The brutal stabbing of 18-year-old student Henry Nowak in Southampton has triggered a national conversation about “two-tiered” policing, racism and accountability. But while this new debate is noisy and heated, it is quietly being informed by a single word – “equity”.
Apparently unobjectionable, seemingly even virtuous, the term “equity” has spread through the official lexicon of the state and its services over the past decade, marking a subtle but dramatic shift in how those services treat different groups within the public at large. As it has done so, it has frequently come to replace the word “equality” in policies, training and public statements.
The distinction between the two may sound semantic. But for policy-makers, legal experts and campaigners, the difference is profound. “Most people probably use ‘equity’ and ‘equality’ interchangeably and think they are roughly the same,” says Simon Fanshawe, managing director of consultancy Diversity By Design.
In fact, he explains, they reflect profoundly different outlooks, with “equality” focussing on “equality of opportunity” while “equity” aims to engineer “equality of outcome” – despite the distortions or discriminations that might be required to orchestrate it.
“‘Equality’ is nuanced and about the individual’s situation,” says Fanshawe. It is not about treating everyone the same – a notion he considers “ludicrous”: “You don’t treat someone in a wheelchair the same as someone who is walking. What you do is provide people with the platform that gives them an equality of opportunity and the fairness to live well.”
Crucially though, he adds, ‘You don’t do that on [an aggregate] basis, you have to look at the individual.” But “equity” results in the notion “that any disparity in the data between ‘black’ and ‘white’ or between ‘men’ and ‘women’ must be racism or sexism”.
For Baroness Kishwer Falkner, former chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, this conceptual leap from equality to equity is a disturbing development. She points out that in the UK it is “equality” that is the law, not equity.
“The law emphasises equality of opportunity,” she says. “For example, to accommodate a disabled student, we place a ramp up into a building so they can take their exam. No one is saying the person needing the ramp would be marked to a lower or higher standard because they’re in a wheelchair, but we’ve enabled the person to get there in the first place so they’re equally able to take it.
“Yet when you read guidance such as the Hampshire Police guidance [which was involved in the Henry Nowak case], it talked of making arrest and charge rates ‘equal’ between groups. That is simply wrong.”
[ University student Henry Nowak was killed on his way home from a night out in Southampton ]
Far from a minor semantic difference, then, the swapping of “equality” for “equity” actually represents a significant change in approach – and one potentially at variance with the law. As such, the public might have expected significant consultation and debate before its adoption by major state and private-sector services.
Instead, Telegraph analysis of guidance documents shows it has spread widely but quietly, from policing to the NHS, higher education to the wider workplace.
“To me, diversity is a very good thing,” says Falkner. “But what started happening was that organisations tended to move to ‘virtue-signalling’ so that they were ‘inclusive’ of everyone and ‘equity’ was an element of that. Organisations which add ‘equity’ to their policies are ‘gold-plating’ them unnecessarily.
“The really worrying part is that they’re doing it quietly because they wish to appear ‘progressive’. They’re following trends rather than sticking to our own well-developed laws.”
[ Baroness Falkner: ‘Organisations add “equity” to their policies to seem progressive’ ]
Perhaps unsurprisingly, equity policies are now particularly embedded in UK universities. Research last year by the Committee for Academic Freedom (CAF) found that at least 20 universities across the country now understand the “E” in the acronym DEI (Diversity, Equality, Inclusion) to refer not to “equality” but “equity”. These include Bristol, Leeds, Sheffield, and the London School of Economics.
“The term ‘equity’ is increasingly being used in universities and DEI departments to ensure equal outcomes for under-represented groups – ie. giving them a leg up where that’s necessary to achieve equality of outcome,” says Dr Edward Skidelsky, director of CAF.
“Many have policies which include positive discrimination or affirmative action, and that’s very concerning because one should aim to treat all students and all academics equally and not give them special consideration because they belong to some group. That’s unjust.
“Students and academics should be treated on their own merits. It’s deeply patronising and insulting to try to favour people because of their background.”
Skidelsky says he believes that this kind of policy actually “encourages racism and sexism”.
“It’s very divisive,” he says. “Because if, for instance, you have a black professor, people say things like ‘You know why he got the job, don’t you?’ and that could be completely unfair, but the suspicion is already planted in people’s minds if you have an ‘equity’ policy in place.”
In healthcare, several NHS trusts – including East London, Bristol and Weston and UCL – have explicitly adopted “equity” either alongside or in place of “equality” in their DEI strategies. Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust describes itself as on a “journey to become a pro-equity organisation” – but this has come under intense scrutiny and criticism this year.
In February, during a public inquiry into the brutal murders of three people in Nottingham, it emerged that professionals at the Trust decided not to detain the killer Valdo Calocane after considering research that noted the over-representation of young black men detained after being sectioned on mental health grounds.
[ Critics have claimed that the treatment of Valdo Calocane, who murdered three people in Nottingham, was influenced by concerns over the number of black men being sectioned ]
A search on the gov.uk website today shows there are 354 results for “health equity” and just 71 for “health equality”, with an acceleration of publications mentioning the term through the 2010s. In 2010, for example, the Coalition government presented its vision for the health service. It was entitled “Equity and Excellence: Liberating the NHS”. Seven years later, Public Health England, the since-scrapped quango which, by its own definition, existed “to… reduce health inequalities”, published instead a “Health Equity Report”. It was subtitled “Focus on ethnicity”.
“When the NHS determines that it will favour one group of people over another, it betrays the values on which it is based,” says Gareth Lyon, head of health and social care at think tank Policy Exchange. “Any attempt to replace ‘equality’ with ‘equity’ means introducing a subjective value judgment about perceived challenges or history which has no place in a universal public service.
