Daniel Dieppe: Labour is set to expand the bogus equality law that bankrupted Birmingham

Daniel Dieppe is a researcher for the think tank Civitas.

Twenty-two-inch rats; Army experts summoned to help the council; children playing amongst filth and rubbish; agency workers running away from rats as they try to collect rubbish. The world has seen the shocking images of Birmingham’s bin crisis, but what was the cause of it?

The chief culprit is not the Labour Council (though they are not without their flaws), but an unaddressed and devastating section in the 2010 Equality Act – the ‘full right to equal pay’.

In September 2023, Birmingham City Council – the largest local authority in Europe – declared effective bankruptcy in a section 114 notice. The Council was unequivocal about why this happened: after already shelling out £1.4 billion in equal pay claims since 2010, it was inundated with yet another £700 million equal pay claim.

This figure, the Council explained, is roughly equal to their entire annual revenue budget, and could not be matched by dwindling reserves.

One might assume, upon hearing this extremely bulging figure, that Labour’s Birmingham City Council is a hotbed of institutional, systematic discrimination and sexism.

Yet the equal pay claim shows nothing of the sort. The root cause was the council paying predominantly male road workers and bin men to leave work early and get paid for a full shift – if they had completed their work. This was introduced under Covid regulations to minimise the risk of transmissions, but was not offered to the predominantly female in-house staff. It had, in other words, little to do with sex discrimination.

Birmingham Council, accounting for the sheer cost of equal pay, described it as ‘one of the biggest challenges this council has ever faced.’ Westminster-sourced commissioners, who now run the council, introduced an ‘unprecedented’ budget with hundreds of millions of cuts and rises to council tax.

Children’s services, adult social care, housing, homelessness prevention and youth services were cut. The arts budget was cut to almost nothing, streetlights dimmed, and bin collection was made fortnightly. There was mild relief in Birmingham earlier this year when council tax only rose by 7.5 per cent, not the expected ten per cent.

The bin dispute centres around equal pay. The trade union Unite, representing the striking binmen, opposes the broke council’s decision to remove Waste Recycling and Collection Officer (WRCO) roles, which they claim is important to health and safety, and opportunities for pay progression of up to £8,000 per annum. Birmingham, in response, claim that WRCO could cause more equal pay claims, as it is overwhelmingly performed by men.

The Birmingham logjam, therefore, is caused by an unstoppable force (trade unions) meeting an immovable object (the 2010 Equality Act).

Birmingham is hardly an isolated case. There are dozens of equal pay claims against local authorities, and the lists only gets bigger by the month. The private sector is not immune, either. Next lost an equal pay case last year (it is appealing) and the supermarkets Asda, Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Morrisons, and Co-op face equal pay claims from over 100,000 current and former staff. The final cost for Asda, who have the largest equal pay claim, could be as much as £1.2bn.

The most extraordinary thing, beyond all this, was the Government’s decision – in the midst of the bin strike – to quietly begin its consultation into the most radical expansion of the Equality Act and equal pay legislation to date. In the consultation, the Government reaffirmed its plan to extend the ‘right to equal pay’ to ethnic minorities and disabled people through an Equality (Race and Disability) bill.

Except, as has become apparent, there is nothing ‘full’, nothing ‘equal’ and no ‘right’ about this ideological expansion. Paying someone less because of their sex has been illegal since 1975, for race since 1976, and for disability since 1995. To call it the ‘right to equal pay’ is undeniably Orwellian doublespeak. It should be called ‘same pay for different work’, as it undermines the rules of supply and demand.

Alongside the extension of same pay for different work, the Government announced a host of powers for a brand new quango – the Equal Pay Regulatory and Enforcement Unit. As well as enforcing mandatory equal pay claims (a separate problem in itself), the Government intends for the unit to litigate employers, pursue investigations, undertake research, and publish reports on equal pay. The unit will build ‘capacity within allied sectors, organisations and communities’ and work with trade unions.

This remarkable quango will make the trade of equal pay activist law firms obsolete – simply for the fact that they will now be taxpayer-funded. Likewise, overnment lobbyists will now become inhouse, permanently lobbying from the inside, on taxpayer money.

If there is one thing the Government should do to solve the Birmingham bin impasse, it is this: scrap same pay for different work legislation in the Equality Act.