Why does Reform want to tear up the vote-winning Equality Act?

The latest stage in Nigel Farage’s ever-growing ‘war on woke’ could help propel him to Downing Street – and will make life worse for everyone, not just wheelchair-users like me, says James Moore

My first reaction to news that Reform UK, if it were elected to form the next government, would scrap the Equality Act was neither fear nor anger, but bewilderment.

For what harm has this useful piece of legislation from 2010 – which protects people from discrimination, harassment and victimisation in the workplace and in wider society – ever done to Nigel Farage and his followers?

Far from ushering in a vexatious and legalistic Götterdämmerung, as its critics warned when it was brought in by a previous, competent Labour government, it has become part of the fabric of British life, a social safety net as indisputable as the welfare system and our free-at-the-point-of-use National Health Service.

The anti-discrimination legislation has, for instance, made it unlawful to discriminate against someone or treat them less fairly because of nine “protected” characteristics. To that end, it offers protections for the almost 38 million people who follow a religious faith; the estimated 11 million people who belong to an ethnic minority; the 10.4 million people with disabilities, either physical or mental; the 2 million lesbians, gays and bisexuals; and the hundreds of thousands of trans-identifying people who have either undergone a medical, legal or social process to reassign their sex or are proposing to do so.

It gives peace of mind against direct discrimination and victimisation in the workplace to 835,000 pregnant women every year, thanks to the protected characteristic of pregnancy and maternity.

In fact, anyone who has a sex and an age is guaranteed protections – against sexism and ageism. So that’s literally every single one of us.

The Equality Act is, for the most part, an uncontroversial part of everyday life, merely establishing some rules of the game. Don’t discriminate. Play fair. That sort of thing. It’s all very… British.

So who – aside from the odd LGBT+ activist keen to make a vexatious point against, say, a Christian bakery – could argue with any of that?

Well, me for one. When it comes to my own protected characteristic – disability – I think the legislation has proven wholly inadequate. Don’t believe me? Strap yourself into a wheelchair and try navigating London via public transport in 2026.

Or take a quick look at Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson’s social media feed. One of our greatest Paralympians, she is regularly left stranded on trains when promised assistance fails to turn up.

The same goes for the BBC’s wheelchair-using security correspondent, Frank Gardner, who you’d be forgiven for thinking is routinely abandoned by airport ground staff and left to crawl off planes.

Or read the story of wheelchair-using Paralympian, Anne Wafula-Strike, who was left on a plane after returning from a championships, and who was humiliated when she wet herself on a long train journey because the disabled loos were out of service.

For those of us with impairments, proper equality remains but a distant dream. So what does Reform hope to gain here by scrapping this legislation? Grim though it may be, I worry such a move might be electorally popular.

This is a part of Reform’s wider “war on woke”, even though that’s not what the Act is for. It’s not the Equality Act’s fault, for instance, that foreign criminals have been able to demand a “right to a family life” and remain in the country upon their release from jail, outraging the families whose lives they have destroyed. That’ll be down to the European Convention on Human Rights (EHCR), which, I’m afraid, has had a habit of producing perverse rulings – and which Team Farage wants Britain to abandon.

I would hazard that even the most rabid Reform voter wouldn’t dream of shouting abuse at a wheelchair user in the street, as happens to me, repeatedly. I’m sure they’d also be only too happy to help you board a train when the numpties at a rail company don’t turn up, despite all the pre-arranging and promises.

But I fear many will still vote Reform without thinking about who will be adversely affected by the promise to do away with the Equality Act, making all kinds of discrimination legal.

In its way, it remains a fine piece of legislation, and one of which the nation ought to be proud. It is the enshrinement of decency. It isn’t broken. We should all beware the motives of those who would ever do away with it.