The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) has published its business plan for 2016/17.
Within the plan, the EHRC Disability Committee has decided to prioritise the following issues over a three-year period:
- Disability and finance
- Encouraging fair recruitment, development and reward in employment
- Social isolation
- Disabled parents
- ‘A home of our own’
- The use of restraint and coercion.
Key focus areas
- Tackling unlawful discrimination in recruitment and treatment at work.
- Addressing gender, disability and race pay gaps.
- Promoting the right to equality of access to appropriate health and social care services and dignity of care.
- Tackling prejudice and hate crime.
- Preventing and responding to disability-related harassment through stereotyped media reporting.
- Commissioning an assessment to determine how changes to the welfare system have affected equality of opportunity and the human rights of people who share certain protected characteristics.
- In an intervention at the Supreme Court, EHRC will submit that the decision to remove the spare room subsidy (bedroom tax) does not comply with equality and human rights law in the light of the severe impact on disabled people who require an additional room for carers and equipment."
- EHRC will launch a new inquiry examining housing options for disabled people, including those with learning disabilities. The inquiry will gather evidence and assess the provision and choice of housing for disabled people and its impact on independent living, and seek to identify innovative approaches to providing a choice of housing to enable independent living.
- EHRC will continue to press for changes to secure disabled people’s access to bus and rail services, taxis, and right to fair treatment when travelling by air, using our strategic litigation powers where appropriate to clarify rights and obligations.
- In the Supreme Court they are supporting a case to improve accessibility of buses to wheelchair users (the Paulley case), arguing that they should be given priority access to the wheelchair space.