Equality Bill

My Lords, we have heard a very persuasive case, made by the noble Lord, Lord Low, about the importance of, and the need for, this amendment, supported by the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell of Surbiton. However, the points that have just been raised by my noble friend Lord Elton need, too, to be borne in mind. As I understand it, the noble Lord, Lord Low, is asking for no change to be made to the scope or extent of the Bill; he has argued that the intention of the "fourth requirement" is merely to place in a more obvious position the need for A to provide more accessible information. Will the Minister confirm that the amendment would achieve what the noble Lord seeks and would go no further than the current law as it stands? If it does not, the argument would appear to rest on whether it would be more beneficial to state the need for accessible information in the Bill, which in turn would depend on whether the more visible position of the requirement would mean that more people would be likely to follow it. The Bill must be about achieving real change. The duty to provide accessible information for disabled people has been in force from 1995 and guidance around the issue has been available since then. However, as was clear from the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Low, there is still a considerable lack of compliance with it. Does the Minister think that if the requirement were placed more clearly in the Bill, it would increase compliance with the duty? Or perhaps she can inform the Committee whether there are deeper issues here which we need to look into in more detail. Are there other reasons for this duty not being complied with? If so, are there other ways in which the problem needs to be addressed? I have considerable sympathy with the concerns raised by the noble Lord, Lord Low. I would be interested to hear the Minister’s response, particularly as to whether this is a cosmetic change to the Bill and the best way to ensure compliance with the DDA guidelines on accessible information to which the noble Lord referred. Research from the RNIB submitted to the Conservative Party’s working group on health information has shown that only 9 per cent of local authorities could even say whether they could provide accessible information, and that 72 per cent of patients have been given information by their GPs which they could not read. Lack of access to information can range from the annoying, such as not being able to read the day on which your rubbish will be collected, to the downright dangerous—for example, 81 per cent of people surveyed by the RNIB said that they did not get information about prescribed medicines in a format they could read. In the age of computers where the touch of a button can provide information in a large format, it seems ridiculous that this should be such a hard provision to comply with. According to figures from the RNIB, there are currently 2 million people in the UK with sight loss. We have tabled Amendments 43, 44 and 45 to probe the Government’s intentions regarding the possibility of the need for the asymmetric treatment of disabled people. As the Bill stands, Clause 20 appears to concentrate more heavily on helping disabled people to "overcome" the disadvantage that may be put in their way. This can be seen from the examples in the Explanatory Notes. The first example is a utility company that knows that many of its customers have sight impairment—making it difficult to read invoices and other customer communications—thinking about how to make the correspondence more accessible. This may involve making some letters available in large print. However, the Disability Charities Consortium is worried that this does not comply with the spirit of the Disability Discrimination Act, which was designed to ensure that disabled people have the same level of access as non-disabled people. Lord Justice Sedley in the case of Roads v Central Trains Ltd in 2004 stated that, ""the policy of the [Act] is not a minimalist policy of simply ensuring that some access is available to the disabled; it is, so far as reasonably practicable, to approximate the access enjoyed by disabled persons to that enjoyed by the rest of the public"." The Disability Charities Consortium is concerned that the Bill as it stands does not replicate this duty. It therefore considers it necessary to make clear the anticipatory nature of disability discrimination law. The emphasis should be on removing the barrier before it has even become a hindrance. Only where this is not reasonable should there be a requirement to provide an alternative means. There may therefore be a need to treat disabled people more favourably than those who are not disabled in order to take these factors into account and address these issues properly. We have therefore tabled the amendments to question the Minister as to how far these concerns are addressed in the Bill. Do the provisions contain an anticipatory duty? The Explanatory Notes state that this clause and those following it simply replace similar provisions in the Disability Discrimination Act, but does the Minister consider that they retain the principle encapsulated in that Act? Can she give any reassurance to the Disability Charities Consortium on this point?