Conservatives will abolish the public sector duty enabling extremists to bring costly claims from prison
Daily Telegraph 10/06/26
How can it be that an Islamist double murderer can successfully sue the British state under our own laws, costing us more than £200,000? How can unequal treatment based on race or identity be official policy within the Civil Service, education and the NHS? And how can it be that guidelines for police appear to have led officers to handcuff Henry Nowak as he lay dying, prioritising instead his killer’s baseless cry of racism?
The behaviour of the police at the scene of Henry’s death is to be investigated. But – as my party’s leader, Kemi Badenoch, rightly said – they were following the guidance and training they had been given. This is not an excuse, but it is a wake-up call: the politics of race and identity are now hardwired into our public institutions, our public services and our laws.
One of the main culprits is the public sector equality duty (PSED), which the Conservatives are now committing to abolish. This is part of the Equality Act, which Kemi Badenoch has pledged to reform so that true equal treatment under the law is restored.
The PSED lies behind almost every equality and diversity-based recruitment drive, training, quango guidance and instance of de facto positive discrimination you have seen reported in the media. And it is interpreted and applied by judges, officials and diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) officers across the country in the most pernicious ways.
In addition to baking special treatment for certain groups into our public services, the PSED is hugely costly. Around 10,000 DEI staff work across the public sector, costing an estimated £427m per year.
Diversity requirements are built into procurement rules, with £61m being spent on HS2 suppliers chosen partly due to ethnicity, sex or other forms of protected characteristic. Diversity requirements are also built into public sector recruitment and HR policies, resulting in huge opportunity costs when candidates other than the best are chosen for important jobs.
One of the most troubling and perverse impacts of the PSED is on our criminal justice system, from the police to the Sentencing Council, the judiciary and the way equality laws are applied. The National Police Chiefs’ Council Anti-Racism Commitment explicitly sets a goal of “equality of policing outcomes” – regardless of actual trends in criminality – and says that fairness does not mean treating everyone the same.
Allegations of racism are prioritised over other considerations – even, in Henry Nowak’s case, a lethal stabbing. Sentencing guidelines point to factors such as ethnicity for judges to consider when assessing the vulnerability of an offender. The Judicial Diversity and Inclusion Strategy lays out increasing the number of black judges as a priority target.
The PSED enables those committed to identity politics to impose what amount to positive discrimination action practices on the bodies they run. Professor Lynne Berry, for example, has been named as David Lammy’s preferred candidate to chair the Judicial Appointments Commission. He has a track record of promoting DEI strategies and so-called “positive action” to recruit and promote based on identity.
The Duty gives rise to truly deranged litigation, providing a platform from which activist lawyers can bring lawsuits against the state. These have resulted in taxpayers’ money being extracted by convicted terrorists from within our prisons.
Last year Sahayb Abu, an Islamic State supporter serving a life sentence for plotting a sword and knife attack, successfully sued the Ministry of Justice for separating him in segregated confinement to stop him radicalising other inmates. The High Court ruled his treatment unlawful, partly on grounds of a breach of the PSED.
Cases like this come at considerable cost. In 2024 Fuad Awale – a double murderer who took a prison officer hostage – won a case against the Government on human rights grounds for prolonged detention in a close supervision centre. He was an Islamist found to hold extremist views. His legal fees alone cost more than £230,000, and he was awarded £7,500 in compensation. A breach of PSED requirements was one of the principal grounds on which the judge ruled in his favour.
The Duty has become a weapon even for convicted terrorists and those engaging in radicalisation of other criminals. It is used against those who guard them, and inhibits the ability of the state to incarcerate dangerous people safely and securely. When our laws allow those who hate our way of life to deploy those same laws against us, they are no longer fit for purpose. And they distort our ancient common law tradition of treating everyone as an individual, equal in rights and responsibilities.
The Conservatives will abolish the Public Sector Equality Duty entirely, and instead restore the principles of simple non-discrimination and equality before the law. People can plainly see that this objectivity has been lost, and that justice is no longer blind. The DEI ideology has run its course. It’s time to restore common sense to the law.
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