The Grounds of Discrimination under the Race Relations Act 1976 in the United Kingdom

regulated: employment, housing, personal and public services and the like. These may be called matters of scope. The second essential decision is one of application: to whom should the legislation speak ? Non-discrimination provisions in a Bill of Rights -whether one that overrides conflicting legislation, as in the United States, or one that is merely of equal authority, as in Canada--cover only the actions of the State or public bodies 1; the European Convention on Human Rights is subject to the same restriction. In most federal systems, constitutional principles restrict the application of national legislation,2 but the intended structure of Scottish and Welsh devolution does not diminish the authority of United Kingdom anti-discrimination laws in those regions.3 Though the present law, the Race Relations Act 1976, contains some exclusions of scope (fewer however than did its