legal protection to volunteers is likely to affect certain sectors more than others (such as charities, volunteering organisations etc). However, the Government has recognised that any steps taken to protect volunteers must also avoid placing unreasonable or unworkable expectations on voluntary organisations.
Next steps
The call for evidence is open until 30 June 2025. However, the Government has not given any commitments about timings, instead describing the current policy as being “at this early stage.”
The Next Steps to Make Work Pay document originally indicated that the Government would begin consulting, with a draft Equality Bill to be published during the 2024/25 parliamentary session for pre-legislative scrutiny. However, there is not much time left in this parliamentary session for those steps to conclude and the Government is undertaking a more detailed call for evidence on this, which it will need to consider before proposing any draft legislation.
In any event, once a bill has been published and read into Parliament, it will need to go through the usual legislative process, likely alongside further consultation or guidance/codes of practice. The upshot is that if reforms do make it through to the legislative stage, we consider that they will unlikely be implemented any time before 2026/27.
Keep up to date with developments via our Reform Hub.
