Is the Equality Act 2010 fit for purpose?

As part of our internal Dine and Debate series, where we examine significant social and cultural developments shaping the environments organisations operate within, we recently discussed a question that has entered public debate.

Is the 2010 Equality Act fit for purpose?

The Equality Act 2010 is the legal framework that governs discrimination in the United Kingdom. It consolidated decades of earlier legislation into a single system that prohibits unfair treatment in areas such as employment, education, housing and public services.

At the centre of the framework are nine protected characteristics, including race, sex, disability, religion or belief and sexual orientation. These categories define the legal grounds on which discrimination can be identified and challenged.

For most of its existence, the Act has operated quietly in the background of institutional life.

Yet this year, that changed.

Reform UK has pledged to repeal the legislation if it enters government, presenting the move as part of a broader effort to dismantle what it describes as identity-based policy.

At a press conference announcing the party’s equality agenda, Suella Braverman said a Reform government would abolish the equalities minister and repeal the Act on its first day in office.

“We will repeal the Equality Act because we are going to work to build a country defined by meritocracy not tokenism, personal responsibility not victimhood, excellence not mediocrity and unity not division.”

The argument is straightforward. Reform figures claim that the equality framework has encouraged diversity, equality and inclusion policy that prioritises identity over competence.

Critics argue that repealing the Act would dismantle the legal protections that allow individuals to challenge discrimination in workplaces, services and public institutions.

The debate around the Act has therefore become highly charged and often symbolic, particularly in the context of a wider cultural moment in which questions of identity, fairness and institutional power are increasingly contested. In the UK this has played out through what is often described as the culture wars, alongside international narratives about the “death of DEI” and growing backlash against what critics label as “woke” policy.

Within that environment certain terms appear repeatedly. Words such as meritocracy, fairness and tokenism are often used as shorthand for deeper disagreements about how opportunity should be allocated and whether institutions should actively address structural inequality. At times these terms operate as political signals as much as analytical concepts, carrying different meanings depending on who is using them and what assumptions they bring about how society functions.

What receives far less attention in the public argument are the mechanics of the law itself and the practical implications of removing it.

That gap formed the starting point for our discussion.

Law, practice and public perception

The Act itself is a legal framework. Its core function is to prohibit discrimination and provide individuals with a route to challenge unfair treatment in areas such as employment, services and housing.

Much of the public argument, however, is not about those legal protections. It is about how organisations interpret equality in practice through diversity, equality and inclusion initiatives.

These two layers often become collapsed into one debate.

Critics frequently point to diversity targets, training programmes or hiring practices they view as identity focused and attribute those developments to the Equality Act. Supporters often respond by defending the principle of equality protections. As a result the discussion moves quickly between legal structure, organisational behaviour and cultural politics without always distinguishing between them.

The law itself is narrower in scope than the debate surrounding it.

For example the Act allows limited forms of positive action, where organisations can take proportionate steps to address disadvantage or under-representation. This may include targeted outreach or selecting a candidate from an underrepresented group when candidates are genuinely equally qualified.

What the law generally does not allow is positive discrimination. Selecting someone solely because of identity, regardless of merit, remains unlawful in most circumstances.

In public debate, that distinction is often blurred. Criticism directed at organisational diversity initiatives frequently becomes criticism of the Equality Act itself, even when those practices are not required by the legislation.

Understanding this difference helps clarify why the conversation around the Act can feel misaligned. The criticism being voiced is often about organisational practice, while the legislation being debated concerns legal protections against discrimination.

Meritocracy

Much of the criticism directed at the Equality Act is framed through the language of meritocracy. The argument suggests that removing equality legislation would allow institutions to evaluate individuals purely on competence and capability, free from identity-based considerations.

Yet that position rests on an assumption that is rarely examined directly. It assumes that opportunity is already distributed in a broadly even way and that individuals enter competition on comparable terms.

The logic behind the equality law begins from a different observation.

The Equality Act did not emerge from contemporary diversity policy. It consolidated more than fifty years of earlier anti-discrimination legislation, including the Race Relations Act and the Sex Discrimination Act. These laws were developed in response to evidence that access to employment, housing and public services had historically been shaped by patterns of discrimination embedded within institutions and social systems.

From that perspective, the purpose of equality law was not to replace merit-based decision-making. Its role was to prevent discrimination from shaping the conditions under which merit is assessed.

