Introduced into the House of Commons in April 2009, the Equality Bill, which will apply to Great Britain but not Northern Ireland, will replace almost all the existing discrimination legislation (though the Equality Act 2006 will remain, in so far as it relates to the Equality and Human Rights Commission), harmonising existing provisions to give a single approach where appropriate. Each of the discrimination strands - age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex, and sexual orientation - will be called a 'protected characteristic'.

The Bill will, among other things:

• widen the definitions of direct discrimination and harassment to cover both associative and perceived discrimination or harassment
• extend the scope of indirect discrimination to cover disability, as well as introduce a new definition of discrimination arising from disability
• remove the list of capacities from the definition of disability
• remove the need for a comparator in victimisation cases
• extend the protection from harassment that already exists for employees who are harassed by a third party such as a customer or client because of their sex, to those harassed because of other protected characteristics
•  reverse the burden of proof in all cases of discrimination, victimisation and harassment
• make it unlawful, across all protected characteristics in all areas covered by the Bill, for a person to instruct, cause or induce someone to discriminate against, harass or victimise another person, or to attempt to do so. Both the Equality and Human Rights Commission and the individual instructed (even if the instruction is not carried out) will be able to bring proceedings
• extend positive action to allow employers, when choosing between two equally qualified candidates for recruitment or promotion, to select the successful candidate on the ground that they are from a disadvantaged or under-represented group
• substantially replicate the Equal Pay Act 1970 with a few amendments, particularly in respect of the employer's defence. For example, the 'genuine material factor' defence becomes a 'material factor' defence; the requirement that an indirectly discriminatory material factor be shown to be a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim is expressly spelled out; and it is expressly stated that  the long-term objective of reducing inequality between men's and women's terms of work is always to be regarded as a legitimate aim
• allow equal pay claimants to rely on a hypothetical comparator to establish sex discrimination in pay where there is no actual comparator doing equal work
• render pay confidentiality clauses in employment contracts unenforceable in certain circumstances
• enable Ministers to require private sector employers with at least 250 employees in Britain to publish information about the differences in pay between their male and female employees
• empower employment tribunals to make recommendations in respect of an employer's workforce as a whole following a finding of discrimination
• create a new single public sector Equality Duty which will continue to cover race, gender, and disability, but will be extended to cover age, sexual orientation, religion or belief, pregnancy and maternity, and gender reassignment
• enable Ministers to impose specific duties on listed public bodies to enable them to carry out their Equality Duty effectively, including duties in relation to their public procurement functions
• place a new duty on Government Ministers, departments and key public bodies such as local authorities and NHS Trusts to consider what action they can take to reduce the socio-economic inequalities people face
•  make it unlawful to unjustifiably discriminate against someone aged 18 or over because of age in the provision of goods, facilities and services.

The Government anticipates that the Bill will reach the House of Lords at the beginning of the new parliamentary session and, subject to the approval of both Houses, that it will receive Royal Assent in Spring 2010. The majority of the Bill will come into operation in Autumn 2010. Certain parts of the Bill, such as the public sector Equality Duty and the socio-economic duty on public bodies are likely to come into force in 2011, and the prohibition on age discrimination outside of the workplace the following year.

The Bill and its Parliamentary progress can be viewed here