With effect from 1st October 2010 the Equality Act 2010 repeals previous Acts of Parliament and revokes previous regulations dealing with anti-discrimination law. This is especially important in the employment law field.

The Equality Act 2010 replaces the previous anti-discrimination Acts and regulations with one single Act. The new Act uses different wording and some different concepts from those used previously but makes only a few changes to the substance of existing law. In particular, it can be safely assumed that decisions made by the Employment Appeal Tribunal and the Courts in cases decided under pre-1.10.2010 law will remain relevant.

Importantly section numbers and other references are, of course, completely different from those in the previous Acts and regulations. Presumably because the new Act is more than just a consolidation statute, the government has not provided the derivation/destination tables normally produced with consolidation Acts (at least one commercial publisher has filled the gap - emplaw.co.uk).

The Act outlaws various types of behaviour as follows: direct (including associative and perceived) discrimination, indirect discrimination, harassment (including third party harassment) and victimisation plus "disability related discrimination".

A conceptual change made by the Act is the introduction of the idea of "protected characteristics" ((i) age, (ii) disability, (iii) gender reassignment, (iv) marriage and civil partnership, (v) pregnancy and maternity, (vi) race (defined to include colour, nationality and ethnic or national origins), (vii) religion or belief, (viii) sex (ie gender) and (ix) sexual orientation). This change is important both as a matter of terminology and of "focus", which now centres on the protected characterisitc rather than on the protected person.

Other significant changes affecting employers and employees in relevant situations are:-

• prohibition of health questionnaires in the recruitment process, save in specified situations - see Equality Act 2010/health questionnaires ;
  
• making positive discrimination lawful in some circumstances in selection of job applicants etc - see Equality Act 2010/positive action
  
• allowing combined "dual discrimination" claims - Equality Act 2010/dual discrimination
  
• tidying up "disability discrimination" rules - see Equality Act 2010/protected characteristics/disability and/or Equality Act 2010/reasonable adjustments ;
  
• removal of the requirement that to be protected by the gender reassignment anti-discrimination rules a person must already be under medical supervision - see Equality Act 2010/protected characteristics/gender reassignment ;
  
• clarification of harassment rules - see Equality Act 2010/harassment ;
  
• a new rule making it unlawful to prevent employees from discussing differences in pay which result from a protected characteristic - see Equality Act 2010/pay secrecy ;
  
• a change (possibly in error) to the rules concerning who can be an "independent adviser" in connection with compromise agreements; and
  
• a new power for employment tribunals to make recommendations to employers who have been have been found "guilty" of unlawful discrimination to ensure that employees other than the one who brought a case to the tribunal are protected from discrimination - see Equality Act 2010/tribunal recommendations .

ACAS provides a helpful ACAS tabular "at a glance" guide to what's new and what's changed by the EA 2010" on its website.