Equality Bill

If the noble Lord lets me finish, he may be pleased with what I have to say. Before I complete my remarks, I want to clarify a point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Low, about the reasonable adjustments duty in the Bill not being as strong as the duty in the Disability Discrimination Act. We do not think this is true. We believe the Bill provides better protection for disabled people, and three elements of the duty and requirements do what is reasonable, as is required by the DDA. The noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, asked whether the duty for service providers is still anticipatory. As with the DDA currently, the duty of reasonable adjustment as it applies to those who provide services or public functions remains owed to disabled people at large. In conclusion, I hope that what I have said goes some way to reassuring the noble Lord, Lord Low. The Government share his objective for the reasonable duty to deliver access to information to people with sensory impairments. However, we need to take these amendments away and look at them again. It would appear that the point is being made by every noble Lord around the House that the problem we have is one of implementation. We are not sure whether these amendments would improve that situation, but we will look at them again to see whether we can come up with something that could.