Movement slams watchdog's first year

John Pring

Britain’s single equalities watchdog is facing broad criticism as it celebrates its first anniversary.

Senior figures from across the disability sector have criticised the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) for its failure to speak out on behalf of disabled people, tackle disability discrimination or build on the legacy of the Disability Rights Commission (DRC), which it replaced last October.

One senior figure said the EHRC’s first year had been “chaotic, unimpressive and disengaged”.

Among the strongest critics was Caroline Gooding, the former director of law reform at the DRC, who told Disability Now: “I think the EHRC’s performance is not impressive…On disability it is particularly poor.”

She said she was appalled at the lack of “visible leadership ” shown by the EHRC following a hugely important Lords ruling on the Disability Discrimination Act in June.

Sue Bott, director of the National Centre for Independent Living, added: “I think it is a complete muddle. It doesn’t feel that disability is owned by the commission as a whole.”

Some critics pointed to the performance of the EHRC’s helpline, which dealt with just 26,000 queries in its first 11 months, compared with 104,000 queries dealt with by the DRC’s helpline in 2006-07. There were also 3.6 million “visitor sessions” on the DRC website in 2006-07, compared with just 1.2 million in the first ten months of the EHRC’s site.

One critic was furious that the website did not include much of the DRC’s work, including official guidance written for the government.

The EHRC’s chair, Trevor Phillips, faced further criticism after concentrating only on race and gender issues at a fringe event at the Liberal Democrat party conference in Bournemouth.

He told us afterwards: “If people want to go around saying this, it would help if they said what more we should be doing.”

Baroness [Jane] Campbell, about to step down as chair of the EHRC’s disability committee, described the commission’s performance as “creative” and “dynamic” but accepted that some of the criticisms were “understandable” in its first year.

She added that improving the helpline figures was an “urgent priority”.

See: http://www.disabilitynow.org.uk/living/features/commissions-birthday-blues