Equality Bill

My Lords, Clause 15 provides that an employer or service provider, such as the universities cited by the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, cannot be liable for discrimination arising from disability if he or she does not know, and could not reasonably be expected to know, that the person is disabled. This is sometimes referred to as the "knowledge requirement". This amendment seeks to remove it from the Bill. The judgment in the House of Lords in the Malcolm case was unanimous that actual or imputed knowledge of the disability must be a factor in determining whether there has been disability-related discrimination. It is right to reflect this in the legislation, rather than rely on case law. An example is a pub landlady who refuses to serve a man who has had a stroke as she thinks that the man is drunk because of the way that he speaks. He is not refused service because he has had a stroke but because he has slurred speech, which is something that is connected with the disability. If any of the facts of the case, such as the other symptoms connected with a stroke or information given to the landlady by the customer himself, or by someone else, should have led the landlady to believe that the slurred speech was the result of the stroke rather than the drunkenness, the knowledge provision will be satisfied. This is the case even if the landlady herself did not believe that this was the case. The legislation, therefore, achieves a balance between the rights of disabled people and the interests of those with duties. The Bill sets out that a person is still under a duty not to discriminate where they could reasonably be expected to know that the person was disabled; and that, once a prima facie case has been established, the burden of proof falls on the duty-holder to show that they have not discriminated. The noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, asked how businesses or service providers would know what to do. There will be codes of practice that will be used alongside the legislation. These codes of practice will set out examples to show, where the treatment is unfavourable, how it should be determined. I am not sure when these codes of practice will be forthcoming but I will certainly let the noble Baroness and other noble Lords know. I would therefore respectfully request that the noble Baroness withdraw the amendment.