An equality leader has called for the Equal Pay Act to be scrapped to help tens of thousands of women receive a fairer deal on pay.

Trevor Phillips, chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, said the legislation, introduced almost 40 years ago, has reached its sell-by date', warning that it is contributing to a huge backlog of equal pay cases at employment tribunals.

He warned that the tribunal system could crash' under the weight of cases and said hundreds of thousands of women would have to wait intolerably long' unless there were urgent changes.

He referred to an estimated 50,000 equal pay cases being brought by council workers and estimated that the number could treble this year, causing the employment tribunal system to seize up like a blocked drain'.

He said hundreds of thousands of women, many of whom have been waiting for more than 10 years for equal pay, could face longer delays.

The commission called for a radical change to the law to allow so-called representative' actions to allow hundreds of cases to be heard at tribunals at the same time.

Mr Phillips said this would unclog the tribunal system and could reduce the number of cases by more than 90 per cent - from as many as 150,000 to around 11,000.

The commission also announced that it will not be directly funding equal pay cases of up to 800 women involved in a four-year tribunal action due to be heard tomorrow in the Court of Appeal affecting women at Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council.

The commission will instead make a statement to the court that it hopes will set a legal precedent and speed up the case.

Mr Phillips said: "These women deserve justice now, not justice in another decade. They are the care workers who look after your mum, the dinner ladies who look after your children, and every single one of us would suffer if they did not put in the hours.

"There is no point in us throwing petrol on this legal forest fire by supporting even more individual cases going through the tribunal system. Instead we need to come up with some radical solutions.

"The Equal Pay Act has reached its sell-by date and it's time for new legislation, fit for this century."