Just Fair and The Equality Trust

1. Find out who your MP is. You only need to know your postcode.

2. Check here if your MP is supporting the Early Day Motion 591 to bring the Socio-economic Duty to life. If they are in the list, great! You don’t need to do anything else.*

3. If they are not in the list, go back where you were in step 1. From there you’ll be able to write to your MP and ask them to support EDM 591. If you need some inspiration, feel free to use or adapt the following text.

Dear xxx

As you know, income and wealth inequalities are severe problems in our country. Abundant evidence shows that inequality harms our physical and mental health, self-esteem, happiness, social mobility, trust and civic participation, and puts the enjoyment of human rights at risk.

The Equality Act 2010 was a significant step forward in tackling social inequalities in our society. Chief amongst its instruments was the Socio-economic Duty (Section 1), which would require public bodies ‘when making decisions of a strategic nature about how to exercise [their] functions’ to ‘have due regard to the desirability of exercising them in a way that is designed to reduce the inequalities of outcome which result from socio-economic disadvantage’.

Unfortunately, to this day Section 1 remains one of the few uncommenced clauses of The Equality Act 2010.

The Socio-economic Duty offers a powerful lever for reducing the damaging gaps between us all.

I urge you to consider supporting EDM 591 on the commencement and enforcement of the Socio-Economic Duty.

Yours sincerely,

4. If you receive a response, remember to forward it to us at [email protected] and [email protected] so we can keep track of them.

5. You can also tweet your MP using this.

* Ministers, Whips, Parliamentary Private Secretaries, the Speaker, Deputy Speakers, and Opposition Front Bench Members do not normally sign EDMs.