“NHS trusts should judge each individual case on the basis of clinical need. Polling for Policy Exchange shows that the public want the NHS to focus on improving GP access and treatment for life-threatening conditions – the health service should be prioritising these areas and avoiding this kind of damaging, distracting mission creep.”
In the world of employment, large companies, too, began to adopt the new word, though the shifts tended to be gradual and without fanfare. HR expert Tanya de Grunwald, host of the This Isn’t Working podcast, noticed the change arriving in employers’ language with “no challenge”.
“We were still calling it D&I [Diversity and Inclusion] in 2018 and the E came later,” she says. “Initially it stood for ‘equality’, but we were quickly told ‘equity’ was superior as people didn’t come from ‘equal’ starting points in life.
“Suddenly, graphics of people peeping over walls [to illustrate that tall people could see easily while short people would struggle] or running races from different start lines were everywhere and they were so simple that a child could understand why someone might need a box to stand on, or a longer ladder, or a start from the same place as other runners.”
[ An example of the cartoons used by pro-equity campaigners to support their cause ]
Equality law specialist Audrey Ludwig, who carries out training for firms, also says this trend for employers and organisations to adopt “equity” alongside or instead of “equality” began in the late 2010s. “It was influenced by North American DEI frameworks and has been problematic,” she says.
The beginning of that decade, 2010, was the date of the Equality – not Equity – Act, which replaced multiple anti-discrimination laws with a single, streamlined Act to help protect individuals against discrimination based on nine protected characteristics. They included race, sex, age and disability.
It marked a major evolution from landmark laws like the Race Relations Act 1968 or the Equal Pay Act 1970, says Fanshawe, which aimed to address inequality brought about by “disadvantage or discrimination” demonstrable by fundamental facts: “They were data driven.”
Ironically, some critics say it was the Equality Act which ushered in the era of equity. “Unfortunately, the Equality Act does licence universities and other institutions to treat applicants favourably on the grounds of race, sex and so forth,” says Dr Skidelsky. “I think it was a disastrous piece of legislation.”
The “equity” era of the late 2010s marked a new ideological direction after decades of equality campaigning the need for which few contested. The murder of Stephen Lawrence in 1993 and the subsequent MacPherson report emphasised the need for more training to tackle “institutional racism” and was broadly welcomed by officers and the public alike.
But during the 2010s, equity-focused approaches began to appear in DEI training, initially in America. Those influencing this subtle change include individuals such as US historian and professor Ibram X Kendi, author of the 2019 book How To Be An Antiracist and Robin DiAngelo, who wrote White Fragility in 2018 and co-wrote Is Everyone Really Equal?.
In the UK, organisations such as Stonewall began encouraging the idea of “equitable outcomes” for LGBTQ+ people in the early 2020s, even announcing a new strategy based on three pillars: Freedom, Equity and Potential. But it was following George Floyd’s death in 2020, and the subsequent Black Lives Matter protests, that the drive for equity accelerated, with UK institutions and bodies increasingly using it in place of “equality” in action plans to address disparities.
[ The Black Lives Matter protests were a turning point for British institutions in the battle of ‘equality’ vs ‘equity’ ]
“I did wonder why it was happening and saw an element of American DEI practice coming over the water,” says Baroness Falkner. “It’s been part of the overall progressive bent in the last 15 or 20 years where corporate values – even for public bodies – have become much more significant and are seen as the done thing.”
Even if such public bodies were trying to do the right thing, however, perverse and discriminatory outcomes soon emerged.
“One such example,” says Ludwig, “is a case in 2019 when a white, heterosexual male – Matthew Furlong – was unsuccessful in applying for the role of police constable for Cheshire Police.
“Mr Furlong brought claims of direct discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation, race and sex against Cheshire Police. While the Force argued that it had lawfully applied the ‘positive action in recruitment measures’ under the Equality Act to increase diversity, the Employment Tribunal found Cheshire Police had directly discriminated against Mr Furlong by deeming all candidates equal at interview stage but then offering a role to those with a protected characteristic in preference to him.
“What was a well-intentioned policy to increase much-needed workforce diversity led to unlawful discrimination in recruitment. When organisations substitute equity for equality, they risk moving away from universal rights towards discretionary preferences, based sometimes on no more than fashionable views.”
The equity-equality switch has become hot politics. This week, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch underlined her stance as one of the fiercest opponents of ideological “equity”, under which outcomes must be engineered to be equal for everyone.
[ Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has pledged to scrap the ‘equality duty’ ]
“We need to make sure that we do not create a society where people retreat into groups,” she said. “We’re seeing separatism in our country occur because different people are being treated differently. And when you have that, there will be a backlash.”
That backlash, as Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer can attest, is already underway. But Baroness Falkner insists the remedy is straightforward. “My answer to private and public organisations would be: stick to the law first and then worry about inclusion and equity and what your outcomes look like.”
David Rose, director of policy and research at the Free Speech Union, says the correction is already underway: “Unfortunately analogous ideas, derived from Critical Race Theory, have come to be applied in other public spheres.
“If the death of Henry Nowak can be said to have any positive aspect, it is that it may lead to a long overdue re-evaluation of this ideology and its pernicious effects.”
[ Via: https://archive.today/TksSW ]
There is no such thing as "positive" discrimination. When you discriminate for someone, you're discriminating against someone else. So-called "positive" discriminate for black people or women is just discrimination against white, Asian, etc, people or men.
Calling it "affirmative action" or "positive discrimination" doesn't change what you're doing. Which is just racism and sexism.
