Equality Act 2006

The Equality Act 2006 (c. 3) is an act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom covering the United Kingdom. The 2006 Act is a precursor to the Equality Act 2010, which combines all of the equality enactments within Great Britain and provide comparable protections across all equality strands. Those explicitly mentioned by the Equality Act 2006 include age; disability; sex; proposed, commenced or completed gender reassignment; race; religion or belief and sexual orientation. The changes it made were:

With the exception of the provision relating to goods and services discrimination in Northern Ireland on the grounds of sexual orientation, the Act relates to equality law in Great Britain, as a separate legislative framework exists for Northern Ireland which also has a separate equality body, the Equality Commission for Northern Ireland (though by and large reflecting the general approach to equality legislation in Great Britain).

In 1998, the Runnymede Trust published a report by Bhikhu Parekh calling for a new Equality Act which would consolidate and advance existing legislation.

The Equality Bill first appeared in the 2004/05 session, but did not make it into law before Parliament was dissolved ahead of the 2005 general election. In its manifesto, the Labour Party promised to reintroduce the Bill, which it duly accomplished upon its reinstatement in Westminster.

At this stage, only "religion or belief" was included in the anti-discrimination clauses. The Labour Party specifically did not wish to ban discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation.

After the bill was reintroduced, further lobbying by openly gay Peer the Lord Alli succeeded in forcing the government to add homophobic discrimination to the bill.

However, the lateness of this concession meant the extra provisions could not be included substantively in the primary legislation. Instead, legislators agreed to delegate the drafting of regulations to the government. After a public consultation and a protracted debate within the Cabinet, these were eventually laid before Parliament as the Equality Act (Sexual Orientation) Regulations 2007.

Further promised legislation also includes a provision to provide for protection for people in the provision of goods and services on the grounds of gender reassignment in order to comply with an EU Directive.