• 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 / MPs call for bill to do more on disability equality

MPs call for bill to do more on disability equality

By guest on 16th April 2009 Category: News Archive

Listen

MPs have called on the government to do more through its new equality bill to monitor how the public sector combats disability discrimination.

The work and pensions select committee said current disability equality schemes were often merely “tick box exercises”, and called for research on their effectiveness.

It also called for councils to use the existing disability equality duty to ensure providers of goods and services comply with the Disability Discrimination Act.

The committee welcomed the new equality bill, which it said would make discrimination law easier to understand. The MPs also welcomed the bill’s new single equality duty, but said the government needed to improve monitoring and enforcement if the duty was to successfully promote equality.

The report, on how disability equality should fit within a single equality act, said the government needed to “refresh its approach” to supporting disabled people into work, particularly those with mental health conditions.

The report said more should be done to ensure employers and disabled people were aware of the access to work scheme, which needed to be more flexible and offer better support for people with mental health and fluctuating conditions.

A pilot scheme to use access to work to support people with mental health problems and fluctuating conditions should be extended, it said.

And it expressed concern at evidence from the Employers’ Forum on Disability (EFD) that 85 per cent of online recruitment sites were inaccessible, calling on the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) to conduct more research into the use of inaccessible technology in recruitment, and to take on recruitment discrimination cases.

The report also called on the government to use the new bill to introduce equality tribunals that would address the current complexity and cost of taking county court discrimination cases.

Jonathan Shaw, minister for disabled people, said the government would be responding to the report “in due course”, but said there would be a “resource issue” in setting up equality tribunals and that he believed the current provision was “satisfactory”.

Shaw said the government was awaiting the results of the access to work pilot but that it was “certainly committed to seeing more people with mental health conditions in work”.

He said he was also working with the Federation of Small Businesses to make it easier for disabled people to become self-employed.

The EFD welcomed the committee’s report. Susan Scott-Parker, the forum’s chief executive, backed the idea of equality tribunals, and agreed that the bill was an opportunity for the government to address the “e-discrimination” that prevents many disabled people from applying for jobs online.

April

Share this post:

TwitterFacebookWhatsAppReddit

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

Access

Latest Stories

Disabled high-rise leaseholders are living in post-Grenfell fear of fire and financial ruin

Disabled people highlight scores of lockdown concerns

Regulator investigates DWP over universal credit ‘cover-up’

Tomlinson held just a handful of external meetings every month early in pandemic

US retail giant faces legal action over new face covering rule

Minister allows transport industry its fourth exemption from access laws

Government’s pandemic failings caused us ‘horrendous’ challenges, say DPOs

Watchdog has approved care settings for COVID patients in only three-fifths of areas

High court is asked to order fresh inquest into death of Jodey Whiting

MPs call for inquiry into government’s role in COVID deaths of disabled people

Advice and Information

DWP: The case for the prosecution

Readspeaker

Footer

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

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

Copyright © 2021 Disability News Service

Site development by A Bright Clear Web