On 6 April the Equality Bill completed its passage in parliament after the House of Commons approved amendments made in the House of Lords. The Bill will be given Royal Assent in the next few days. The Equality Bill (to become the Equality Act) will merge and replace existing anti-discrimination legislation, including the Disability Discrimination Act.

Many of the recent changes approved involved disability, such as:

• making it unlawful to ask job applicants disability and health questions before job offers, except in prescribed circumstances;
• making explicit that reasonable adjustments for disabled people include reasonable steps to provide information in accessible formats, when the way information is provided would otherwise put disabled people at a substantial disadvantage.
• requiring schools to provide auxiliary aids for disabled pupils, where reasonable;
• making clear that costs of reasonable adjustments cannot generally be passed on to a disabled person;

• increasing the potential number of wheelchair-accessible taxis.

  The full text of the House of Commons debate on 6 April can be read at www.publications.parliament.uk

Inclusion London will be doing more work to raise awareness of the implications of the new legislation after the General Election – so watch this space!