Do your duty for Equality
A quick history of our campaign to enact
the Socio Economic Duty
2009
Labour government propose placing a legal duty on all public sector institutions to reduce inequality between socio-economic groups.
“…public bodies will be in breach of their duty if they ignore evidence of socio-economic disadvantage or do not consider the issue in planning resources.”
Harriet Harman,
the Labour deputy leader,
2009
Theresa May becomes Home Secretary and the duty is scrapped
“[the duty is] ridiculous ... They thought they could make people's lives better by simply passing a law saying that they should be made better...That is why I am announcing today that we are scrapping Harman's law for good.”
Theresa May, the Home secretary at the time
2016
Poverty2Solutions is formed
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2018
We developed our policy ask of a Socio-economic Duty
We decided to focus on promoting the voice of lived experience as a way of bringing forward positive change for people living in poverty - starting with the Socio Economic Duty.
2019
We launched the
“Do your duty for equality” campaign
We held a number of influencing meetings with key opposition MP’s including Hariet Harman’ MP, Dawn Butler, MP, shadow Women and Equalities Minister, Margaret Greenwood, MP, Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions and Lyn Brown, MP, Shadow Minister for Treasury.
Labour Party conference 2019
We held a high-profile, professional and well-branded fringe event featured a panel of high-profile speakers at the Labour Party Conference in Brighton.
‘Taking our project to the LPC was great, I really liked it. I had never been to such an event, meeting MPs and public figures was something special, I felt some of the people really listened to us. We really need to keep meeting people and getting the message out there.”
Angela, ATD Fourth World
Team work made the dream work
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Meeting and speaking to policy makers
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Contributing to reports and other materials
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Designing, printing and making
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Mucking in and supporting each other
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Handing out flyers and canvasing at the conference
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Speaking at the fringe event
It went well…
“We will put class at the heart of Britain’s equality agenda and create a new ground for discrimination on the basis of socio-economic disadvantage.”
Labour 2019 Manifesto
In the media
The Big Issue makes us one of their top 100 Changemakers
2019
The new government has no intention to enact the duty so we concentrate on other things
2024
The momentum is back again!
New Labour Government Commits to enact the duty!
“Labour will enact the socio-economic duty in the Equality Act: Under section 1, public bodies are required to adopt transparent and effective measures to address the inequalities that result from differences in socio-economic status.”
