The Fawcett Society has applied to the High Court for a judicial review of Chancellor George Osborne’s “blatantly unfair” Emergency Budget because it has not taken into account the disproportionate impact on women.
MPs should have been told of the impact on women when asked to vote for the Budget, it said.
The imaginative and novel application says the coalition did not do an impact assessment and if it had, it would have shown it will increase inequality between men and women as £5.8 billion of £8 billion savings outlined in the Budget would come from women.
Sixty-five per cent of public sector workers are women who will, by definition, be harder hit by job losses and pay freezes in that area just as they will be harder hit by cuts in benefits and tax credits, said the organisation in its application.
The society has called on the Government “to look again at the Budget” and urged it to ensure all government departments “undertake a robust and transparent gender equality impact assessment of proposals being discussed in the current spending review”.
Fawcett Society solicitor, Samantha Mangwana, of Russell Jones & Walker LLP, said: “Although public authorities have been subject to the gender equality duty for several years now, there is widespread ignorance not only about how strong these laws actually are, but also what specific steps are required to be undertaken. The case law is crystal clear in spelling this out. First, an equality impact assessment must be conducted before policy decisions are taken. Secondly, where an assessment reveals a risk of discrimination, urgent action must be taken to address those risks.”
Shadow Minister for Women Yvette Cooper, an economist and potential candidate for Shadow Chancellor after the Labour Party leader is elected in September, backed the application for judicial review.
She said: “The new Government’s plans, from the Budget to criminal justice, are peppered with policies that hit women hardest. At best, ministers seem blind to women’s lives; at worst, it’s an ideological drive to turn back the feminist clock. The Budget widens the gap between women and men, reduces women’s financial independence and makes it harder for women to choose how to balance work and family life. George Osborne expects women to pay three times more than men to accelerate deficit cuts, even though women still earn and own far less.”
