Schedule 13
Equality Bill
8:00 pm
An amendment to ensure that the anticipatory nature of the duty to make reasonable adjustments is retained in education as in the Disability Discrimination Act by providing that the duty applies to ‘disabled persons’ not only to an individual disabled person.
The amendment is on the matter of reasonable adjustments. It is a departure from the original language on reasonable adjustments in the services and functions, private clubs and education provisions of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995. My understanding is that the phrase “disabled persons” must direct attention to features which impede persons with one or more kind of disability. We are aiming not simply for an education establishment to anticipate the needs of an individual who would have impairments requiring specific reasonable adjustments. The wording of the Bill needs to include the fact that it is about a class of disabilities—for example, being mobility-impaired or visually impaired—and about making reasonable anticipatory adjustments so that someone who has that disability and belongs to that group, will not need to arrive at the school and then ask for that adjustment to be made; it will already be there. The EHRC says:
“This is a critical underlying aspect of the reasonable adjustment duties and failing to address this in education would be regressive.”
Therefore, I am seeking the Minister’s response to see if there is any room to oblige on that matter.