The disagreement by Reform, therefore, does not sit neatly between merit and equality. It reflects different assumptions about whether opportunity is already distributed fairly or whether structural barriers continue to influence access to it.

Fit for purpose in 2026? 

Even when that distinction is recognised, the framework still operates with several tensions that we questioned regarding the Equality Act’s relevance in 2026.

One concern relates to implementation. Many organisations experience equality obligations primarily through compliance processes, reporting structures and risk management frameworks. Over time, this can create the impression that equality law produces bureaucracy rather than practical outcomes, which is something we often see as a business. Less so implicated, tying together with performance outcomes and growth. 

Another tension appears where different rights intersect. Cases involving sex based rights and gender identity have generated complex legal questions and attracted significant public attention. Although these disputes represent a relatively small portion of equality law in practice, they shape how the framework is perceived.

There are also questions about whether the current structure fully captures all contemporary forms of disadvantage. During our discussion, issues such as class background, regional inequality and social mobility frequently surfaced. These factors increasingly shape access to opportunity in Britain, yet they sit somewhat awkwardly alongside the protected characteristics model that structures the Equality Act. While the legislation includes a largely dormant “socio-economic duty”, socio-economic background itself is not a protected characteristic within discrimination law.

These tensions do not necessarily undermine the purpose of the legislation. They do, however, highlight the difficulty of maintaining a framework designed to address discrimination within a social context that continues to evolve.

The issue is not simply whether equality protections should exist. The deeper question concerns how a society protects individuals from discrimination while maintaining confidence that opportunity is allocated fairly.

The Equality Act represents one attempt to structure that balance within law. It establishes a framework intended to safeguard individuals from discrimination while preserving the principle that opportunity should be allocated through capability and competence.

The current debate suggests that the balance between protection, fairness and institutional legitimacy is now being questioned from several directions.

What the debate is really about

Taken together, our discussion suggested that the real issue is not simply whether equality protections should exist, but how they should operate within a society where the shape of inequality has become more complex.

Reform’s argument rests on a clear narrative. The party frames the Equality Act as a system that prioritises identity over merit and leaves groups such as white working-class boys behind. In announcing the policy, Suella Braverman highlighted the educational outcomes of disadvantaged white boys as evidence that the current framework fails to address the people who most need support.

The concern about social mobility is not unfounded. Research and parliamentary inquiries have repeatedly pointed to persistent educational and economic disadvantage among white pupils from poorer backgrounds. But the way this issue is often presented, places that disadvantage in opposition to protections afforded to other groups, as though addressing inequality for one group necessarily comes at the expense of another.

Our discussion suggested that reality is more layered than this framing allows.

Disadvantage rarely operates along a single line. Class, geography, disability, race, gender and education interact in ways that shape access to opportunity. The idea of intersectionality reflects this complexity by recognising that people often experience overlapping forms of disadvantage rather than fitting neatly into a single category.

From that perspective, the challenge is not that safeguards against discrimination exist, but that the framework designed to address inequality may not yet capture all the ways it manifests today. Class background, regional inequality and social mobility increasingly shape life chances in Britain, yet these dynamics sit somewhat awkwardly alongside the protected characteristics model that structures the Equality Act.

The conversation, therefore, becomes less about choosing between meritocracy and equality, and more about how a society recognises systemic inequality while maintaining confidence that opportunity is allocated fairly.

Repealing the Act, as Reform proposes, would remove the legal structure through which discrimination is currently assessed. Our discussion instead pointed to a different question.

If inequality operates through multiple, intersecting forces, what kinds of safeguards are required to ensure that access to opportunity is genuinely fair.

Why This Matters for Organisations

For us, the debate also illustrates something broader about the environments organisations operate within.

Laws, policies and institutional frameworks rarely become contentious overnight. They tend to reflect the assumptions of the moment in which they were designed. Over time, society changes faster than the systems built to govern it. When that gap widens, arguments about fairness, legitimacy and relevance begin to surface.

The Equality Act now sits inside that kind of moment. The framework was designed to address patterns of discrimination identified over decades. Today it is being debated within a landscape shaped by new forms of inequality, new political narratives and new expectations about how opportunity should be distributed.

For organisations trying to navigate that landscape, the lesson goes beyond equality law. It’s about recognising when the systems guiding decision-making are drifting away from how society actually functions.

Understanding that gap is increasingly a strategic capability.s increasingly a strategic capability.