Mick Hartley

Jill Foster in the Telegraph – How the diversity industry jettisoned ‘equality of opportunity’ for ‘equality of outcome’:

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….

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.”

Not just wrong, but absurd and unworkable.

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.”

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.”…

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.

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.

At least, after Henry Nowak’s tragic death, we’re now talking about this nonsense.