When even ministers shrug off being stopped and searched for no apparent reason, nothing will change, says Guardian columnist Afua Hirsch
Tag: Equality and Human Rights Commission
Disabled campaigners ‘one step closer to justice’, despite court setback : Disability News Service
Disabled campaigners believe they are “one step closer to justice”, despite losing a legal case against the government over the potentially ruinous costs of taking discrimination cases through the courts. A high court judge yesterday (Wednesday) dismissed an application for judicial review […]
Source: Disabled campaigners ‘one step closer to justice’, despite court setback : Disability News Service
Health Secretary orders probe into autistic youngsters locked in NHS ‘hell holes’ across the UK | Daily Mail Online
Health Secretary Matt Hancock has ordered an urgent investigation into why youngsters are being locked up like criminals because they have autism or learning difficulties, just days after The Mail on Sunday revealed their appalling plight.
Mr Hancock was ‘deeply shocked’ by this newspaper’s account last week of children as young as 13 being incarcerated, sometimes for years, in NHS-funded assessment and treatment units, known as ATUs.
Our exposé, based on numerous detailed interviews with distraught individuals and families, found evidence of routine abuse of children and young people kept in the secretive facilities.
Deaf campaigner takes court action over BSL jury ban | DisabledGo News and Blog
A Deaf campaigner has launched a legal action aimed at stopping the government discriminating against users of British Sign Language by preventing them from serving on juries.
David Buxton, chief executive of the London-based disabled people’s organisation Action on Disability, is seeking a judicial review of the government’s failure to allow him to sit on a jury.
He was called up for jury service at Kingston Crown Court earlier this year, but when he told the Jury Central Summoning Bureau he was Deaf, he was informed that he was not required.
A crown court judge later deferred a decision on whether he would be allowed to serve as a juror.
In his claim for judicial review – which is being funded by the Equality and Human Rights Commission – Buxton is arguing that justice secretary David Gauke is discriminating against him and breaching the Equality Act’s public sector equality duty, and the Human Rights Act, by not allowing him to serve on a jury with the assistance of an interpreter.
The Ministry of Justice said this week that allowing a non-juror into the jury room during its deliberations breaches common law.
But Buxton’s call is backed by the UN committee on the rights of persons with disabilities, which said last September that the UK government should enable BSL-users “to fully and equally participate as jurors in court proceedings”, under article 13 (access to justice) of the UN disability convention.
The committee, in its concluding observations on the government’s implementation of the convention, said it was concerned that “regulations exclude persons with hearing impairments from participation in jury proceedings, and that personal assistants/interpreters are not deemed to constitute procedural accommodation”.
The refusal to allow BSL-users to take part as jurors is a long-standing source of frustration for many Deaf campaigners.
Source: Deaf campaigner takes court action over BSL jury ban | DisabledGo News and Blog
Concerns over green paper’s ‘chilling’ failure to address accessible housing crisis | DisabledGo News and Blog
The government has been criticised by disabled campaigners and the equality watchdog after its new social housing green paper failed to include a single mention of the accessible housing crisis.
Only three months ago, the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) warned that more than 350,000 disabled people in England had unmet housing needs, with one-third of those in private rented accommodation and one-fifth of those in social housing living in unsuitable properties.
EHRC called in its report for the government to draw up a national strategy to ensure an adequate supply of new homes built to inclusive design standards.
But this week’s social housing green paper, described by communities secretary James Brokenshire as a “new deal” for social housing residents – those who pay rent at below market levels – does not mention accessible housing once.
The word “accessible” only appears in the 78-page document four times, on each occasion relating to the need for accessible information or complaints procedures.
The green paper does refer to supported housing, which it explains has a “key role to play” in supporting minority groups including people with mental ill-health, learning difficulties and other disabled people.
But there are no proposals to improve supported housing, other than referring to a U-turnannounced last week, in which ministers said that it would continue to be funded through the social security system rather than being devolved to local authorities as originally planned.
