Celebrating Diversity? The Implementation of the European None-Discrimination Directives in the UK

Abstract

This article will look at the Regulations introduced in the UK for the implementation of the EU non-discrimination Directives adopted in 2000.¹ It provides an overview of the new legislation introduced in the UK to protect again discrimination on grounds of religion and belief, and sexual orientation as well as the proposals on age discrimination.² These are all new grounds of discrimination, which were not previously covered in British discrimination law. This article also looks briefly at the amendments introduced to the Race Relations Act and Disability Discrimination Act to comply with the requirements of the directives. The government has taken a piecemeal approach to amending the law, and in the process has made discrimination law in the UK hugely complicated and somewhat chaotic. The end result has not furthered the overall aim of equality as far as it might.