Changed approach to equality

The Coalition government formed shortly after the 2010 election immediately identified itself with a commitment to a small state with minimal government intervention (Ridell and Watson 2011). This is set out in the first paragraph of the Coalition Programme for Government which argues for the end to big government and the distribution of power in order to build a ‘free, fair and responsible society’:

We share a conviction that the days of big government are over; that centralisation and top-down control have proved a failure […] it is our ambition to distribute power and opportunity to people rather than hoarding authority within government. That way, we can build the free, fair and responsible society we want to see. (HM Government 2010a p7)

The focus on the end of ‘big government’ and the emphasis on the values of ‘freedom, fairness and responsibility’ were the main theme of both the Coalition Programme and the first joint press conference given by Liberal Democrat leader, Nick Clegg, and Conservative leader, David Cameron, shortly after the Coalition was formed. These shared values, and the ‘new politics’ they were said to represent, were central to a rhetorical strategy to demonstrate that the Coalition was not just a ‘marriage of convenience’ but a genuine partnership based on ideological agreement between the two parties (Atkins 2015). Freedom was defined in terms of individual choice and the transfer of power from government to the individual as set out in the quote above. Fairness was identified as removing barriers to social mobility:

We both want a Britain where social mobility is unlocked; where everyone, regardless of background, has the chance to rise as high as their talents and ambition allow (HM Government 2010a p7)

Responsibility meant managing the economy responsibly through cutting the deficit, identified as the most important priority for the Coalition in the Programme which stated in large type that ‘The deficit reduction programme takes precedence over any of the other measures in this document’ (HM Government 2010a p35). However

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responsibility also meant fostering personal and social responsibility when linked to increasing people’s freedom ‘to make their own choices’. In this context the smaller state was not only an unavoidable outcome of the programme of public spending cuts, but necessary in order to increase individual freedom. Even where change in behaviour was seen as desirable this should be achieved not through rules and regulations but through supporting and enabling people to make better choices for themselves:

There has been the assumption that central government can only change people’s behaviour through rules and regulations. Our government will be a much smarter one, shunning the bureaucratic levers of the past and finding intelligent ways to encourage, support and enable people to make better choices for themselves (HM Government 2010a p7-8)

This rejection of ‘rules and regulations’ and ‘bureaucratic levers’ in favour of fairness, freedom and individual responsibility through a smaller state and dispersal of power to the individual was continued in the Government’s Equalities Strategy published in late 2010 and in an accompanying speech by Theresa May, then the Minister for Women and Equality. This speech explicitly distanced the new Government’s approach to equality from that taken by the previous Labour Government. The introduction to the Equality Strategy makes it clear that the strategy ‘sets out a new approach to Equality’ (HM Government 2010b p5) while May’s speech talks about her desire to ‘turn around the equalities agenda’. This ‘new approach’ is framed as a rejection of what equality has ‘come to mean’, presumably under the previous government;

Too often the word ‘equality’ has been misused and misunderstood because it has come to mean political correctness, social engineering, form filling and box ticking (HM Government 2010b p6).

The critique here is of an approach to equality that is both bureaucratic (form filling and box ticking) and represents an unjustified interference in individual freedoms (social engineering) based on political ideology rather than an understanding of

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‘human nature’. This is reinforced in the conclusion to the strategy, which argues that:

only if we work with the grain of human nature, not against it, will we achieve the fairer, more equal and more prosperous society that we all want to see (HM Government 2010b p24).

This new approach involved several elements; a framing of action by the previous government as bureaucratic and ‘politically correct’ as seen above; a move towards an individualistic model of equality based on fairness and equal treatment; and a rejection of government action as the best way to achieve equality in favour of a strategy based on empowering individuals and business to ‘do the right thing’. The move towards an individualistic approach to equality is set out early in the Equality Strategy where the Government’s approach is defined as one that ‘moves away from treating people as groups or ‘equality strands’ and instead recognises that ‘we are a nation of 62 million individuals’. (HM Government 2010b p8). This focus on the individual appears throughout the document. Although the strategy includes examples of collective disadvantage, (for example the pay gap, high unemployment rates faced by BAME men, barriers to accessing services for disabled people), the majority of the language used focusses on individual experience; ‘no one’ should face disadvantage because of who they are or what they believe. The need to ‘recognise people’s individuality’ as opposed to the ‘identity politics of the past’ is repeated at several points in the document. Again this is matched by the language used in Theresa May’s speech which repeats the phrase ‘we are a nation of 62

million individuals’. This fits with the definition of equality that the strategy is based on. While the various strategy documents and consultation papers that informed the Equality Act recognised a wide range of definitions of equality, the Coalition strategy focusses on just two: ‘equal treatment and equal opportunities’. Theresa May’s speech goes further, arguing that ‘no government should try to ensure equal outcomes for everyone’, ruling out equality of outcome as an aim for the Coalition. The agenda of equal treatment and equal opportunities is defined by May as being about ‘fairness’ with the phrase ‘it’s not fair that…’ repeatedly used to introduce different examples of inequality. This links the Equality Strategy to the commitment to fairness in the Coalition’s Programme for Government described above. This focus on fairness, rather than equality is used by May to counter the accusations that

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the Government’s (then proposed) spending cuts would be likely to increase inequality as she argues that ‘fairness includes dealing responsibly with the deficit; ‘it is not “unfair” to tackle the record deficit. What is unfair is leaving our children to pay off the debts.’ The exact meaning of the term fairness is unclear – as Hamnett (2013) has argued its illusiveness is part of its political appeal as it can mean whatever the hearer wants it to mean. This vagueness about the meaning of fairness means that May can use the term both as a synonym for equality and as a

justification for policies that might have the impact of increasing inequality. May goes on to argue that the claim that spending cuts will unfairly hit women is ‘fundamentally flawed’ because women are not a homogeneous group:

And let me also say that I reject the fundamentally flawed idea that tackling the deficit will unfairly hit the single homogeneous group labelled “women”. There are over 31 million women in the UK - each of them is an individual and each of them will be affected differently by the changes we are making (May 2010).

This argument goes beyond saying that failure to tackle the deficit would be unfair on the next generation to call the whole process of assessing impact of policy on groups (rather than individuals) into question by saying that impact cannot be assessed collectively because each member of a group has to be considered as an individual. As the previous chapter outlined the process of public sector duties to consider equality grew out of a recognition that previous anti-discrimination laws had failed to address collective experiences of structural inequality. May’s comments here, along with the argument that ‘we are a nation of 62 million individuals’ appear to conclude that such a structural approach is not only undesirable but also

impossible. This is an example of both the dissolving of groups into individuals warned of by Young (1997) and of the tendency observed by Ahmed (2007) for the individualisation of difference to conceal systemic inequalities, explored in the literature review.

Alongside a focus on fairness for the individual both the Strategy and May’s speech position this new approach as a rejection of legislation as a solution to the problem of inequality. Both repeatedly argue that although legislation has worked in the past ‘we cannot tackle these issues by simply passing more legislation’ and that

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‘legislation is not a panacea for the continuing gaps in inequality that we all face (HM Government 2010b p7/8). The continued existence of inequality is used in both the Strategy and speech as evidence that previous approaches to equality through legislation are unlikely to succeed in the future. Both conclude that a new approach, defined in terms of reducing Government intervention is needed. According to May; it is ‘not about government dictating what people and businesses should do - it’s about giving people and businesses the chance to choose what is right for them’, continuing the focus on a smaller state in the Programme for Government. This includes greater involvement in community groups, faith groups and charities in delivering public services since ‘these groups are often better at drawing in under- represented people than government’ and increased transparency to allow

communities to hold local services to account.