The Women and Equalities Committee at the House of Commons has just published its report on Equality Act enforcement.

The report’s main recommendations are:

• Develop a ‘critical mass’ of cases to inform employers and organisations about their legal duties and make adherence to existing equality law a priority for all organisations;
• Move away from relying so heavily on the current model of using individual litigation to create precedents;
• Make obligations on employers, public authorities, and service providers explicit and enforceable;
• Ensure that all who have powers to change the way in which employers, public bodies and service providers operate use their powers to eliminate discrimination and to advance equality;
• The EHRC must refocus its work and be bolder in using its unique enforcement powers.

Committee Chair Maria Miller said:

“Above all, the Government must act on its own obligations. It must embed compliance and enforcement of the Equality Act into its most significant strategies and action plans. That it has not yet done so in its recent efforts to improve the quality of work – where stopping discrimination is so clearly an essential precondition to any improvements – beggars belief. Our report sets out exactly what needs to be done, and we look forward to hearing how the Government plans to act on this".

Full details can be found here

The Equality and Human Rights Commission has issued a report saying that 1 in 200 applications for legal aid for discrimination resulted in legal representation being obtained.  I'm surprised it's that high.  The Civil Legal Aid Gateway is specifically designed to be inaccessible as it is a bureaucratic obstacle course that even most non-disabled people would struggle to get through.  It was brought in to coincide with more and more discrimination by the Government itself, particularly in social security.

Having assisted a number of complainants to bring complaints about registered nurses doing the exact opposite of what nurses should do: i.e. harming patients rather than helping them, it was shocking to read this: https://www.disabilitynewsservice.com/nursing-regulator-cleared-more-than-200-nurses-over-pip-and-wca-complaints/

Amongst the complaints I've seen were clear examples of nurses ignoring specialist evidence in favour of "informal observations" (i.e. looking the patient up and down and deciding if they're considered worthy of the benefit), and misrepresenting what the patient had told them in order to deliver what appeared to be a predetermined outcome.  Claimants going from zero points when assessed by a nurse employed by Capita/Atos for PIP to 20+ points when specialist medical evidence available to them was actually properly considered surely indicates a problem!

The shocking revelations from Disability News Service appears to suggest nurses are immune from regulatory action when carrying out PIP and ESA assessments.

Tracey from Tredegar in South Wales had her PIP dailiy living component arbitrarily removed after a faulty "assessment by a health care professional".   This meant her husband was faced with the end of his carers allowance, which would have forced him to seek work.  Tracey has epilepsy and has sustained multiple injuries from fits. 

The DWP decision to remove Tracey's PIP daily living component was despite information readily available to it showing Tracey's safety could only be protected by her having a full time carer. 

Fortunately a single Kester Disability Rights letter resulted in PIP daily living being restored at the enhanced rate.  And this means her husband can continue to get carers allowance.  This was achieved so quickly that arrears were under £125!

Thousands of claimants in similar situations have to endure the full appeals regime (typically taking around a year) to get benefits restored.  This is a national scandal involving substantial risk and damage to disabled people and massive waste of tax payer's money.

Kester Disability Rights (KDR) made £7,000 in its first year.  That is my total pre-tax profits for the first full financial year of operation - my earnings for the entire year.  When setting up KDR I committed to only ever making a modest salary and all the surplus would go into expanding the service, but perhaps not that modest!  Although business people say to make any money at all in the first year is a bonus.  Fortunately I had redundancy money to subsidise it with.

When agonising over whether I should set up a charity or company I thought long and hard about what to do for the best.  Both models have reputation problems.  Charities sometimes pay very large salaries to people not doing very much whilst those doing all the work get very little, and companies have the same tendency.

So I went for the company option as I can't stand committees.  And I've come up with an imaginative new name and had a sign made for my office.

Here is a story showing the recent announcement that pensioners would no longer be repeatedly reasssessed for PIP could be less to do with compassion and more to do with expediency.  https://inews.co.uk/news/dwp-quietly-admits-never-had-capacity-pip-reviews-pensioners-disabilities-dwp-benefits/

The simple truth is Parliament never voted for claimants in deteriorating health to be repeatedly reassessed, which makes it all the more astonishing that people under pension age with chronic and deteriorating conditions are still going to be!