Chair of Hunting Kind says he has built legal case to obtain same protection as Roma and LGBTQ+ people
A pro-foxhunting group says it has prepared a legal case to try to prove that hunters are an ethnic minority whose hunts should be protected under equality laws.
Ed Swales, the chair of Hunting Kind, claims he has been advised by a leading human rights lawyer that hunters unequivocally qualify for legal protection under the UK Equality Act 2010.
Continue reading...Conservatives would change law so trans people could be excluded from single-sex spaces, if party wins election
Kemi Badenoch has said the Conservatives will change the Equality Act to rewrite the definition of sex and allow organisations to bar transgender women from single-sex spaces, including hospital wards and sports events.
The party will make clear that the protected characteristic of sex means biological sex, enabling those who wish to bar male-bodied people from organisations or activities to do so.
Continue reading...Campaigners say removal of blue badge parking to make way for new defences is in breach of Equality Act
Disability rights campaigners are planning a legal challenge against York council after it voted to ban blue badge parking on key streets in the city centre.
York Accessibility Action (YAA), an organisation founded by disabled York residents and carers, said the city has become a “no go zone” for many disabled people and there was now no suitable parking within 150 metres of the city centre.
Continue reading...Woman claims asylum housing staff ignored pleas for help when she was in pain while 35 weeks pregnant
A woman whose baby died is suing the Home Office for negligence over claims that staff at her asylum accommodation refused to call an ambulance when she was pregnant and bleeding.
The woman, who has asked to be named Adna, sought asylum in the UK in January 2020 after fleeing Angola. She was seven months pregnant when she was brought by police to Brigstock House asylum-support accommodation in Croydon.
Continue reading...Exclusive: government urged to activate part of Equality Act that would impose duty on public bodies to tackle inequality
The failure of successive governments to enact part of the Equality Act, which would have imposed a duty to address socio-economic disadvantage, has exacerbated inequalities in England during the coronavirus pandemic, a thinktank has claimed.
The Runnymede Trust’s report, Facts Don’t Lie, says that the public sector duty provision would have imposed a legal obligation on education authorities in England to ensure working class children on free school meals were fed properly while schools were shut and had access to laptops for remote learning.
Continue reading...The Garrick Club was founded in 1831 – a place where ‘actors and men of refinement and education might meet on equal terms’. Women were not allowed to be members and, almost 200 years on, that is still the case. Emily Bendell on why she is taking legal action against the Garrick and Amy Milne-Smith on the history of London’s clubland
Last year, businesswoman Emily Bendell was looking for a private members’ club where she could meet people after work and was surprised to discover that a number of clubs in central London still exclude women. She tells Mythili Rao why she has launched legal action against one of London’s last remaining gentlemen’s clubs, the Garrick, arguing that its men-only membership rules are a breach of equality legislation.
Mythili also talks to historian Amy Milne-Smith, author of London Clubland: A Cultural History of Gender and Class in late-Victorian Britain, about how these clubs first came into existence. She looks at the type of men who wanted to be members and why there has been a resurgence in popularity of these clubs. Is it escapism and nostalgia that is driving this?
Continue reading...