Activists say equality proposals still need work

By Sunil Peck

Campaigners have said they are encouraged by new government proposals for an equality bill, but insist that there are still gaps that need plugging.

The bill is designed to strengthen existing laws and bring nine separate anti-discrimination laws, including the Disability Discrimination Act, into a single piece of legislation.

This week, equality minister Harriet Harman announced a number of measures that would be included in the bill.

The government had provoked uproar among campaigners last year when it announced that it would be introducing a single equality duty in place of the disability equality duty (DED).

The DED obliges public bodies to consider how their spending decisions, employment practices and service delivery will affect disabled people.

But the single equality duty would only require authorities to set equality objectives and take “proportionate” steps to achieve them, effectively allowing them to set their own agenda.

An Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) spokeswoman said they will not know about the specifics of the new duty until the government responds to a consultation on discrimination law later this summer.

RADAR chief executive Liz Sayce (pictured) said there were some “great” proposals. But she said they fail to address the fact that disabled people tend to remain in lower-paid jobs and there is a pay gap between disabled and non-disabled employees.

She added that it was vital that the government did not weaken the existing public equality duties.

The EHRC spokeswoman said that, although sea and air travel were still not going to be included in the bill, the EHRC would have considerable powers to ensure that new anti-discrimination EU regulations on air travel were implemented fully.

At present, employment tribunals can only make judgments work for the individual who brings the case. The new bill will allow tribunals to make recommendations which will benefit everybody in the workforce and stop similar types of discrimination happening again.

Sir Bert Massie, former chair of the Disability Rights Commission, welcomed this aspect of the bill.

But he said a disabled person would still have to fund a discrimination case involving goods and services and pay all legal costs if they lose. This he says,
would not be the case in an employment or equality tribunal.

The new equality bill will also include powers to ban all unjustified discrimination against older people.

The government expects to publish further details about the bill later this summer, including its response to the consultation on the Discrimination Law Review that took place last summer.

The bill is expected to be introduced in the next parliamentary session, which starts in December.