Equality Act 2006
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| Long title | An Act to make provision for the establishment of the Commission for Equality and Human Rights; to dissolve the Equal Opportunities Commission, the Commission for Racial Equality and the Disability Rights Commission; to make provision about discrimination on grounds of religion or belief; to enable provision to be made about discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation; to impose duties relating to sex discrimination on persons performing public functions; to amend the Disability Discrimination Act 1995; and for connected purposes. |
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| Citation | 2006 c 3 |
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| Royal assent | 16 February 2006 |
| History of passage through Parliament | |
| Text of statute as originally enacted | |
| Revised text of statute as amended | |
The Equality Act 2006 (c 3) is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom covering the United Kingdom. The 2006 Act is a precursor to the Equality Act 2010, which combines all of the equality enactments within Great Britain and provide comparable protections across all equality strands. Those explicitly mentioned by the Equality Act 2006 include age; disability; gender; proposed, commenced or completed gender reassignment; race; religion or belief and sexual orientation. The changes it made were,
With the exception of the provision relating to goods and services discrimination in Northern Ireland on the grounds of sexual orientation, the Act relates to equality law in Great Britain, as a separate legislative framework exists for Northern Ireland which also has a separate equality body, the Equality Commission for Northern Ireland (though by and large reflecting the general approach to equality legislation in Great Britain).
The Equality Bill first appeared in the 2004/05 Session, but did not make it into law before Parliament was dissolved ahead of the 2005 general election. In its manifesto, the Labour Party promised to reintroduce the Bill, which it duly accomplished upon its reinstatement in Westminster.
At this stage, only ‘religion or belief’ was included in the anti-discrimination clauses. The Labour Party specifically did not wish to ban discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation. There were suggestions this policy decision was made to appease homophobic religious voters in the run-up to the election.
After the Bill was reintroduced, further lobbying by openly-gay Peer the Lord Alli succeeded in forcing the government to add homophobic discrimination to the Bill.
However, the lateness of this concession meant the extra provisions could not be included substantively in the primary legislation. Instead, legislators agreed to delegate the drafting of regulations to the Government. After a public consultation and a protracted debate within the Cabinet, these were eventually laid before Parliament as the Equality Act (Sexual Orientation) Regulations 2007.
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