Disabled People’s Voice Becomes No More Than A Whisper – The Danger of The Equality Bill

The Government has published a single Equality Bill for the UK. If passed, this will bring disability, gender, race and other strands of discrimination within one piece of legislation. The proposals for the Bill also include some major changes to disability discrimination law but not necessarily for the better.

For many disabled people, the Equality Bill is oppressive and demeaning to disabled people. Our voice is lost in the confused and incoherent message caused by the integration of equality under one heading. What the Equality Bill fails to recognise is that whilst the strands of equality have a common aim, they are all very different and require many different approaches. The understanding of discrimination on the grounds of race or gender is far more known in the public domain than that of disability and under the Equality Bill, we have a real danger of the disabled people’s voice becoming little more than a whisper.

It has taken many campaigners many years to get where we are today with disability discrimination and changes have been slow to come. I, like many, doubt that I will see true equality for disabled people in my lifetime but I am determined to do all that I can to raise inclusion for all. The UK was very much forced to bring in the DDA but it has its limitations i.e. a requirement to make buildings accessible, but there was a more than liberal get-out clause and even more liberal lead-in times which allowed business managers to skirt around the issues. There has been little decisive action taken against offenders and we are still in a position whereby large areas of goods and services are unavailable to disabled people - some by direct discrimination i.e. non-accessible buildings and others by indirect discrimination such as no dropped kerbs etc.

The proposed Equality Bill attempts to level the playing field for all inequalities but somewhat leads to inconsistencies and there are ‘priority battles’ that have not been properly ironed out. The Equality Bill fails to address the many areas that disability reform requires and in doing so can only push back disabled equality rather than move it forward.