The green paper also mentions an ongoing review of the disabled facilities grant (DFG), which provides funding to make disabled people’s homes more accessible, for example by widening doorways or installing ramps, and which will see spending increase from £220 million in 2015-16 to £505 million in 2019-20.
But there are no new proposals for increasing the supply of accessible housing, or even requests for ideas on how the accessible housing crisis could be addressed.
Ellen Clifford, campaigns and policy manager for Inclusion London, said that reading the green paper and realising its failure to mention the crisis in accessible housing – despite the conclusions reached in the EHRC report – had been a “chilling” experience.
Autistic teen’s legal fight over ‘physical abuse’ school exclusion | DisabledGo News and Blog
A legal case being heard this week highlights how disabled children who can be physically aggressive because of their impairment are currently being failed by equality laws, say inclusive education campaigners.
The upper tribunal this week heard the appeal brought by the parents of a 13-year-old disabled boy, known as L, who was excluded from school because of behaviour linked to his autism.
The way that Equality Act regulations are currently interpreted means children like L who are defined as having “a tendency to physical abuse” are often not treated as “disabled” and are therefore not protected by the Equality Act.
The lack of protection under the Equality Act means schools do not have to justify how a decision to exclude a disabled child in these circumstances is proportionate or explain how they have made reasonable adjustments to support the pupil so the behaviour can be prevented or reduced.
Statistics show that almost half of all school exclusions involve a child with special educational needs.
Two years ago, a report by a House of Lords committee on the impact of the Equality Act on disabled people said the regulations had “unintentionally, discouraged schools from paying sufficient attention to their duties” under the act.
Source: Autistic teen’s legal fight over ‘physical abuse’ school exclusion | DisabledGo News and Blog
Watchdog’s barrister calls for legal right to independent living | DisabledGo News and Blog
Legal advice commissioned by the equality and human rights watchdog has called for disabled people to have a legal right to independent living.
The barrister was asked by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) last year to examine if there needed to be a right to independent living in law for disabled people, because of concerns that their right to choice and control over their lives was being “eroded”.
The lawyer has now concluded that there does need to be a legal right to independent living, although there are several options for how that could be achieved.
Now EHRC is consulting on which of those options it should recommend, and it is likely to publish its conclusions by the end of the year.
An EHRC spokesman told Disability News Service that the barrister’s advice contains “quite a few options” on “how such a right could work in practice”.
He said: “We are going to speak to a range of people involved and see if we can narrow down those options and will then come forward with a set of proposals.”
Although he said EHRC could not yet say that it agreed that there needed to be a legal right to independent living, he said its proposals would “take into account” the barrister’s advice.
Last autumn, the UN’s committee on the rights of persons with disabilities (CRPD) called on the UK government to recognise disabled people’s legal right to independent living, one of the key demands disabled people and their organisations in the UK had made in their submissions to the committee .
has called for disabled people to have a legal right to independent living.
The barrister was asked by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) last year to examine if there needed to be a right to independent living in law for disabled people, because of concerns that their right to choice and control over their lives was being “eroded”.
The lawyer has now concluded that there does need to be a legal right to independent living, although there are several options for how that could be achieved.
Now EHRC is consulting on which of those options it should recommend, and it is likely to publish its conclusions by the end of the year.
An EHRC spokesman told Disability News Service that the barrister’s advice contains “quite a few options” on “how such a right could work in practice”.
He said: “We are going to speak to a range of people involved and see if we can narrow down those options and will then come forward with a set of proposals.”
Although he said EHRC could not yet say that it agreed that there needed to be a legal right to independent living, he said its proposals would “take into account” the barrister’s advice.
Last autumn, the UN’s committee on the rights of persons with disabilities (CRPD) called on the UK government to recognise disabled people’s legal right to independent living, one of the key demands disabled people and their organisations in the UK had made in their submissions to the committee .
