Scrap legal equality duty for public services, says Badenoch

The Conservatives want to scrap rules requiring public bodies such as schools and hospitals to consider promoting equality in their decisions.

In what the party described as the first step in a programme to "restore common sense", Kemi Badenoch said the Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED) has resulted in some groups being "preferred over others".

The Tory leader called for its repeal after warning public bodies have "spent so long worrying about institutional racism that they have become institutionally incompetent".

Science Secretary Liz Kendall said the Conservatives' plans would "turn the clock back".

Speaking to Sky News, she said Badenoch wanted "to repeal a duty which stops pregnant women being sacked, women on maternity leave being sacked, which prevents discrimination against disabled people, which prevents discrimination on age grounds".

"She needs to set out which protections she's going to remove, because I tell you, there are women out there still who get worried that if they get pregnant or they're on mat leave that they're going to lose their job, and Labour is standing for them."

Badenoch's speech came after the murder of Henry Nowak and the police's response fuelled questions about equality policies and laws.

The Conservatives are trying to forge a distinct response from both Labour, who have strengthened equality protections, and Reform UK, who want to go further than the Tories and scrap the Equality Act completely. Reform says it would still protect people in the workplace.

The Public Sector Equality Duty, which applies in England, Scotland and Wales, requires public bodies and bodies carrying out public functions to have "due regard" to certain needs.

These include eliminating unlawful discrimination and to "advance equality of opportunity between people who share and people who do not share a relevant protected characteristic".

Protected characteristics include age, disability, race, pregnancy, sex and sexual orientation.

The Tory policy to repeal the PSED has been in development in recent months, with Badenoch saying: "We do not need to replace the duty, we need to explain to people that they should do their jobs."

She also said equality law "properly designed should protect us all in the same way", adding: "It should be a shield, not a sword."

But she said the understanding that such laws should protect people from being treated differently is being "perverted".

Badenoch said "modern Britain is the least racist country on Earth" and pointed to her experience as a child of living on three different continents.

She adde