Call for monitoring of Equality Act 2010 in Wales to ensure disabled people are not disadvantaged
North Wales Assembly Member Mark Isherwood has called on the Welsh Government to ensure that the Equality Act 2010 is properly monitored and that public bodies understand what it means.
Speaking in the Welsh Parliament yesterday, Mr Isherwood expressed concerned that disabled people are currently disadvantaged because of a failure to check that public bodies are adhering to the legislation.
Raising the matter with the Deputy Minister and Chief Whip, he said:
“The Equality Act 2010 requires ‘that service providers must think ahead and take steps to address barriers that impede disabled people’.
“In doing this, it says ‘it is a good idea to consider the range of disabilities that your actual or potential service users might have’ and that ‘you should not wait until a disabled person experiences difficulties using a service’. It also says that ‘those to whom the provisions apply’ are required to ‘take such steps as is reasonable to take’ to avoid putting disabled people at ‘a substantial disadvantage’, where ‘failure to comply with this duty is a form of discrimination’. And this ‘reflects the social model of disability’, requiring ‘changes to the environment, as well as attitudinal and behavioural changes’. And yet, every day, I'm having to write regarding casework relating to child safeguarding, access to education, exclusions from schools and colleges, access to care and support from social services, and access to health services in Wales, and having to repeat the content of this legislation to the same service providers I've repeated it to previously.
“This is a failure of monitoring. How are we not only going to manage the change to ensure that these public bodies at the top floor understand what this means, but then also monitor to ensure that they actually implement it?”
The Deputy Minister and Chief Whip replied: “It is for the Equality and Human Rights Commission to regulate the Public Sector Equality Duty, and work was commissioned last year, in 2018, to monitor that compliance. The findings of the exercise were published earlier on this year, and, actually, we note in the main finding that none of the public bodies in Wales fully met all of the requirements of the Public Sector Equality Duty - the specific duties that were monitored. So, clearly, very significant challenges are there.
“We've discussed this with Ruth Coombs, the Director of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, and I attended an event in July this year. I'm encouraged now that organisations are coming forward and we will back the Equality and Human Rights Commission in taking this seriously, because we are proud that we have got those Welsh-specific duties and we need to make sure that they're implemented”.
