Select committee: Women and Equalities Committee
Recommendation 20
Fourth report: Unequal impact? Coronavirus, disability and access to services: full Report
Published 22 Dec 2020
Paragraph 125
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)
NHS health and publicly funded social care services are legally required, by the Accessible Information Standard, published under section 250 of the Health and Social Care Act 2012, to provide health and care information to patients and service users in a way they can understand. The aim is to ensure a consistent approach to identifying and meeting the information and communication needs of patients and 46 Unequal impact? Coronavirus, disability and access to services: full Report service users, their carers and families. Disabled people’s experiences of inaccessible public health information from the Government during this pandemic have been unacceptable. Disabled people have been put at risk through lack of access to vital information. Their communication needs should have been anticipated as a matter of course. Everyone should have the right to receive public health information in a format they can understand. We recommend the Accessible Information Standard be extended to apply to all public health messages from government departments.
From: Women and Equalities Committee, Fourth report: Unequal impact? Coronavirus, disability and access to services: full Report (HC 1050), paragraph 125, 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.