Starmer’s final act will expose firms to more bogus equality claims
In his final days, Keir Starmer has opened the door to employees being able to challenge pay differences between entirely different jobs if predominantly staffed by people of different races, and a tribunal determines those – entirely different jobs – to be of ‘equal value’. says Tom Harwood
As Keir Starmer bows out after two years in Number 10, one of his final acts as Prime Minister has gone significantly below the radar. In his final days in charge, the government is consulting on massively expanding the way employees can sue their employers over claims of racism.
I’m not talking about specific individual acts of race discrimination that are rightly already illegal, but rather a new invented form of racism, in line with the pretend misogyny of warehouse workers being paid differently to shop floor workers.
The new bogus idea from the government attempts to argue that employees should be able to challenge pay differences between entirely different jobs if predominantly staffed by people of different races, and a tribunal determines those – entirely different jobs – to be of ‘equal value’.
It would be like the government determining mustard must be sold at exactly the same price as ketchup, or honey be sold at precisely the same price as syrup – because an official assessor has declared them equivalent.
Yes, welcome to the bonkers world of ‘work of equal value’ claims, where under the Equality Act, these lawsuits can already be brought on the basis of sex. This has led to huge cases like those that bankrupted Birmingham council forcing dinner ladies to be paid the same as bin men.
Next was a warning
How on earth can a tribunal judge decide if a job is ‘of equal value’ compared to a completely different job better than a market can? Well, the blunt answer is they can’t.
In the case of the retailer Next, in 2024 an employment tribunal decided that its (predominantly female) shop workers must be paid the same basic rate as its (slightly male majority) warehouse staff.
This is despite the very same tribunal revealing that in 2021 the company offered 25,000 retail workers the chance to transfer to better paid warehouse roles. Just seven took up the offer, and of those three quit within the year.
The judgement which found against Next even quoted an employee who made clear that warehouse work was unappealing, she preferred her customer service role, and would require “a lot more money” to move to the warehouse.
It’s almost as if the warehouse roles are more demanding, and less appealing than work on the shop floor. It’s almost as if less appealing jobs necessitate a higher wage in order to attract and retain people willing to do them.
The ‘work of equal value’ crisis is not slowing down. Last month, the GMB Union announced that more than 4,000 women had joined equal-pay claims against Leeds City Council for ‘pay justice’, potentially worth hundreds of millions of pounds. Similar to Birmingham, they’re demanding that roles as different as teaching assistants and bin men are of ‘equal value’ and yet suffer “structural pay differences”.
Just how many more councils could be driven to bankruptcy when the grounds to bring forward these cases expand beyond sex and into the realm of disability and race too?
This is a nonsense realm of employment arbitrage that must be done away with not expanded. For a market to function, different jobs must be allowed to be paid different wages, even if one role might for whatever reason employ more people of one gender or race than another to which it is being compared.
Last year New Zealand was facing a wave of similar claims threatening to cost taxpayers billions of dollars. Instead of expanding the legal route that is crippling local government in Britain, the Kiwis put the brakes on New Zealand’s “work of equal value” regime. The New Zealand Equal Pay Amendment Act (2025) cancelled every live equal pay claim and forced complainants to start again under much tougher rules requiring evidence of sex-based undervaluation from the outset.
Effectively, New Zealand neutered the bonkers world of ‘equal value’ claims and saved taxpayers billions in the process. Just as Britain is about to take precisely the opposite path.
Tom Harwood is deputy political editor of GBNews