EQUALITY ACT 2010
The Equality Act 2010 distils and extends existing discrimination legislation in order to provide a simpler, more consistent and more effective legal framework for preventing discrimination. The Act will be implemented in stages from 1 October 2010.

Pregnancy and maternity, gender reassignment and marriage and civil partnership will all exist as protected characteristics in their own right from 1 October. In an effort to achieve greater consistency across the nine protected characteristics, the Equality Act - among other things - extends the concept of direct discrimination to include discrimination by reason of perception or association and standardises the definition of indirect discrimination. It also extends the protection against third-party harassment across seven of the nine protected characteristics.

We look in detail at how the Act will change the face of disability discrimination law by: simplifying the definition of disability; introducing the concept of indirect disability discrimination; replacing the concept of disability-related discrimination with that of "discrimination arising from disability"; and regulating pre-employment enquiries about an applicant's health.

Jeya Thiruchelvam
Equal opportunities editor,
XpertHR