Can common sense replace Equality Act protections, as Kemi Badenoch suggests?

Kemi Badenoch says the public sector equality duty encourages public bodies to adopt ‘dangerous and divisive agendas’. Photograph: James Manning/PA

For more than two decades, an important part of Britain’s equality laws ensured public institutions had to think about the impact their decisions could have on different groups in society.

Introduced after the Stephen Lawrence inquiry, the public sector equality duty required public bodies – such as local councils, police forces and hospitals – to think proactively about equality law. Now this once uncontroversial public duty is a new battleground in Britain’s culture wars.