The Government believes that there are many barriers to social mobility and equal opportunities in Britain today, with too many children held back because of their social background, and too many people of all ages held back because of their gender, race, religion or sexuality. We need concerted government action to tear down these barriers and help to build a fairer society.
- We are promoting equal pay and will take a range of measures to end discrimination in the workplace.
- We are consulting with business on how best to extend the right to request flexible working to all employees.
- We will undertake a fair pay review in the public sector.
- We have developed a new voluntary framework for gender equality reporting, to help encourage and support organisations to improve their gender equality – we do not support mandatory pay reporting.
- We have scrapped the bureaucratic socio-economic duty on public bodies which was legislated for by the previous Government.
- We will promote improved community relations and opportunities for Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) communities, including by providing internships for underrepresented minorities in every Whitehall department and funding a targeted national enterprise mentoring scheme for BAME people who want to start a business.
- We are taking action to address violence against women.
- We will use our relationships with other countries to push for unequivocal support for gay rights and for UK civil partnerships to be recognised internationally.
- We are tackling homophobia in sport and homophobic bullying in schools.
- We have introduced legislation that will allow the removal of criminal convictions for consensual gay sex from times when such acts were illegal.
- We are allowing those religious premises that wish to do so to register civil partnerships and we will consult next year on how to introduce same-sex civil marriage.