FURTHER
SUPPLEMENTARY WRITTEN
EVIDENCE SUBMITTED
BY SCOPE
Scope is pleased to submit further evidence to the
Home Affairs Committee inquiry into equalities. This follows our
earlier written submission and oral evidence given on 22 March
2011. These remarks are focused on the recent announcements from
the Government to launch a policy review on further revisions
to the draft regulations for the specific duties and not to implement
the dual discrimination provisions under the Equality Act. We
are concerned that both of these measures are very regressive
and will weaken protection against discrimination afforded to
disabled people.
Given the timing of these announcements, it was regrettably
not possible for us to comment on these issues in our initial
submission to the Committee, so we welcome an opportunity to provide
further evidence on these issues. Scope as a member of the Disability
Charities Consortium and Equality and Diversity Forum has contributed
to their submissions and supports the points that they raised.
SPECIFIC DUTIES
We do not understand the rationale for the Government's
change of direction in this area and the need for another review
of the draft regulations for the specific duties, the Government
having already consulted at length on these issues through a consultation
launched in August 2010. The process that the Government has undertaken
to get to this stage was extensive, with substantial input from
disabled people and organisations representing them, so we do
not therefore see the need for these to be reviewed again.
The revised draft regulations in the policy review
mark a regression both from the current legal duty on public bodies
and the proposals which were initially issued for consultation.
Worryingly, the proposals seek to remove requirements to publish
information about engagement and equality impact assessments as
well as requirements in relation to equality objective setting.
Involving disabled people and carrying out an impact assessment
of decisions and policies are vital for the effective performance
of a public authority of their public sector equality duty and
for ensuring compliance with the need to show due regard. Public
bodies will still need to look at the equality impact of their
decisions as that is what is required by the act itself, but this
is not recognised in the policy review. Furthermore, by removing
these requirements, this will greatly reduce transparency and
make it much more difficult for disabled people to hold public
authorities to account without having to resort to a legal challenge.
Also, the policy review argues that "in some
circumstances a single objective could be appropriate"[59]
which would be across all of a public's authority functions and
all equality groups in a four year period. We believe that this
does not reflect reality in terms of the scale of inequality that
disabled people experience and the need to take specific action
to reduce that inequality. Scope supported the change in wording
from "public authorities must prepare and publish one or
more objectives" to "public authorities must prepare
and publish objectives", which we felt that it clarified
and sent a strong message that a single objective cannot be sufficient
to tackle inequality. We are very disappointed that the Government
is seeking to reintroduce the original formulation.
Given the timeframe for the policy review, there
will be an inevitable gap between the general duty coming into
force on 5 April and the introduction of specific duties and associated
guidance. These delays will cause significant confusion among
public authorities and disabled people. In particular, we are
concerned that while this does in no way reduce the overarching
requirement on public authorities to have due regard to promoting
disability equality in the exercise of all of their functions
under the general duty, the confusion around the specific duties
may mean that some public authorities may not realise that they
still have to comply with this.
DUAL DISCRIMINATION
In our initial submission, we highlighted to the
Committee our concerns about the parts in the Equality Act not
yet implemented which would ensure that progress towards greater
equality for disabled people is sustained and expressed our hope
that the Committee will use the inquiry as an opportunity to raise
with the Government the importance and need for the Equality Act
to be fully implemented.
We are very concerned about the subsequent announcement
made in the Budget that the Government will not pursue with the
implementation of the dual discrimination provisions in the Act.
The clause on dual discrimination has been introduced in order
to address the gap in legislation that currently exists which
only allows bringing separate discrimination claims relating to
one protected characteristic, such as disability, which can be
very difficult. Further, this oversimplifies the real and complex
ways in which many disabled people experience discrimination,
whereas the dual discrimination clause, while reduced from the
provision on multiple discrimination which was originally included
in the Act, it did go some way to recognise and address this.
Worryingly, this appears to be part of a wider trend
of scrapping any regulations that are perceived as not needed.
The emphasis on avoiding unnecessary, bureaucratic burdens on
business sets a worrying tone, by implying no consideration of
the overarching objective of such regulation—and the benefits
where these exists—and instead proceeding with "cherry
picking" provisions from the legislation on the basis of
a broad sweeping understanding of what amounts to regulatory burden.
This poses doubts about the Government's plans to live up to its
equality commitments to disabled people as set out in the Equality
Strategy.
April 2011
59 Government Equalities Office, 2011, Equality Act
2010: The public sector Equality Duty: reducing bureaucracy-Policy
review paper,
www.equalities.gov.uk/pdf/110317%20Public%20sector%20Equality%20Duty%20-%20Policy%20review%20paper.pdf Back
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