It’s time we talked about the Equality Act.
Odds are you’ve never really given much thought to the (so-called) Equality Act. That’s probably because you’re a decent upstanding normal citizen who’s perfectly equal already. Never for one second would someone like you go begging to the Nanny State to make you any equaler.
Sadly, there are some still resident in this increasingly great country of ours who are hell bent on doing exactly that. A prime example of this phenomenon recently came to Bankstone News’ attention after lefty rag the Telegraph pointed out that ‘big brand’ motor insurers are charging people who were (ahem) ‘born abroad’ up to £850 more for their motor insurance.
Those of us not born yesterday know perfectly well that, nine times out of ten, ‘people born abroad’ is just a polite way of saying ‘foreigners’. And what exactly is wrong with making Johnny Foreigner pay a bit more for his motor insurance – especially if it keeps prices down for the rest of us?!
But, inevitably, trouble-making lawyers have wasted no time trying to make out that ‘PBA weighting’ is some kind of crime. John Halfords of Blindman’s Solicitors claims that slapping price-comparing overseasers with a modest premium uplift amounts to a breach of equality laws.
The aforementioned Equality Act supposedly makes it unlawful to ‘discriminate’ against someone – even a foreigner – because of their nationality or national origins, which are (get this!) ‘among the legally-defined protected characteristics of race.’
This is PC gone mad. This is Sheila’s Wheels all over again. If underwriters can’t discriminate – then what on earth’s the point of having them! Can it really be right, in this day and age, to hedge insurers in with soul-destroying thickets of unproductive, frankly antidemocratic, legal quibbling?
Sorry, but if PBAs don’t want to pay what they’re quoted, they can go drive somewhere else.
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