Source: Watchdog’s barrister calls for legal right to independent living | DisabledGo News and Blog
Universal Credit ‘discriminates’ against disabled people, High Court rules : Welfare Weekly
Universal Credit rules which saw two severely disabled men miss out on £178 a month in vital benefits are unlawful and “discriminatory”, the High Court in London has ruled in a landmark legal case.
The two claimants, known only as TP and AR, were in receipt of the Severe Disability Premium (SDP) and Enhanced Disability Premium (EDP), which are designed to meet care costs for those without a carer, before they were required to claim Universal Credit after moving to a new area.
However, both the SDP and EDP have been scrapped under Universal Credit, despite reasurances from Work and Pensions Secretary Esther McVey that “no one will experience a reduction in the benefit they are receiving at the point of migration to Universal Credit where circumstances remain the same”.
TP is a former Cambridge graduate and worked in the finance sector, before being diagnosed with terminal illness – Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma and Castleman’s disease in 2016.
AR is 35 and suffers from severe mental health issues. He moved from Middlesbrough to Hartlepool in 2017 to escape the hated Bedroom Tax, but soon found himself facing the much criticised Universal Credit system and a serious drop in income.
Source: Universal Credit ‘discriminates’ against disabled people, High Court rules : Welfare Weekly
Equality watchdog ‘considering legal action against government’ over rail access failures | DisabledGo News and Blog
The equality watchdog is considering legal action against the government over its failure to ensure an accessible rail service, according to a leading disabled expert.
The potential legal action emerged in the wake of anger directed at rail operator Govia Thameslink Railway (GTR) – which runs Southern, Thameslink, Gatwick Express and Great Northern – after it issued “grossly insulting” guidance to staff on how to deal with disabled rail passengers.
Among the advice in the Pit Stop guidance was that staff should not attempt to place “persons of reduced mobility (PRM)” on a train “if there is a possibility of delaying the service”.
It also tells staff that any PRM wishing to travel by train to an unstaffed station should be taken to the nearest staffed station to their destination and then “assisted into a taxi”.
And it says that “ill passengers need to be removed from the train as quickly as possible” because “not taking action will cause thousands of other passengers to be stuck on trains”.
For people “who are fitting”, the guidance says, staff should “wait for the convulsions to stop and be ready, if appropriate, to move them once they have started to wake up”.
Marsha de Cordova, Labour’s shadow minister for disabled people, said the guidance was “shocking” and “grossly insulting to disabled people, who are being treated as second class citizens”.
Although other disabled campaigners were outraged at GTR’s guidance, they also said it was an inevitable consequence of government rail policies.
WOW Campaign is back, and pushing for a second House of Commons debate | DisabledGo News and Blog
Disabled campaigners are relaunching the WOW Campaign in a bid to secure a debate in the House of Commons on the need for the government to assess the financial damage caused to disabled people through its cuts and reforms.
Four years ago, nearly 105,000 people signed a petition launched by the WOW Campaign that called on the government to carry out a cumulative impact assessment (CIA) of the cuts.
That petition led to a debate in February 2014, the first time disabled people had secured a debate in the main chamber of the House of Commons on an agenda they had chosen themselves.
The WOW (War On Welfare) Campaign has been largely dormant for more than two years, but key figures now believe the time is right for a relaunch and a second WOW debate.
Activists are working to secure cross-party backing for another debate that would call on ministers to defend their refusal to calculate the overall impact of their cuts on disabled people.
This time, WOW is hoping to secure a debate through a request from supportive MPs to the backbench business committee, rather than through a petition to parliament.
Initial support has already come, they say, from Labour’s shadow chancellor John McDonnell – who led the WOW debate in 2014 – Green MP Caroline Lucas, and Kate Green, Labour’s former shadow minister for disabled people, as well as SNP and Liberal Democrat MPs.
Green said she was “still at the stage of investigating possibilities”, including “discussing exactly what a debate would cover, for example would it be just on benefit cuts or wider, given the comprehensively damning assessment from the UN since the original petition”.
Source: WOW Campaign is back, and pushing for a second House of Commons debate | DisabledGo News and Blog
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