1st Special Report - Ensuring strong equalities legislation after the EU exit: Government Response to the Committee’s Seventh Report of Session 2016–17

This is the government's response, published 11 October 2017.

Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.

The government says it shares the Committee's goal of no erosion of equalities protections on leaving the EU, and states that it has "specifically committed to retain" the protections in the Equality Acts 2006 and 2010.

• On amending the Equality Act 2010 to mirror the Human Rights Act 1998, the government says it "considered the Committee's recommendations carefully" but sets out how the two Acts "differ in significant ways", including that public authorities already "must not breach the Equality Act unless required to do so by another Act".
• On the Great Repeal Bill, it says the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill converts EU law into domestic law at the point of exit, and that the Bill gives historic CJEU case law "the same binding, or precedent, status" as Supreme Court decisions.
• On cross-government working, it says the Government Equalities Office and DExEU have convened a cross-government working group, and that an Equality Analysis was published alongside the Bill although there is "no legal obligation" to do so.
• On funding, it says it is working with the Ministry of Justice to assess activities supported by the Rights, Equality and Citizenship Programme, and that it will "consider this as part of the negotiation" whether to participate in specific European programmes.

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