CONFERENCE: Equality chief fails to steady Lib Dems on disability

From Cathy Reay in Bournemouth

Chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), Trevor Phillips, has done little to calm fears over the Commission’s commitment to disability issues.

In a speech to Lib Dems at their conference in Bournemouth, he was keen to emphasise that mental health and social care are high on the EHRC’s agenda,

He also assured campaigners that the EHRC is a “different animal” compared to when he first took up the chair.

But he spent the majority of his session addressing possible future EHRC strategies to tackle issues within other minority groups, speaking little about disability.

Meurig Williams, a disabled independent living advisor and Liberal Democrat councillor in Surrey Heath, said: “When the unified commission was set up, Sir Bert Massie [former EHRC disability commissioner] said that he feared disability issues would be pushed under the carpet. I was hopeful at the time but I fear they have been.

"What Trevor said towards the end of his speech about bringing a unified approach to human dignity gave me some hope but I think there’s a lot more to be done. They have got a long way to go in raising visibility of disability issues to the same level [of equality] as, say, race and gender.”

When Disability Now later asked Mr Phillips about whether the recent departures of disabled commissioners (Including Sir Bert) had made him feel pressured to prove disability was high on his agenda, he said: “We’re going to do what exactly what we would have done anyway, to get on with the work particularly around learning disability and hate crime and to deal with the social care issue.

"I am sorry that Bert left in the way that he did but Bert is an old warrior, he and I will probably sit down over a beer, talk about it again. Grown ups have arguments but the more important thing is not whether we are arguing, it is whether we are doing any of the work."