Equality and Human Rights Commission: Disability Commissioner

Baroness Gale Excerpts

Thursday 10th May 2018 Grand Committee

[Baroness Gale (Lab)]

My Lords, I first thank the noble Lord, Lord Shinkwin, for bringing this debate before us today. We know that he has a great record of campaigning for the rights of people with disabilities and he is well respected for the views he holds and the passion he holds them in, as we have seen today.

The UK has, through various pieces of legislation, always striven to promote equality in the workplace. Over the years, there have been different statutory bodies that deal with specific aspects of discrimination. It was a Labour Government who set up the Equal Opportunities Commission; its first chair was Baroness Lockwood, who has only recently retired from your Lordships’ House. This body was established under the Sex Discrimination Act 1975 and had statutory powers to help enforce Acts such as the Equal Pay Act and other gender equality legislation that existed in Britain at that time.

The Equal Opportunities Commission was established to tackle issues of sex discrimination. Then we had the Commission for Racial Equality, which was established in 1976 to address racial discrimination and promote racial equality. Then we had the Disability Rights Commission, again established by a Labour Government in 1999, which obviously focused on issues relating to disability discrimination. As my noble friend Lady Prosser pointed out, these commissions were merged into a new body, the Equality and Human Rights Commission, in 2007. In addition to taking on the responsibilities of the three existing commissions, they acquired new responsibilities to provide the same level of protection for all minority groups. The primary aim was and is to promote and protect everyone’s right to equal opportunities in the workplace, as laid down in the Equality Act 2010.

The legislation on equality and human rights has changed over the years and I believe it has improved: as we learn more about how many forms of discrimination there can be, Parliament will, we hope, bring forward legislation to deal with it. With all the legislation we have, and the protected characteristics, can a case be made for a separate disability commissioner? I am not so sure, since there are nine protected characteristics under the 2010 Act. There could be calls for there to be a separate commissioner for each of those, not just for disability. I know that when the legislation was brought in to set up the Equality and Human Rights Commission to bring everything together in one umbrella body, I was concerned about what would happen to the voice of women, for example. Other groups were very concerned about what would happen to their voice: would they all be lost in this bigger organisation?

I looked at the briefing that the EHRC sent out for this debate and it says that it believes its efforts should be embedded in all its work. Its strategic plan sets out the key issues to address all areas of life. It has a disabilities advisory committee with people with expertise in this field, and most people who sit on the committee have disabilities. This committee keeps strong links with the board of commissioners to keep informed of their activities and to input them as appropriate. The board maintains oversight of the work of this committee and is in regular contact with it. The Equality and Human Rights Commission believes that the changes it has made were designed to strengthen, rather than weaken, its approach to advancing the rights of people with disabilities. It has made a good case for the work it does on behalf of people with disabilities and it believes that that is the best way forward.

We can always improve on all levels of equality and discrimination and we are all looking at ways to make things better for people, to treat people equally and to ask what legislation we need to put in place to make sure that happens. There is still much work to be done to ensure that people with disabilities are treated with respect and given the support they need. I believe that our legislation can provide that, but we should look at other ways as well, if they are needed, as the noble Lord, Lord Shinkwin, strongly believes is the case. I look forward to what the Minister has to say on this.