MEND condemns Badenoch’s proposal to scrap the Public Sector Equality Duty

MEND (Muslim Engagement and Development) condemns the Conservative Party’s proposal to abolish the Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED) – a cornerstone of protection against discrimination for millions of people across England, Scotland and Wales.

Kemi Badenoch says the Equality Act should be “a shield to protect you from discrimination, not a sword for social engineering.” But the duty she wants to scrap is exactly what makes that shield work. It requires public bodies to consider who their decisions might harm before they act. Remove the duty and you take the shield away.

This is also a remarkable reversal from Badenoch, who in December 2023 when Minister for Women and Equalities, wrote to every public authority instructing them to comply with this very duty, and stated that there is no hierarchy of rights because every person holds a protected characteristic. Either she was wrong then, or she is being opportunistic now.

The duty imposes no quotas and dictates no outcomes. It simply requires public bodies to think about who might be left behind. It is why a council must weigh the impact on an elderly resident before scrapping the bus route she depends on. It is the duty the Home Office was found to have breached over Windrush in 2020 – and the one the High Court used to quash an unlawful Windrush decision in 2024, twice holding Badenoch’s own party to account.

Strip it away and every community – Muslims, disabled people, older people, women and others – is left exposed to institutional bias that no public body is required even to consider. When the powerful are freed from the duty to think before they act, it is always the quietest voices who pay first.

MEND stands for justice for all, especially those with no one to speak for them. We call on parliamentarians, civil society organisations, and the public to oppose this proposal. Equality before the law should never be allowed to be a partisan issue.