The Race Equality, Disability Equality and Gender Equality Duties are all in force for public authorities. These individual pieces of statutory legislation are referred to as the Public Sector Equality Duties.
The public sector duty on race equality was enshrined in the Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000 and came into force in 2002. You can read more about the Race Equality Duty on the Government's WebPage and find guidance on the Equality and Human Rights Commission's website.
The duty to promote disability equality was introduced through the Disability Discrimination Act 2005 and came into force in December 2006. You can read more about the Disablity Equality Duty on the Government's WebPage and find guidance on the Equality and Human Rights Commission's website.
The duty to promote equality of opportunity between women and men and to eliminate unlawful discrimination was introduced as part of the Equality Act 2006 and came into force in April 2007. You can read more about the Gender Equality Duty on the Government's WebPage and find guidance on the Equality and Human Rights Commission's website.
New Single Equality Duty
The Equality Bill, introduced at Westminster in April 2009, will replace these 3 existing duties with a single Equality Duty. This new duty will also extend to age, religion and belief, sexual orientation, gender reassignment and pregnancy and maternity.
Like the 3 existing duties, the new single Equality Duty is in 2 parts - a general duty, which is set out in the Equality Bill; and specific duties, which can be placed on certain public authorities to ensure the better performance of the general duty. It is for Scottish Ministers to determine the specific duties that should be placed on Scottish public authorities. To help inform this, consultation on the scope of the specific duties was launched in Scotland on 29 September. You can access the consultation document on the Scottish Government website.