Home Secretary Teresa May has announced that the ‘socioeconomic duty’ contained in the 2010 Equality Act would not be implemented. It would have required all public bodies to assess whether they were addressing inequalities caused by socioeconomic factors, encouraging them to improve, for example, health and education outcomes in more deprived areas. May dismissed the legislation as “ridiculous”. Scottish ministers had previously proposed, following consultation, to extend the duty to cover public bodies in Scotland.