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The Equality Bill completed its Report Stage and Third Reading in the House of Commons today. It is now off to the House of Lords.

I havn’t been able to check all of the amendments that were made but the proceedings of the Bill published so far show the Government proposing two new clauses - which I presume were adopted.

The first is a complicated provision which seems to provide that where an employer asks an employee about his or her health prior to offering employment and then does not make an offer of employment then the burden of proof will switch to the employer to prove that the refusal of employment was not an act of discrimination.

Hmmm. Not sure about this. Nothing wrong with the provision in itself - but why single out disability for special treatment here? The purpose of the Bill is at least in part to harmonise the way in which discrimination works accross the different strands and this is one added way in which disability discrimination will work differently. In any event its a pretty complicated provision which doesn’t do all that much - it only shifts the burden of proof. It does not prevent an employer from using medical questionnaires and does not make refusing employment based on health unlawful in itself. I think it is bound to cause confusion and certainly will not help to ’simplify and clarify’ the law.

Another new clause makes it clear that in a discrimination case the fact that the discriminator shares the same protected characteristic as the claimant does not prevent a claim of discrimination. In other words it is possible for a woman to discriminate on the grounds of the sex of another woman, or a white person to racially discriminate against another white person -etc.

I’m a bit puzzled by this. Who on earth  has ever suggested otherwise. I certainly wouldn’t have read the current Bill in any other way. Maybe I’ve missed something?

When the full proceedings are published I’ll post a full list of the subnstantive amendments that have been made. I’ll also plough through the Hansard debates to see if there are any indications of future developments from  the Government -both the current one and the next one!