Reform will repeal the Orwellian Equality Act

The Act has embedded a state doctrine of social engineering that has destroyed equality before the law

The aim of the legislation was honourable, but its outcome has been disastrous Credit: MIke Kemp/In Pictures via Getty Images

“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” When George Orwell wrote those words in Animal Farm, he meant them as a warning against totalitarian Russia under Stalin. Systems erected in the name of fairness, he illustrated, can – if left unchecked – become instruments of injustice.

It is an uncomfortable thought, but one that increasingly resonates in modern Britain. The Equality Act of 2010 was conceived under Gordon Brown by Harriet Harman to consolidate protections and ensure that no one would suffer discrimination on the basis of immutable characteristics. That aim was honourable.

Yet in practice it has inspired a culture in which equality before the law has been replaced by equality of outcome, engineered by a ballooning DEI industry and interpreted through progressive ideology. This is why a Reform UK government will scrap the Equality Act.

To be crystal clear, protections against discrimination in the workplace are not only necessary but civilisational. A serious country does not tolerate the dismissal of a person because of their race, sex or disability. Britain did not need to wait until 2010 to discover this moral truth. Such safeguards existed for decades, refined through statute and precedent, long before the Equality Act came along. Much of what was valuable in that Act was not new at all, but copied. That won’t change under a Reform government.

Where the Equality Act went wrong, however, was to embed a far more expansive doctrine of state-mandated social engineering – one influenced heavily by the law of European Union and the European Convention on Human Rights. The result was a shift away from the timeless British principle of equal treatment under neutral law, towards something far more subjective, interventionist and, ironically, unequal.

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Consider the public sector equality duty in section 149. Its language appears innocuous, even virtuous. Who, after all, could object to “fostering good relations”? But in practice, it has placed public authorities under intense pressure not merely to avoid unfairness, but to demonstrate positive discrimination; the antithesis of a meritocratic society. Combined with the “positive action” measures in sections 158-159, what started as a shield has now become a sword in the culture wars.

Across the public sector – from the Civil Service to institutions such as the Royal Air Force, the NHS, our intelligence services, the Sentencing Council, some police forces and the Bank of England – recruitment schemes and internal programmes have too often excluded white men purely because of their race and sex. This is two-tier equality.

Moreover, the Act gave birth to a vast HR industry devoted to diversity training, grievance arbitration and ideological instruction. Concepts like “unconscious bias”, “microaggressions”, “white privilege”, “allyship” and “diversity targets” have migrated into everyday professional life through mandatory training.

They have not obviously improved workplace harmony or productivity. Instead, they have imposed cost, burden and division where it once never existed. And woe betide anyone who dares question the dogma.

Britain is not the irredeemably racist or “phobic” society these structures presume. Analysis by the campaign group Don’t Divide Us found that only 5 per cent of race discrimination claims succeed at tribunal. As the education scholar Alka Sehgal Cuthbert has argued, the effect has been to normalise a culture of formalised grievance rather than to cultivate resilience, mutual respect and shared purpose.

What makes this more frustrating is that since 2010, the Conservative Party, despite its spin, did absolutely nothing to confront the deeper structural problem. In fact, it exacerbated it with its overactive equalities department and ministers. Never forget that Tory MPs took the knee, confessed to benefiting from white privilege and supported BLM. Those of us who argued for repeal of the Equality Act were dismissed.

Reform UK’s argument is not that Britain should abandon fairness, but that it should return to its older, sturdier definition. It is why we will introduce legislation that restates the foundational protections against discrimination on an explicitly individual basis.

Group rights, diversity targets and positive discrimination will be out. We will restore the oldest and most British of principles: that every person is equal before the law and that no person may be treated unfairly because of who they are. These protections will be at least as robust as those that existed before 2010.

Our nation cannot cohere if our laws encourage our citizens to see one another through the prism of group identity. Nor can we flourish if merit becomes secondary to entitlement. The Great Britain in which I believe is one where everyone, regardless of race, religion, class or disability, can reach as high as their effort, character and talent may take them.

The task now is not to abandon equality, but to rescue it: to restore a culture focused on personal responsibility, not victimhood; excellence, not mediocrity; and unity, not division. That’s why a Reform government will get rid of the equalities department and equalities minister and repeal the Equality Act.

Suella