Do your duty for equality and support our campaign to enact the Socio-Economic Duty.
The Socio-Economic Duty is the missing piece in equality legislation. Whilst a wide range of inequalities including age, gender and race are included, socio-economic status remains a glaring omission. This means the government has no duty to think about reducing poverty and inequality in their policy and decision making.
If combined with the meaningful engagement of people with lived experience, the Socio-Economic Duty has the power to produce better policies, services and - ultimately - a fairer society.
“‘It is now time to rethink how decisions are made and enacting the socio-economic duty alongside developing best practice guidance gives us a wonderful opportunity to work together in a true partnership for the good of all.’
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What you need to know:
The socio-economic duty is the missing piece in UK equality legislation. Whilst a wide range of inequalities, such as age, gender and race are included, socio-economic status is not covered. This is a glaring omission.
Enacting the duty would rectify this. It would create a legal imperative for public authorities to pay ‘due regard’ to the desirability of reducing the inequalities caused by socio-economic disadvantage and poverty in their policy making and budgetary decisions. This would help to drive forward better policies and services and ultimately create a fairer society.
To ensure the duty has the transformative approach intended by the spirit of the law, it is crucial that guidance on best practice implementation and monitoring is developed in partnership with people who have lived experience of socio-economic disadvantage.
This work should include groups like Poverty2Solutions; ‘experts by experience’.
Poverty 2 Solutions are working tirelessly to campaign for the enactment of the duty, and to begin the process of transformative change that this would represent. We believe its enactment would enliven democracy, give voice to those with lived experience of socio-economic disadvantage, and improve social and economic futures for us all.
Do your duty for equality….
Read our briefing
The briefing sets out why Poverty2Solutions are calling on the UK government to ‘do your duty for equality’, that is: enact the socio-economic duty and develop guidance on best practice implementation and monitoring in partnership with people who have lived experience of socio-economic disadvantage.
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If you have personal experience of living in poverty we’d like to hear from you - please share your story with us on Twitter. Or to get involved with the project you can get in touch at info@poverty2solutions.org.
