Equality Act 2010 (Amendment) Bill [HL]

Baroness Thornton Excerpts

Friday 21st November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord on bringing the Bill forward. It is an exact model of a Private Member’s Bill: it addresses one issue and does so in very few clauses. I also congratulate the speakers in the debate. I was listening very careful to the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, and her story about County Hall. I wondered whether she was going to end up in the aquarium or something when she spoke about all the doors that she went through.

It is important that we congratulate the institutions, buildings and businesses that get this right and that we name those who get it wrong. When I visited its headquarters recently I noted that the RIBA has remodelled its front and its steps for disabled access. If the RIBA can do it, anybody should be able to do it.

I was interested when the noble Lord talked about the 2010 Act because I was one of the Equalities Ministers responsible for helping to take that legislation through your Lordships’ House. I very well remember the discussions that took place around Clause 20 and the negotiation that took place across the House about how tight or otherwise it should be. At the time, the noble Lord, Lord Low, tried to make amendments to the Bill which were not dissimilar to this amendment. However, because negotiations were going on and it was at the end of a Parliament, I am afraid that not all the parties in the House could agree to them. However, at that time everybody knew and accepted that the Act would need to be addressed from time to time to see how it worked or did not work and what adjustments might need to be made. It is entirely sensible that we are reaching that point.

I apologise to the noble Lord for not going on his trip to Strutton Ground yesterday. As I said in my note to him, it was one of those days when I could not manage to get out of the House to do something as interesting as that.

I grew up with somebody in a wheelchair. My grandfather had been blown up in the Second World War and was a paraplegic. He died when I was about 20. My parents got married in 1952 and, as the noble Lord will know, wheelchairs then were very large and extremely heavy. My parents told me that he had to be carried in his wheelchair up two flights of stairs to attend their wedding. There was absolutely no way that the register office in Dewsbury would have any access whatever for someone in a wheelchair.

My mother was in a wheelchair for a lot of the last year or so of her life. Although she was slightly mobile, she needed a wheelchair when we went out. As the noble Lord will know, in Yorkshire we have a lot of hills. Her favourite garden centre had disabled access, and it was very good and very accessible, except that the car park was on a steep slope. Getting her out of the car, into the wheelchair and into the garden centre without her rolling down the hill to Haworth was quite a challenge. Therefore, I am absolutely familiar and completely in sympathy with the noble Lord’s wishes and with the Bill. I am very pleased to hear that he seems to have anticipated some of the issues that might arise from the issue of six inches and 12 inches.

I think that this is a good time to ask questions of the Government about the enforcement of Section 20. As the noble Lord clearly did, I looked at what was being said by the EHRC about disabled access and adjustments for disabled people. Because my research was done yesterday, on the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s website I found briefing dated 11 November about the adjustments for disabled people. It basically reiterates what is in the Bill, which is that Section 20 is anticipatory. In other words, it anticipates that adjustments should be made whether they are asked for or not. That is rather important, and I remember the debates about that. The briefing says that an organisation should not wait,

“until a disabled person wants to use its services, but must think in advance (and on an ongoing basis) about what disabled people with a range of impairments might reasonably need, such as people who have a visual impairment, a hearing impairment, a mobility impairment or a learning disability”.

The question of what is reasonable has now changed. The noble Lord is suggesting that it is reasonable that businesses should take steps to make these adjustments, and I think that that is entirely right.

I shall not prolong the debate, because other speakers have made the case much better than I can, having spoken from their personal experience. I wish the Bill well and look forward to the Minister’s response.