By Lucy Phillips
7 December 2010
The High Court has blocked the Fawcett Society’s attempt to challenge the June Budget for unlawfully discriminating against women.
The equality campaign group brought the case to court after a written application for a judicial review in the summer had also been rejected. There will now be no further court hearing.
The society argued that the Treasury failed to carry out the necessary equality assessment prior to Chancellor’s George Osborne’s emergency Budget. It claimed that women would bear the brunt of measures such as a cap on Housing Benefit and rise in VAT.
Speaking in court yesterday, Karon Monaghan QC, the Fawcett Society’s barrister, said spending cuts were having a ‘grossly disproportionate and devastating’ impact on women.
Of the £8.1bn in savings identified in the Budget, £5.7bn or 72%, were being borne by women, compared to 28% by men, she said.
The government’s lawyers had earlier conceded that it had not carried out equality assessments before the Budget in some areas, including the public sector pay freeze and benefit cuts. The lawyers said this was ‘regrettable’.
But Mr Justice Ouseley dismissed the case as ‘unarguable - or academic’. There had been too long a delay in the court application and there was now ‘no prospect’ of the court declaring the Budget unlawful, he said.
Speaking after the hearing, the Fawcett Society’s chief executive Ceri Goddard said: ‘While we are disappointed not to have been granted a judicial review of the Budget, we are pleased the government has heard that budgetary decisions are not above equality law – and that a court of law agreed with us that the government’s economic processes need to be looked at again.’
A Treasury spokesman welcomed the court’s verdict. The department ‘takes its equalities responsibilities very seriously’, he said. ‘We will continue to work on improving our understanding of the impact of our policies on vulnerable groups,’ he added.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission is carrying out a separate assessment of the equality impacts of the Comprehensive Spending Review.
