Recommendation 12

HM Government Acknowledged

41. We welcome the Committee’s attention to people who have experienced discrimination due to a combination of protected characteristics and share the view that this is unacceptable. 42. The UK has a strong history of protecting against direct and indirect discrimination and the Government is committed to reinforcing this, including through strengthening protections against dual discrimination. It is wrong, for example, that some Muslim women or women experiencing the menopause may be treated less favourably by an employer or service provider because of a particular combination of protected characteristics. The Equality Act 2010 has protections that enable people to challenge discrimination across a range of fields, including the provision of services, employment and recruitment processes. Acas also provides free impartial advice on workplace rights, rules and best practice, including guidance on Following discrimination law - Recruitment - Acas. We will explore with Acas options for enhancing their advice. 43. In April 2025, we launched the Equality law call for evidence, which sought evidence and views on a number of areas of equality policy to identify barriers to opportunity and seek expert views on how to overcome these barriers, including on how to strengthen protections against dual discrimination. We will be confirming our next steps after considering the responses. 44. We will explore effective and proportionate ways to encourage employers to promote fairness and transparency throughout the recruitment process. 45. The Government agrees with the Committee that visible role models can be a valuable source of inspiration for people to look up to. This is especially the case as underrepresentation in our workplace remains a persistent barrier to unlocking the most out of the human talent which exists in our diverse nation. Everyone deserves to be treated fairly at work and receive equal opportunities for progression, regardless of sex, ethnicity, religion or disability. 46. We must ensure that we are consistent in championing those whose talent is matched only by the scale of the opportunity available in this country. We must celebrate the Muslim women whose contributions to our society create new possibilities for others. We therefore welcome the Committee’s recommendation for the Government and major employers to highlight the achievements of Muslim women in key industries. Together with MHCLG and major employers, the Government’s Race Equality Unit will host a roundtable to shine a light on Muslim women inspiring meaningful change in a range of industries, driving up employment and representation as part of our programme of renewal. 47. To promote equality of opportunity in the workplace, we are taking significant steps to introduce mandatory ethnicity and disability pay- gap reporting for large employers. Our public consultation on mandatory ethnicity and disability pay gap reporting concluded in June 2025. Following a thorough review of the feedback and responses, the government response to the consultation was published on 25 March 2026. 48. The Labour Force Survey (LFS), conducted by the ONS, collects relevant information across all categories. Labour market status is derived for all people within the survey based on whether people meet the international definition of employment, or unemployment or are outside of the labour force. 49. Each quarter, the Office for National Statistics publishes information from the LFS on labour market status by sex and ethnicity - A09: Labour market status by ethnic group. While religion is collected in England, Wales and Scotland, the ONS has never included religion as part of the regular LFS outputs. The sample size available for many of the religious groups, differentiated in the dataset, would mean that statistics would have high sampling variability, and therefore volatility over time. This would allow for an overall picture of comparison between different religions by sex, but it would only establish broad trends in changes when looked at over a long time span rather than reliable pictures of movements from period to period or comparisons across groups within a specific, short period. 50. Given the different collection of earnings data and the relative prevalence of different religions within the dataset, it is unlikely that earnings statistics from the quarterly LFS datasets would provide a reliable picture of earnings across different religious groups. However, an amalgamation of samples, from the first and fifth interviews, and boost cases, may mean that more meaningful statistics could be derived from the annual version of the survey, the Annual Population Survey. Again, this is likely to be limited to a broad overview of trends over a long span of time, rather than reliable comparison metrics from period to period or of differences in groups for a specific time period. 51. Information on religion is only expected to be available from Transformed Labou