UK - New concerns over equality watchdog as it scraps disability committee

Article at Disability News Service https://www.disabilitynewsservice.c...y-watchdog-as-it-scraps-disability-committee/

"The equality watchdog has secretly decided to scrap its committee of disabled advisers, without attempting to consult on the move with disabled people and their organisations, Disability News Service (DNS) has learned.

The decision by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), and its failure to consult with disabled people’s organisations over the move, will place a further question-mark over its prestigious “A” status as a National Human Rights Institution (NHRI), awarded by the United Nations.

There are also questions over whether it carried out an equality impact assessment of the move to scrap the disability advisory committee (DAC)."

More at link.

This is a worrying development, EHRC is a publicly funded body and one of the 'go to' organisations for defending diasbled people's rights in the UK.

Equality and Human Rights Commission

 

The EHRC is a mess, sadly. There have been a number of politically motivated appointments at the top which has meant they haven't been impartial for a few years now: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/nov/30/politicising-ehrc-five-controversial-appointments

 

The CEO had her card marked a few years back for pointing out that the PM’s comments about letterboxes and burkas were spectacularly ill-judged, and then was forced out last year for, of all things, breaching Covid regs by visiting her holiday cottage in Wales (although not, funnily enough, organising EHRC booze ups during lockdown).

I know this board has rules about discussing politics but it must be tricky to observe them when the levers of power are seized by a cabal which a) will politicise absolutely everything if it suits them and b) files reasonable adjustments and disabled rights with “wokery”. I commend you all for managing to stick to them.

 

I can't remember the name of it to be sure - was it the national disability strategy that was released about a year ago and disabled people said they hadn't really been consulted or inputted into it?

Would this committee have had aything to do with that ie did it either come from them (in which case what has really gone wrong and was that for show they had disabled people involved) or oversighting/commenting on/objecting to any issues with it (in which case I sort of want to know more on that situation and the politics of it)?

 

Re: the National Disability Strategy - ruled illegal at Judicial Review: Government ‘must tear up national disability strategy’ after high court defeat

The national disability strategy is a Government initiative, as an independent body (similar to NICE) the EHRC is answerable to Parliament and the EHRC contribution to the national disability strategy was via a Parliamentary briefing https://www.equalityhumanrights.com..._inform_the_national_disability_strategy.docx

There is concern about the EHRC becoming too close to Government, but in the case of the national disability strategy the EHRC probably has clean hands.

 

Thank you for explaining. That is useful to know. There are some really big issues then above this with needing more of this and it to be more effective then. I don't fully know what the removal of this committee could impact on/what the EHRC would have input for and how much 'weight' this committee had been allowed/how much it worked in principle, but it theoretically doesn't sound good re: direction of travel.