Select committee: Women and Equalities Committee
Recommendation 8
Fourth report: Unequal impact? Coronavirus, disability and access to services: full Report
Published 22 Dec 2020
Paragraph 55
Addressed to Government Equalities Office
Women and Equalities Committee Unequal impact? Coronavirus, disability and access to services All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Recommendation (the committee's words)
The Equality Act 2010’s Public Sector Equality Duty is intended to ensure public authorities have due regard, including in their decision making, policies and service delivery, to achieving the Act’s objectives, which include the elimination of discrimination against groups of people who share a protected characteristic. The Equality and Human Rights Commission has published non-statutory technical guidance on the Duty. This provides public authorities with a detailed Unequal impact? Coronavirus, disability and access to services: full Report 43 and comprehensive guide to the law, but, while it can be admissible as evidence in the courts, it does not have its own legal authority. We believe disabled people’s experiences of public services during the pandemic make the case for a strengthening of the Public Sector Equality Duty, outweighing any concerns about additional burdens on authorities. The Government should consent to the Equality and Human Rights Commission issuing a statutory Code of Practice on the Public Sector Equality Duty.
From: Women and Equalities Committee, Fourth report: Unequal impact? Coronavirus, disability and access to services: full Report (HC 1050), paragraph 55, 22 December 2020
Government response
The government responded to the whole report on 14 April 2021.
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The government welcomes the Committee's report and sets out measures taken during the pandemic, while declining some recommendations and committing to publish the National Strategy for Disabled People in Spring 2021.
- On a statutory Code of Practice on the Public Sector Equality Duty, the government says it "does not see any compelling need to depart from the normal preference of its predecessors against additional statutory codes of practice".
- On publishing assessments of disabled people's food needs, it says that, "in line with the practice of successive administrations", it "does not routinely publish EIAs".
- On the SEND review, the Department for Education "intends to publish proposals for consultation in the spring of 2021", saying the pandemic "has unavoidably delayed" the review.
- On an independent inquiry and social care reform, it says there will be "opportunities to look back" at COVID-19 but is "focused entirely" on the response for now, and will "bring forward proposals this year" on adult social care.