The Equality Act 2010 was meant as a turning point in Britain’s uneven struggle for fairness. It consolidated anti-discrimination law and quietly, but importantly, introduced a new idea: that the government must consider the consequences of its actions for those disadvantaged by poverty and social class.
That idea is in Section 1 of the Act, known as the socio‑economic duty. Parliament approved it. Royal Assent was given. However, in England, it was left on the shelf for almost 15 years. It existed in law, but not in practice.
Catching up with Scotland and Wales
The government has now decided it intends to bring Section 1 into force in England. That is welcome, as far as it goes. But it comes with the reality that other parts of Great Britain did not stand still while England stalled. Scotland implemented its version, the Fairer Scotland Duty, in 2018; Wales followed in 2021. Throughout that period, England continued to make major investments and policy decisions without any statutory requirement to consider socio‑economic inequality at all.
Socio-economic duty is often misunderstood, sometimes deliberately so. It does not compel public bodies to allocate funds where most needed, nor does it dictate outcomes. What it requires is simply that decision‑makers must show that they have had due regard to reducing inequalities of outcome caused by disadvantage.
In Scotland, that requirement has been addressed. It has embedded inequality as a formal consideration in strategic decisions on transport, regeneration, housing and public services. It has helped shift policymaking culture so that fairness is considered from the outset, rather than acknowledged after the fact, or perhaps ignored altogether.
The Green Book
In England, with the socio-economic duty not in force, policy appraisal has relied overwhelmingly on the Treasury’s Green Book. The Green Book prioritises projects with high economic return, systematically favouring already prosperous regions. This approach contrasts sharply with Scotland and Wales, where reduced inequality has become a required consideration.
In practice, this Green Book prioritisation has benefitted London and wealthier parts of the south east. Projects in these areas may be more likely to pass appraisal because they generate quick, monetisable benefits, even when the marginal gains are relatively small. This helps explain why schemes such as the Oxford–Cambridge corridor or the early phases of HS2 sit comfortably within Treasury rules. These projects may well have merit in their own terms. The issue is not that they exist, but that the system never applied the same seriousness to places starting from a weaker position but with far greater need.
Devastating impacts on Yorkshire
For Yorkshire, the consequences have been stark and entirely foreseeable. Transport and infrastructure projects that could transform access to jobs, education and economic resilience for millions of people have repeatedly struggled to clear appraisal thresholds designed around return rather than need. The north sees the lowest investment of advanced economies, after missing out on almost £200bn.
This is where the delayed socio-economic duty becomes pivotal. Yorkshire has become caught geographically between two contrasting systems: Scotland, bolstered by a statutory requirement to address inequality, and the English Treasury system which favours an investment system rooted in economic return. Yorkshire, lacking any structural advantage, finds itself in an effective policy gap exposed by these opposing approaches.
Over time, such systemic inequality has widened into something visible and damaging, reflected in weaker connectivity, lower productivity, fewer opportunities and a stubborn prosperity divide that no amount of rhetorical rebranding – from ‘northern powerhouse’ to ‘levelling up’ – has managed to close.
Even the Treasury’s reforms to the Green Book in 2020 did little to change this reality. Independent analysis continues to show that the underlying incentives remain largely intact. Need may be acknowledged in theory, but financial return still dominates in practice. Without the existence of a statutory duty in England, public bodies have had limited leverage to challenge decisions that exacerbate regional inequality, even when the social and economic case for doing so is overwhelming.
Socio-economic duty must be more than a system correction
Bringing the socio‑economic duty into force now is therefore not a clean slate. It is a belated correction to a system that has already done real harm. Major investment decisions have been made and opportunities have been lost. Catching up matters but does not erase the consequences of delay.
There is a real risk that implementation becomes symbolic rather than transformative. A duty that cannot be used to challenge bad decisions is not a duty at all, but rather a cover. If Section 1 is reduced to a box-ticking exercise while appraisal rules continue to prioritise narrow definitions of economic return, the imbalance will persist. Its value lies in forcing fairness, need and long-term resilience to be weighed alongside efficiency at the point decisions are made.
Economic value cannot be measured only in pounds and pence. It must also be judged by the opportunities created, the inequalities reduced and the regions strengthened.
Yorkshire does not need another slogan, nor another short-term funding competition that pits councils against one another for limited resources. What it needs is structural change, that is, investment rules that give proper weight to needs as well as economic return, and a socio-economic duty that has real force in decision-making. That means a duty capable of shaping decisions at the point they are made, not one used after the fact to justify outcomes that continue to entrench inequality.
If the government is serious about tackling regional inequality, it must be honest about the cost of delay and ensure that this time, the tools that parliament has approved are used fully, properly and in the spirit in which they were intended.
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