The reform process has been amateurish and high-handed: a review is the only way to rebuild confidence in government policy Last week’s hat-trick of government defeats in the House of Lords debate on the welfare reform bill has stoked public interest in changes to disability benefits. On Tuesday the debate will move from
Northern Ireland’s 30,000 people with autism will see improvements to the way they are treated, if new legislation is passed. Proposed reforms would ensure that autistic people in Northern Ireland are included in disability legislation and that comprehensive services are provided to them and their families from their earliest years through the course of their [...]
The Coalition Government will be forced to defend its Budget in the High Court later, against claims it broke equalities law. The Fawcett Society is seeking a judicial review, arguing that ministers failed to consider the impact of tax and welfare changes on women. The women’s rights group says £5.8bn of the £8bn savings outlined [...]
The Scottish Parliament rejected new laws giving terminally ill people the right to choose when to die, despite claims they are widely backed. The End of Life Assistance Bill, brought forward by independent MSP Margo MacDonald, who has Parkinson’s disease, was defeated by 85 votes to 16, with two abstentions. The rejection of the bill [...]
Disabled people do not lack the motivation to work, but lack the support needed to do so, according to national disability charity Scope. With Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith expected to announce today (11 November) the most radical welfare reforms in a generation, Scope’s chief executive Richard Hawkes has warned of the chasm [...]
Disabled people must be more aware of their rights under the Equality Act 2010 if the new legislation is to be a success, according to Leonard Cheshire Disability. The Equality Act replaces the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) and makes some key improvements to disabled people’s rights in areas such as employment and access to goods [...]
The Disability Discrimination Act is no more! Unless you live in Northern Ireland, that is. But across mainland Britain, the rights of Disabled people in the UK are now set out within the ‘cross-cutting’ Equality Act 2010. One of the last pieces of legislation introduced by the previous Labour Government, the Equality Act aimed to [...]
More than four in five (81%) employers say the recession has not affected their ability to employ disabled people, or make adjustments, according to a new Department for Work and Pensions study into how organisations are responding to the provisions of the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) 1995 and 2005. However, the DWP report shows that [...]
Northern Ireland’s Department of Health, Social Services and Public Safety has issued its Equality Impact Assessment (EQIA) on its proposals for mental capacity law reform. A gap currently exists in the law in relation to the care and treatment of those people who are at any time unable to make decisions and reform of the Mental Health [...]
Two decades after President George Bush (senior) signed the Americans With Disabilities Act into law, disabled Americans have been marking the advances in disabled people’s rights in the last 20 years – and highlighting what still needs to be done. The federal law, signed on 26 July 1990, brought sweeping change in many areas, including [...]
