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Workplace Stress:

The Legal Essentials

April 2008

Health & Safety

Case Law update

April 2008

Disability Discrimination Update

April 2008

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Disability Discrimination update:

April 2008

 

 

The Disability Discrimination Act 1995 (DDA) is a good example of  an Act of Parliament which has become so complex that many lawyers cannot understand it.  The aim of the Act appears, at first sight, to be useful.  It is a clear example of good, useful law in that its purpose is to protect the weak and vulnerable.  But I defy you to find a lawyer who can tell you, off the top of his head, which sections of the Act are in force.

 

Then we come on to the contents of the Act, which are so opaque and convoluted that non-lawyers have extreme, almost insuperable, difficulty in grasping their meaning.

 

There are an estimated 6.5 million people in the United Kingdom who may come within the meaning of “disabled”.  There is evidence of widespread discrimination against such people.  If ever there was a need for a clear set of rules, it is in the context of protecting the rights of the disabled.

 

A disabled person who takes the view that he or she has been discriminated against, and who seeks to discover what the law is, faces a study of at least the following sources:

 

• The body of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995.

• Complex rules set out in the Schedules to the Act.

• Disability Discrimination (Employment) Regulations 1996.

• Disability Discrimination (Meaning of Disability) Regulations 1996.

• Disability Discrimination (Exemption for Small Employers) Order 1998.

• A mass of commencement orders which state the date at which different parts of the Act come into force.

• A Code of Practice issued by the Department of Education and Employment.

• Guidance on matters to be taken into account in determining questions relating to the definition of disability.

• An increasing body of case law.

 

Thus a ten-year old body of law has fragmented and become less and less accessible to disabled people.  The parliamentary draftspeople responsible for the DDA have created a set of rules which place access to the law outside the reach of non-legally qualified disabled persons.

 

The result of an overview of disability discrimination law is the depressing conclusion that it is not realistic for disabled persons who are not lawyers to bring their own proceedings.  Even highly-trained lawyers find the law difficult to grasp.  A totally new area of law which should have provided a rare opportunity to demystify the rules has been wasted.  The meaning of “disability” should not be a complex matter of law.