Equality law call for evidence
Applies to England, Scotland and Wales
Read the full outcome
Detail of outcome
Update
On 14 July 2026, the Office for Equality and Opportunity (OEO) published a consultation on equal pay and pay discrimination. This is the next stage of delivering on our manifesto commitment and the Plan to Make Work Pay.
In this consultation, we are seeking views on how we can deliver a comprehensive reform of the current pay discrimination framework so that it works better for workers, businesses, and the justice system. As part of this, we are seeking views on:
- proposals to fix the areas of the system that are currently falling short
- how we can address gaps and inconsistencies in the framework currently affecting disabled people, those from ethnic minority groups, and outsourced workers
The responses to the equal pay consultation will be used to inform our next steps.
To support this consultation, OEO has published elements of the call for evidence on equality law analysis relating to making the right to equal pay effective, addressing pay discrimination and improving pay transparency.
The government is giving careful consideration to responses for the call for evidence on equality law, including those areas outside the scope of this analysis publication:
- strengthening protections against combined discrimination
- ensuring the Public Sector Equality Duty is met by all parties exercising public functions
- creating and maintaining workplaces and working conditions free from harassment
- commencing the socio-economic duty
We will publish a full summary of responses to all parts of the call for evidence on equality law in due course.
Alternative formats
Alternative formats of the analysis of responses to the pay discrimination questions are available, including:
- HTML (full report)
- web-accessible PDF (full report and executive summary)
- Easy Read (executive summary)
- Welsh translation (executive summary)
The following alternative format will be published on this page as soon as possible:
- British Sign Language (BSL)
You can sign up to get emails about this page when this alternative format is published.
Original call for evidence
Call for evidence description
The government is seeking evidence and views on a number of areas of equality policy in order to identify barriers to opportunity and seek expert views on how to overcome these barriers.
In some cases, this concerns evidence and views about areas of the existing legal framework, to help better understand how the law is working in practice. In others, it is seeking evidence and views on areas of possible equality law reform that the current government is considering.
The equality law call for evidence is looking for evidence and views on the following areas:
- the prevalence of pay discrimination on the basis of race and disability
- making the right to equal pay effective for ethnic minority and disabled people
- measures to ensure that outsourcing of services can no longer be used by employers to avoid paying equal pay
- improving the enforcement of equal pay rights by establishing an Equal Pay Regulatory and Enforcement Unit, with the involvement of trade unions
- improving pay transparency
- strengthening protections against combined discrimination
- ensuring the Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED) is met by all parties exercising public functions
- creating and maintaining workplaces and working conditions free from harassment
- commencing the socio-economic duty
How to respond
We encourage you to respond online if possible.
Please read the call for evidence document.
Then submit your responses online: Call for evidence: Equality Law survey
Please email EqualityEvidence@cabinetoffice.gov.uk if:
- you would like to respond via email
- you have any other enquiries specifically relating to this call for evidence including requests for the document in an alternative format
If you would like to respond by post, please mark your correspondence ‘Call for evidence: Equality Law response’ and send it to the postal address.
Providing more than one response
You can provide more than one response to the call for evidence. For example, if you are a university research group, you might provide 2 separate responses - one response as a representative organisation and one response as an individual academic.
If you have any complaints or comments about the call for evidence process you should contact the Cabinet Office.
Documents
Updates to this page
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Added an analysis of responses to the questions in the call for evidence about pay discrimination.
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First published.