DDB 42 Philip Pool
Submission by Philip Pool
to the Joint Committee on the Draft Disability Discrimination
Bill
71 Islingword Street
Brighton
BN2 9US
draft Disability Bill Scrutiny Committee
Dear Ms Rock,
Call for Evidence - draft Disability
Bill
I am writing as an individual disabled
person about how the current DDA is being interpreted with the
hope that the issue will be addressed in the Bill. This interpretation
interfers with individual's rights to privacy.
The current requirement for employers
to seek information about their employees' disabilities is clearly
intended to prevent employers being complacent and not seeking
that information. However, some employers are interpreting that
intention in a way that I consider undermines individual's rights
to privacy. For example, my employers conditions state the following:
"Notification
- if a member of your staff tells you that they have a disability,
you must let the # team or their human resources advisor know
without delay. You should also tell human resources if you believe
that a member of staff has a disability, even if they have not
expressly told you that they have.
If a disabled person asks you not to
tell human resources, you should explain that you are required
to do so by the Disability Discrimination Act 1995, but that human
resources will treat the information in confidence."
I consider that that is effectively
"outing" disabled people who may have a good reason
for not passing on that information. The reasons may include;
they have good reason to believe that they will open themselves
up to harassment; the nature of their impairment is personal,
such as incontinence or; it is not relevant to the employer -
eg. they manage the incontinence without need for an adjustment
by their employer.
In a parallel situation, it may be
desirable for an employer to know whether members of staff are
gay so that it can assess whether positive diversity policies
are working. It would not, however, be acceptable to list staff
on the basis of another person's perception that they are gay
and certainly not if that person has asked explicitly asked not
to be recorded that way.
yours sincerely,
Philip Pool
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