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December 24th, 2011 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda - It will save £102m – but it will cost £283
By
Gareth Finighan
Last updated at 4:09 PM on 23rd December 2011
The cost of implementing new equality regulations will ‘far outweigh’ their benefits, a thinktank has claimed.
Civitas suggests that the burden on businesses complying with last year’s Equality Act will hold back Britain’s growth and cost jobs.
Official assessments of the Act suggest that it will save between £102-£134million in its first year and £25-£87million annually after that, quickly earning back the estimated £241-£283 million one-off cost of its introduction.
Costly problem: The Civitas report claims that the cost of implementing equality laws in the workplace will outweigh the benefits (Posed by models)
Over ten years, the impact assessment produced by the Government Equalities Office suggests the Act could save a total of between £40million and £674million.
But Civitas statistician Nigel Williams argued that many of the claimed savings are ‘largely imaginary’, and that the cost of introducing the changes will be far higher than predicted.
The Equality Act was one of the final pieces of legislation introduced by the former Labour administration and came into effect over the last year.
It streamlined existing anti-discrimination laws with the aim of banning unfair treatment and achieving equal opportunities in the workplace and in wider society.
Mr Williams said that much of the financial gain ascribed to the Act comes from an assumed benefit to society in general from greater equality, which is estimated at more than £62million a year.
The GEO assessment argues that this benefit is generated by putting money in the hands of disadvantaged people, who are likely to spend it – thus boosting growth – rather than save it, as wealthier individuals might.
The report dismisses this estimate as ‘ideological’, arguing that no money is produced or saved by the ‘feeling of well-being coming from a belief that differences between people have been reduced’.
It also disputes claims that the Act will save £13million a year by simplifying anti-discrimination and equal pay regulations, arguing that this cost only arises because of the complexity of existing regulations.
And it challenges estimates that it will cost companies only £200million to familiarise themselves with their new duties, pointing out that this allows for only 24 hours of work by personnel officers in large firms, eight hours in companies with less than 250 employees and no time at all in one-person businesses.
Estimating that the Act will in fact impose an annual cost of at least £10million on the economy, Mr Williams said: ‘Even if the changes are introduced with extraordinary efficiency by all concerned and the budgeted £200million proves ample, the annual consequences of this legislation will serve not to pay back the costs, but to add to them.
‘The ideological benefits of the Equality Act are debatable at best. The financial benefits simply do not exist.’
A Home Office spokesman said: ‘The Equality Act replaced nine different laws and allowed us to scrap more than 100 burdensome regulations.
‘We are protecting individuals from unfair treatment without creating unnecessary red tape and simplifying the system to make it fairer for employers and employees.
‘We do not accept the Civitas assessment.’
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