Move could lead to companies being sued for unlimited damages, Tory MPs have warnedRishi Sunak has been accused of squandering Brexit freedoms after quietly introducing sweeping EU equality rules into British law.
New regulations, driven through Parliament without fanfare, “gold-plate” judgments by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) and create a “carte blanche” for companies to be sued for “unlimited damages”, Conservative MPs have warned.
The changes amount to a significant expansion of New Labour’s Equality Act, which Mr Sunak once claimed had “allowed every kind of woke nonsense to permeate public life” and “must stop”.
Ministers say the changes brought “necessary protections” from EU case law into domestic law, before ECJ judgments ceased to apply in Britain this year following Britain’s exit from the EU.
But Tory MPs have criticised the Government for adopting the measure and say it goes further than some ECJ rulings.
Lawyers believe the laws could, for example, allow workers who care for disabled family members to sue firms for “indirect discrimination” on grounds of disability if they are barred from working from home.
The new laws took effect last month, four years after Brexit, without any debate in the Commons or Lords chambers. No announcement was made to the media.
The changes provoked a furious response from leading Brexiteers including Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg, Sir Bill Cash, Sir John Hayes and Martin Howe KC, who has advised the European Research Group. Sir Jacob, Sir Bill and Sir John all refused to vote in favour of the regulations.
Sir Jacob said: “Not only people who voted for Brexit, but people who didn’t, would think that implementing ECJ judgments in any form is simply weird. We have left the EU.”
He added: “I cannot understand why the Government wishes to put more burdens on businesses and add to the Equality Act’s damage to our economic vibrancy.”
Sir John said: “It’s not good enough for a Conservative government to let the ratchet move further on. The vote for Brexit was in some sense a cry for help from the law-abiding, patriotic, hard-working majority. They are desperate for more conservatism, not less.”
Sir Bill added: “This was done, in my opinion, by virtue of extremely bad advice. Nobody seems to have quite grasped how important these issues are.”
Mr Howe questioned why ministers were “behaving as if we are under an obligation to follow these judgments as part of our law when we are under absolutely no obligation to do so”.
Addressing MPs before voting against the legislation, Miriam Cates, a prominent Conservative MP, said it would “undermine our understanding of discrimination rather than to strengthen it ... by gold-plating an obscure piece of foreign case law that essentially allows someone without a protected characteristic to piggyback off someone who does”.
It could create “almost a carte blanche for individuals to bring indirect discrimination cases on almost any grounds and with unlimited potential damages”, she added.