Kemi Badenoch is set to call for rules requiring police officers, nurses, and teachers to consider equality issues when they carry out their day-to-day work to be scrapped.
The Conservative Party leader is expected to unveil plans to scrap the Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED) in a major speech Tuesday as part of a wider overhaul of the Equality Act.
The address comes a week after a political row ignited over whether the police response to the murder of Henry Nowak in Southampton last December was influenced by equality law.
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 will warn the duty has “become a minefield that exposes almost every significant public decision to legal challenge”.
She will say: “A court recently 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 is madness.”
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”.
It also pointed to a Bank of England consultation to replace images of well-known public figures such as Sir Winston Churchill on banknotes with wildlife as an example of the same Government culture.
The party said her approach would ensure that public servants are focused on their primary duties, rather than equalities law.
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.”
According to the Tories, Mrs Badenoch is attempting to tread a path between the different approaches of both Labour and Reform UK.
The party hit out at new equality duties in Labour’s Employment Rights Act, as well as Reform’s plans to scrap the Equality Act altogether, as it promoted Mrs Badenoch’s plans.
Ameer Kotecha, chief executive of the Centre for Government Reform, said: “It is right to scrap the Public Sector Equality Duty entirely. I saw first-hand how it warped Whitehall, for example turning recruitment and promotion into a box-ticking exercise while the actual job went undone.
“Everyone should be treated fairly; what we do not need is artificial targets and embedding identity politics.
“Repeal is long overdue, but the culture it created won’t vanish with the legislation. The real test is whether politicians have the will to rebuild a public sector focused on results and delivery, not performative values.”
