AN SNP MP has condemned a Tory call to abolish a duty for teachers, nurses and police officers to consider protected characteristics enshrined in equality law.
The Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED) requires all public sector workers to consider how their work might have an impact on people because of their age, sex, sexuality, religion and race.
But Tory leader Kemi Badenoch – in a major speech on Tuesday morning – said her party would scrap the duty if in power, saying that tragedies such as the Nottingham stabbings, the Southport attack and Manchester Arena bombing could have been stopped if public authorities did not fear being called racist.
Speaking on Politics Live on Tuesday, Pete Wishart hit out at the call to scrap the duty and said it was “badly wrong”.
The veteran MP recalled when he was first elected to Westminster in 2001.
“There were a whole range of issues that we had to deal with when it came to equalities,” he said.
“Homophobic abuse was just a standard thing that we encountered. Racial discrimination was baked into most of the public work that we did. It was a terrible time and we've made real progress, real progress in terms of trying to create a better place for everybody to live in all our communities right across Scotland – by promoting an agenda that everybody's life is important and matters.”
Wishart added: “And to think that this work has concluded is utterly madness.
“There's lots of other examples when it comes to either gender pay differentials, when it comes to the way that black people are treated in all our structures in society, there's a huge agenda still to go on.”
He went on: “I heard Kemi Badenoch saying that she's still committed to the Equality Act. Good, and I'm pleased about that, at least that's one thing we've got here. But to hollow it out like this. Give it no teeth, give it no means to try and achieve an objective, I think is just so badly wrong.
“This is the wrong thing to do, it is the wrong response. We should always try to continue to strive that everybody gets an opportunity, everybody gets their chances with their life, regardless of the background that they come from, regardless of the skin colour they were born with, regardless of sexual orientation. Let's try and get back to that agenda for goodness sake. Not this, not taking away equalities and trying to set the clock back.”
Badenoch’s speech comes just a week after a political row broke out over whether the police response to the murder of Henry Nowak in Southampton last December was influenced by equality law.
The 18-year-old student was handcuffed by police officers who ignored his pleas that he had been stabbed as he lay dying after his British-born killer, Vickrum Digwa, claimed to have been the victim of a racist attack.
