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A step change for equality

27 May 2010 / Charles Pigott
Issue: 7406 / Categories: Features , Employment
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Radical or just worthy? Charles Pigott puts the Equality Act under the spotlight

There is a certain irony in the fact that the Equality Act received Royal Assent after five years’ hard work by the outgoing Labour government, leaving our new coalition government with five years to reap its benefits before it has to face another general election.

The main objectives of the Act are well enough known to be treated briefly.
l The first, and least controversial, aim was to bring all the country’s anti-discrimination law under one roof, rather than leaving it scattered across numerous acts and statutory instruments.
l The second, closely linked to the first, was to iron out the anomalies that had accumulated due to piecemeal implementation of EU legislation.
l The third, and most challenging, was to reform and modernise the law to tackle persistent inequalities, of which the gender pay gap has been the most obvious example. Exactly 40 years after the Equal Pay Act received Royal Assent, it is still well into double figures on any measure.

Rather

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NEWS
Charles Pigott of Mills & Reeve reports on Haynes v Thomson, the first judicial application of the Supreme Court’s For Women Scotland ruling in a discrimination claim, in this week's NLJ
Charlie Mercer and Astrid Gillam of Stewarts crunch the numbers on civil fraud claims in the English courts, in this week's NLJ. New data shows civil fraud claims rising steadily since 2014, with the King’s Bench Division overtaking the Commercial Court as the forum of choice for lower-value disputes
The Supreme Court issued a landmark judgment in July that overturned the convictions of Tom Hayes and Carlo Palombo, once poster boys of the Libor and Euribor scandal. In NLJ this week, Neil Swift of Peters & Peters considers what the ruling means for financial law enforcement
Small law firms want to embrace technology but feel lost in a maze of jargon, costs and compliance fears, writes Aisling O’Connell of the Solicitors Regulation Authority in this week's NLJ
Artificial intelligence may be revolutionising the law, but its misuse could wreck cases and careers, warns Clare Arthurs of Penningtons Manches Cooper in this week's NLJ
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