Government adviser on health, disability and work warns against Equality Act crackdown on employers

The business leader heading the government’s efforts to keep ill and disabled people in work has suggested to MPs that he does not believe stricter enforcement of the Equality Act is the way to address disability discrimination in the workplace.

Sir Charlie Mayfield, former chair of John Lewis Partnership and of the British Retail Consortium, led the government’s Keep Britain Working review and is now heading a taskforce aimed at shaping how health and disability are managed in the workplace.

But his comments will add to concerns that his efforts are focused on the needs and concerns of employers, rather than those of disabled employees and jobseekers.

Yesterday (Wednesday), Sir Charlie (pictured) was questioned by MPs on the Commons work and pensions committee about his ongoing work as author of the review and lead of the taskforce set up by the government to work with “vanguard” employers to test his new approach to workplace health.

Much of his evidence to the committee focused on the need not to alarm employers and to ensure that owners of smaller businesses felt his solutions were drawn up “with them in mind”, and on how the taskforce was currently working with employers on a series of key issues.

There was criticism when Sir Charlie’s final review report was published in November that it almost completely ignored the views of sick and disabled people.

In contrast, a string of employers and business organisations – and some charities – have praised the report, which the government hopes will “drive action to prevent ill-health, support people to stay in work, and help employers build healthier, more resilient workplaces”.

Sir Charlie told the committee that his taskforce would be “working with a number of the disabled people’s organisations”, although he did not name any of them.

Labour MP Rushanara Ali (watch from 11.35.50) told Sir Charlie that he had focused in his evidence on the need for “positive engagement” with employers, but she asked him what his thoughts were on the need for stricter enforcement of equality legislation.

Successive governments have been criticised by disabled campaigners for failing to do more to enforce measures in the Equality Act that protect disabled people from discrimination.

But instead of calling for wider use of the act to protect disabled people from workplace discrimination, Sir Charlie told her that the government needed to be “thoughtful and careful about enforceability, or relying on enforcement as the mechanism to achieve change”.

He said that many disabled people’s organisations had called for stricter enforcement of the Equality Act but he believed that “the risk of that is that… you are ratcheting up the fear on the employer side to employ somebody with some kind of potential vulnerability”.