Our equalities legislation is based on the concept of protected characteristics. There is a list of them. If you have one and someone does something which adversely affects you because of it, then you should start hiring the lawyers. It’s time for a compensation claim.
 
Or perhaps not. Recent experience of those with the protected characteristic of being an actual woman has not been encouraging. As we know, the Supreme Court decided that the legislation, in defining gender, was based on genetics rather than opinion. Since then, however, there has been a deafening silence from the government and inconsistent actions from various government bodies, such as the NHS.

The UK Equality and Human Rights Commission put out its 'guidance' on the Court’s decision shortly afterwards. It's very simple and just puts into other words what the Court had said. Since then, the head of the EHRC has gone and been replaced by someone-else. The replacement has confirmed that she, too, is in agreement with the guidance issued.

The government however is still sitting on its hands, saying that it is consulting on the guidance. Of course this is because many in the Labour Party were fierce proponents of ‘trans rights’ i.e the right to decide whether you were male, female or something-else. Take your pick from a smorgasbord of descriptions. Having to enforce a simple genetically-based definition instead is very uncomfortable for them. And so they’ve decided not to upset the troops – again.

They could of course try to alter the law to make it what the trans-activists were telling us was its true meaning, but things have moved on and its highly unlikely that there would be parliamentary support for such an attempt.

As things stand, therefore, a proposal to add a new category to the list of protected characteristics is a bit of a non-starter - although actually for a number of reasons.

A report has been produced which calls for class, of all things, to become a protected characteristic, like race or religion. The report's authors see this as being essential to stop the arts world being so posh. The paper, ‘Class Ceiling’, says working class people are struggling to break into the arts world, leaving the sector dominated by the middle class and London.

The report is the result of a review into the arts sector in Greater Manchester, led by Nazir Afzal, the chancellor of the University of Manchester and former DPP (yes, another one) and Avis Gilmore, former deputy general secretary of the National Education Union. Mr Afzal said that this was an opportunity for the region to lead the way on a national challenge and build a better sector “where talent is discovered everywhere, nurtured properly, paid fairly and allowed to rise”.

Among the Inquiry’s 21 recommendations is the inclusion of class as a protected characteristic. In the absence of a change in the law, however, I’m not sure how a unilateral recognition of class in the Manchester area as a protected characteristic would work. Would the toffs not have a right to complain about prejudice against them if they were passed over for promotion in favour of some other class?

If though there were legislation, then would criticism in the workplace of someone as being middle class - as the report appears to do - become a compensation-producing insult? Would we have to stop calling the upper classes ‘Toffs’?

The Labour Party itself has gone from being a supporter of ‘the working class’ to wanting to support ‘working people’. All efforts at finding out how this is defined by the government have failed. This is in part reflective of the fact that train drivers can now earn £80,000 pa and so are hardly on starvation wages, even though (because?) they are members of trade unions.

Do working people include the self-employed? Many manual workers making good money – plumbers and electricians come to mind – are self-employed.  All of which makes the definition of working class a little difficult. If people doing manual jobs are paid more than those with degrees, then what does that mean for our traditional class divides?

And is your class fixed for ever at some point in your life? My step-grandfather, a stoker on the dredgers in Cardiff docks during the day, went round pubs in the evenings challenging people to boxing matches: my father collected money from the spectators. I never asked, but I would guess that a certain amount of betting was involved. Did that mean that my father was always and inevitably working-class?

He entered into a printing apprenticeship at the age of 14 and subsequently became a manager in a printing works in Birmingham. Did he then become middle class – if so, was he upper or lower middle class?

After my stint at Grammar School, I qualified as a solicitor and became a partner in a medium-sized firm of lawyers. Did I remain fixed in the social class attained by my father? Or did I progress up the greasy pole?

As you will have guessed, my view of this extension of the concept of protected characteristics is that it’s complete nonsense. If you can’t even define what working class is, you can’t legislate to protect it.

Another complication comes from the fact that, nowadays, it is white ‘working class’ children - those who come from deprived backgrounds - who are at a greater educational disadvantage as compared to those of other ethnic origins from similarly disadvantaged economic backgrounds. Do we need therefore to create subcategories of protected characteristics?

There is however, another compelling reason to dismiss this idea as a pointless distraction. It does nothing to address the main factor that actually prevents young people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds from entering the arts and media industries.

As pointed out by the columnist Richard Morrison in the Times, the barrier is Britain’s state educational system. As he says, private schools mainly use arts provision as a selling point, whereas state schools hardly offer the arts at all. If you want to guarantee that your child's secondary school will have an orchestra, a theatre staffed by drama professionals, an art studio, and teachers who can prepare students for arts subjects up to A-level, you have to send them to a private school.

Although there are some exceptions, there's no guarantee that your local state secondary school will have any of these things. Therefore, from the age of 11 or earlier, the government is effectively creating a cultural bias within the system against children from lower-income families. If you haven’t been equipped with the necessary skills by your school for art, music or drama college, you probably won’t get in. It would be like someone who has not studied the basics of physics considering the possibility of being a nuclear scientist.

Until this disparity in educational provision is addressed (and I’m not holding my breath), all other discussion is redundant. Re-defining protected characteristics is a solution with no meaningful connection to the actual problem.

Paul Buckingham

12 January 2026