Kemi Badenoch promises to scrap equality rules for police and nurses | Politics | News
Kemi Badenoch wants to see common sense being applied (Image: Getty)
Kemi Badenoch is to unveil “common sense” plans to rip-up hated equality red-tape in our public services. The Tory leader wants to scrap rules requiring police officers, nurses, and teachers to obey diversity and inclusion diktats when they carry out their day-to-day work.
She will argue that officers should be catching criminals, NHS staff treating patients and public servants delivering for taxpayers – “not being dragged into identity politics”. Mrs Badenoch will use a major speech to set out plans to overhaul the Equality Act and scrap the Public Sector Equality Duty, part of a wider mission to restore common sense across public life. Her intervention comes just a week after a political row broke out over whether the police response to the murder of Henry Nowak in Southampton last December was influenced by equality law.
Henry Nowak’s death has caused outrage (Image: Family/Solent News)
The 18-year-old student was handcuffed by police officers who ignored his pleas that he had been stabbed as he lay dying after his British-born killer, Vickrum Digwa, claimed to have been the victim of a racist attack.
The PSED requires all public sector workers to consider how their work might have an impact on people with different protected characteristics, including their age, sex, sexuality, religion and race.
Mrs Badenoch is expected to say: “It is a duty that is subjective… with no clear rules… and whatever its intention… in practice, it has become a minefield that exposes almost every significant public decision to legal challenge.”
She will cite controversies like the Bank of England taking Winston Churchill off banknotes and police training that tells officers not to treat people the same as examples of where public services are too often distracted from the jobs they were created to do.
And she will describe the recent “madness” when a court found that prison officials had breached their “duty” because their separation of prisoners was disproportionately affecting Muslims convicted of Islamic terrorism.
These terrorists could now be eligible for compensation.
“This duty is compromising security decisions… like isolating dangerous criminals… in case the terrorists call us racists,” she will add.
“Far from equal outcomes… this duty is leading to ludicrous outcomes.”
The Conservatives claimed ahead of Mrs Badenoch’s speech that the duty has helped to fuel a culture of dividing people into competing identity groups, and has created a bureaucracy which has spent public money on “box-ticking”.
The party said her approach would ensure that public servants are focused on their primary duties, rather than equalities law.
She will add: “The Public Sector Equality Duty has turned equality into a zero-sum game where some groups are preferred over others.
“And the more public bodies chase equality of outcome… the further they move from equal treatment… and equality under the law.
“So we are going to scrap this Duty altogether.
“We do not need to replace it.
“We need to explain to people that they should do their jobs.”
By Claire Coutinho – Shadow Equalities Minister
Racism has been weaponised across our public services and institutions. In the cases of the Nottingham and Southport killers, the Manchester Arena bomb attack, and the murder of Sara Sharif, the people who were meant to protect us from harm failed because they were too scared of being accused of being racist.
This has not happened by accident. In the years since the Black Lives Matter protests, race-grifting activists arguing we should defund the police, decolonise the curriculum and pay reparations have been given far too much access to our public sector.
Their advice has been as clear as it is wrong: that we should treat people differently based on the colour of their skin to make up for some fictional collective colonial guilt.
One of the root causes is a law called the Public Sector Equality Duty. It requires every public body to obsess about equality and diversity in everything they do, with the constant threat of legal action if they fail.
It is the doorway through which marched Stonewall fanatics who said biological men should be in women’s prisons, the defund the police brigade who told the police you should treat people differently based on the colour of their skin, and gave those who said talking about the grooming gangs was an example of anti-Muslim racism the reins on an Islamophobia definition that gives special protections to just to one religion.
One politician above all others has had the courage and determination to reject this madness. When Black Lives Matter was preaching about white privilege, Kemi Badenoch was the only voice ripping apart their arguments and exposing why this ideology is so dangerous.
We have to rid ourselves of this dangerous thinking which will only breed more division and resentment. That’s why I backed Kemi to lead my party, and why the Conservatives would scrap the Public Sector Equality Duty and bring back common sense to our public services.
That’s the only way to restore trust in policing and the wider state: by upholding the age-old principle that we are all equal under the law.
Claire Coutinho (Image: PA)
Mrs Badenoch is attempting to tread a path between the different approaches of both Labour and Reform UK.
In her speech she will argue that Labour are moving in the opposite direction, wanting to impose further DEI reporting requirements on employers, creating more paperwork, more costs and more distractions from the priorities of hard-working families.
Nigel Farage’s party has said they would simply abolish the Equality Act altogether.
Claire Coutinho, Shadow Minister for Equalities, said: “The Conservatives believe in judging people by the content of their character, not the colour of their skin.
“We need to take identity politics out of public life and bring back common sense, fairness, and equality before the law.
“Our public services should be focused on doing their jobs and keeping the public safe – not pandering to radical ideologies and pushing diversity and inclusion training which does more harm than good.
“We will amend the Equality Act to stop public services like the police and NHS spending precious time and resources on contested ideas about race, sex and gender and more time on the priorities of the British public.”
A Labour source hit out at Mrs Badenoch’s plans, and said: “While the Tories and Reform play politics, Labour is delivering real change.
“We’ll soon be bringing forward a new workforce equalities strategy that focuses on making sure we level the playing field and get proper working-class representation at every level of the Civil Service.”
