It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Allin-Khan. I draw attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests as a serving Surrey county councillor.

I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend Andrew Rosindell for securing today’s debate. For all the reasons that he so ably laid out, it is now well overdue that we honestly assess the impact of the Equality Act on people in the workplace and wider society and consider whether there is need for change. It is best practice to always reassess and measure outcomes, rather than assuming that something is working as intended.

I wish to focus on the public sector equality duty in the Act and on its broader impact on our public institutions. It was undoubtedly a well-meaning Clause. However, as is often the case, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. The public sector equality duty in section 149 imposes a legal burden on public bodies to

“have due regard to the need to…eliminate discrimination…advance equality of opportunity…and…foster good relations” between people with different protected characteristics. That all sounds rather wonderful, but the reality is that it has become a powerful, often unaccountable force that we see distorting public priorities and fuelling ideological dogma. We see local councils that are more concerned with ensuring that residents are anti-racist than with ensuring that bus services to schools and colleges are adequate. We see them painting rainbows on our roads rather than fixing them, and speaking warm words about the importance of accessibility for disabled people while failing to cut hedges back or adjust bus stops.

We all undoubtedly support the ambition that everyone—no matter their protected, or indeed unprotected, characteristics—be given the same opportunities, be treated fairly and have the chance to thrive and prosper through hard work and talent. However, looking at the impact that the public sector duty has had, I believe that it was a mistake to think that that was the answer. If anything, it has highlighted difference, undermined meritocracy and, in some cases, pitted groups against each other. It is now often helpful to someone’s career or studies to be oppressed in some shape or form, leading to the absurd situation in which some of the most talented people are blocked. That does no one any favours, and certainly not our country.

EDI, or DEI as some people call it, has become a lucrative industry. Every public body, from local district councils and hospitals to police forces and schools, is now required to evidence, audit, review and revise policies in the light of how they impact protected groups, regardless of the outcomes that those policies deliver. A 2022 Policy Exchange report found that major public institutions are spending tens of millions of pounds annually on equality, diversity and inclusion roles, as well as training and compliance measures, all to ensure that they tick the right boxes against the public sector equality duty.

The issue is not just the cost. What makes the public sector equality duty potentially damaging is the way in which it enables particular ideologies to seep into institutions and spaces that ought to be wholly neutral on such issues. Because the duty is so broadly framed, and because it requires anticipatory rather than reactive compliance, it has given rise to a culture of pre-emptive overreach. Public bodies feel compelled to insert themselves into questions of speech, behaviour and belief that ought to lie outside their remit. More and more, we see a move away from facts and evidence towards fashionable beliefs within institutions that should be impartial. We see that in councils demanding that their staff include pronouns in their signatures, in police forces being trained to detect unconscious bias, and even in the Welsh Government, where they have pledged to make the country anti-racist.

There is nothing neutral or impartial about such choices. They reflect specific world views, and by embedding them in policy and practice, the public sector equality duty is demanding adherence to such ideas as a precondition for working in the public sector or using its services. That cannot be right. It is little wonder that public confidence has been eroded. More in Common’s “Shattered Britain” report tells of swathes of the public who now view public institutions with mistrust, partly because within such institutions a narrow set of values now dominates, and any dissent is smacked down as bigotry or even dismissed as far-right.

Like all Members present, no doubt, I have heard accounts from my constituents of what that looks like in practice. I have heard from people who feel baffled and confused by all the focus on diversity, unconscious bias and pronouns, rather than on things that actually affect their day-to-day life in a meaningful way, such as fly-tipping and potholes.

My central point is that the public sector equality duty does not just waste taxpayer money; it actively distorts how services are delivered and allows ideology to permeate them. We have seen NHS trusts wasting fortunes on a parade of diversity-focused roles. In the case of NHS Fife, the bureaucratic machinery was brought to bear against a nurse for objecting to a biological man entering her changing room. Meanwhile, West Yorkshire police felt that it would be a valid use of £4.5 million to send their entire workforce away to be lectured for two days on the slave trade. We can only wonder if that time would have been better spent trying to solve some crimes.

I am of the view that we should reconsider whether the public sector equality duty is fit for purpose, and whether a return to a model under which equality means equal treatment for all would have better outcomes.