Union's equality law warning

Members of Unison used the union’s annual conference in Brighton to make repeated calls for greater use of the Gender Equality Duty and other equal rights legislation to combat cuts to services.

The calls came against a wider recognition that the union needs new approaches to fighting its ground in light of the recession.

Allison Roche, Unison’s assistant national officer and equalities specialist, told LGC that outsourcing and shared-services deals were seen as areas of particular concern to female staff.

She said the Equality Bill going through Parliament was likely to lead to greater enforcement of existing legislation, with the validity of shared services arrangements likely to be increasingly questioned.

“It’s an important route and one that we want to drive forward,” she said.

“The framework of the Equality Bill is providing us with good opportunities, particularly in the procurement of services.”

Speakers at the Brighton conference made repeated references to the success of the Southall Black Sisters group, which last year successfully used the Race Equality Duty to challenge Ealing LBC’s proposals to change its domestic violence support. Ealing planned to withdraw funding for the group’s work in favour of commissioning a single borough-wide service for all women.

A spokeswoman for the council told LGC that it stood by the principle of its proposals, but accepted that the Equality Impact Assessment (EIA) process it had used needed to be “refined”.

Gillian Hibberd, president of the Public Sector People Managers’ Association, said the suggestion that equalities legislation could be used in a more hostile way was “disappointing”.

“It would be a significant step backwards if things moved in a more adversarial direction,” she said, adding that more legal challenges had the potential to be a significant drain on time and resources.

Mark Greenburgh, public sector partner at law firm Wragge & Co, said it would be a mistake to use equalities legislation as a back-door route to challenging outsourcing and other changes in service delivery.

“The current economic climate makes fighting cuts on these sorts of grounds less likely to succeed rather than more likely,” he said.

“At a time when councils are increasingly looking to save money on back office services to spend it on front line services, it is difficult to imagine such moves gaining public support.”

Mr Greenburgh said councils could build in equalities requirements to their outsourcing contracts.

Hammersmith & Fulham LBC leader Stephen Greenhalgh (Con) said legislation and tribunals could not halt the need for councils to innovate and find new ways of delivering services.

“Using equalities legislation to stop councils pursuing reform is a retrograde step,” he said.

“Equalities legislation is there to remove discrimination, it isn’t there to stop people delivering change.”

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