Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg has called for the Equality Act to be repealed, arguing that it actually stops people being equal under the law.
Speaking to GB News, he said: “The Equality Act 2010 was a fundamental change in how we legislate in this country.
“It was a move from essentially an English legal approach to a continental one, moving away from this idea that you should have negative rights, that you are allowed to do things unless the state says you are not allowed to, to positive rights, you must do certain things, or else you are in breach of some law and you can be penalised for it.
“And this has had an effect across the public sector, with the public sector equality duty requiring legions of people doing DEI, diversity, equality, or equity and inclusion, and if they don’t do it, breaking the law.
“And this has led to perverse consequences. It’s led to positive discrimination. It has led to organisations like MI6, the Bank of England, and others having internships that exclude the white working-class boys because they don’t tick the right box, and it’s exclusively available for ethnic minorities, creating discontent in the country at large, and no equality either.
“It came in at the end of the long period of Labour government as an effort, supposedly, to round up, to consolidate all the legislation that had been passed since the 1960s in relation to equality.
“But it didn’t just do that. It was sold as doing that, but it went further to make this fundamental philosophical change, so that you were looking for equality of outcome tied up in this nasty word, equity.
“Equality of outcome is nonsense. It’s rubbish. It means that people who are not competent must be deemed to be competent, so that you get the right outcome. It is what Marxism is all about.
“What you want is equality of opportunity, as far as you can achieve that, and you can never achieve it perfectly, so that people, then, on their merit, on their activity, on their energy, can succeed in life.
“You don’t want to handicap those who will storm ahead and do better than others. You want to allow the tall poppies to grow. The Equality Act stopped that, and I’m glad to say that the Prosperity Institute has come up with a proposal.
“It is suggesting that either we scrap the act altogether, or it’s fundamentally reformed, or it’s tinkered with. Tinkering is no good. Repeal is the way forward.
“There should be one law for all of us. One law saying we’re all equal under the law.
“It’s actually broadly what we’ve said since Magna Carta.”
