On Thursday December 17 Liz Truss set out government’s move to root out inequality that impacts people across the UK.
Key takings from the speech include:
- New evidence-based approach to tackle geographical inequality and break down barriers to social mobility – moving away from current way of thinking
- Equality Hub to relocate to the North and take on sponsorship of the Social Mobility Commission to give this agenda real teeth and coherence
She also set out the current problem with the debate around equality in this country:
“Too often, the equality debate has been dominated by a small number of unrepresentative voices, and by those who believe people are defined by their protected characteristic and not by their individual character.”
The speech marks a new approach to the Government’s equality policy, with a commitment to individual dignity and opportunity at its heart. The Minister will also launch the Equality Data Programme in the speech, the large-scale project will gather data in order to better understand the barriers that people from every background are facing across the UK.
This is a significant change from the previous work of the Equality Hub, which often focused on people with a single protected characteristic and compared outcomes narrowly within those groups. The Minister set out why this approach hasn’t worked, and has often created further divides.
