• Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary menu
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • About DNS
  • Subscribe to DNS
  • Advertise with DNS
  • Support DNS
  • Contact DNS

Disability News Service

the country's only news agency specialising in disability issues

  • Home
  • Independent Living
    • Arts, Culture and Sport
    • Crime
    • Education
    • Employment
    • Housing
    • Transport
  • Activism & Campaigning
  • Benefits & Poverty
  • Politics
  • Human Rights
You are here: Home / News Archive / ‘Exhausted’ disabled peer wins praise after ‘stunning’ victory

‘Exhausted’ disabled peer wins praise after ‘stunning’ victory

By John Pring on 26th April 2013 Category: News Archive

Listen

A disabled peer who defeated government plans to restrict the remit of the Equality and theweek-whiteHuman Rights Commission (EHRC) has praised the support she received from across the equality and human rights field.

Baroness [Jane] Campbell won praise herself from cross-party parliamentarians after the government finally conceded defeat this week and agreed not to scrap section three of the Equality Act 2006, the EHRC’s “general duty”.

The general duty describes how the commission should encourage a society where there is respect for human rights mutual respect between groups, and in which every individual has an equal opportunity to participate.

Coalition ministers had argued that keeping such a “wide-ranging and unrealistic general duty” would make it harder for the commission to prioritise its work.

But they were forced to admit defeat, after the House of Lords – led by Baroness Campbell – for the second time overturned plans to abolish the general duty through the enterprise and regulatory reform bill.

Baroness Campbell told Disability News Service that the battle to persuade the government to drop its plans, which began last November at the bill’s second reading in the Lords, had been “exhausting” and “tremendously tough” but “highly rewarding”.

She said she had fought so hard to save section three because she believed that “fundamental principles” were “incredibly important in setting out the terms in which citizens should treat one another”.

She added: “We are in danger of losing some of these priceless principles, like independent living via public services support.

“I hope the journey of this amendment and support I received from the equality and human rights family will be recognised as a model of how we should be working together as a collective, inclusive enterprise.”

Without this “collective effort” the victory “simply would not have happened”, she said.

Baroness Campbell said this success reinforced her belief that she had been right – in 2008 – to “move on from single identity politics and make my way in the unfamiliar, wider equality and human rights world”, which had been “a highly rewarding” journey.

She had told fellow peers this week: “The commission’s role as an agent of change matters to millions of people in this country, whether they are an elderly person in hospital, a woman fleeing a violent partner or a black teenager and his friend waiting for a bus.”

The Lords had been debating her section three amendment on the 20th anniversary of the racist murder of Stephen Lawrence in south London.

Baroness Campbell said the inquiry into the police’s handling of the killing had led to a “sea-change in our approach to equality law and the structural support to promote and enforce it. The general duty embodies this shift in thinking.”

She said the general duty was not just symbolic of “our commitment to preventing the kind of injustice faced by the Lawrence family, or the routine abuse of disabled young people in institutions because of indifference and cruelty”.

If it was removed, she said, the commission’s duty would be changed from holding up a mirror to society to simply “holding up a mirror to itself and asking only: ‘How effective is the commission?’”

Among those praising Baroness Campbell’s role in saving section three was her fellow disabled crossbench peer Baroness [Tanni] Grey-Thompson, who said her success in convincing the government to think again had been “stunning”.

Others to praise her efforts included the Labour MP and equality campaigner Kate Green; Baroness Stowell, the Conservative women and equalities spokeswoman; the Conservative peer Lord Cormack; and Labour spokesman Lord Stevenson.

25 April 2013

Share this post:

Share on TwitterShare on FacebookShare on WhatsAppShare on Reddit

Related

‘Muddled’ blue badge reforms ‘are to blame for renewal delays’
6th February 2015
UN debate will be reminder of true inclusive education
6th February 2015
IDS breaks pledge on PIP waiting-times, as tens of thousands still queue for months
30th January 2015

Primary Sidebar

Image shows a man wearing glasses sitting by an open laptop The text reads: Free Career Support for Disabled People Our services include: 1-2-1 Coaching Online Career Resources Find Support near you Search for Inclusive Jobs Career Events and Workshops Visit the Evenbreak Career Hive today to find out how we can help you

Access

Latest Stories

‘Truly shocking’ figures expose disabled people’s ‘precarious’ financial situation

Silence from Truss and Sunak on how they would improve lives of disabled people

Claimants win chance to appeal ‘punch in the guts’ court ruling on £20 uplift

Disabled spectators ‘told to move so they would not be in Commonwealth Games photos’

Motability customers describe delays, shortages and steep price rises

DWP dismisses regulator’s call to publish universal credit ‘fitness for work’ stats

Government advisers raise serious concerns over ‘retrograde’ HS2 access issue

Government’s long-awaited accessible housing plan ‘does not go far enough’

Government’s advisers say ministers’ plans will not deliver an accessible railway

Thousands of disabled customers waiting months for cars, Motability admits

Advice and Information

Readspeaker

Footer

The International Standard Serial Number for Disability News Service is: ISSN 2398-8924

  • Accessibility Statement
  • Privacy Policy
  • Site map
  • Facebook
  • Twitter

Copyright © 2022 Disability News Service

Site development by A Bright Clear Web