The House of Commons Work and Pensions Select Committee this week added its voice to calls for the UK’s Default Retirement Age to be abolished

In its latest report entitled ‘The Equality Bill: how disability equality fits within a single Equality Act’, the Committee concludes that one of the greatest obstacles to improving employment opportunities for older people is the continued existence of the statutory default retirement age in the Employment Equality (Age) Regulations 2006. The Committee believes that this regulation contradicts the Government’s wider social policy and labour market objectives to raise the average retirement age and allow people to continue to work and save for their retirement - and that it therefore should be removed.

The Committee welcomes the Government’s intentions to simplify and streamline legislation across the different equality strands into one single Equality Bill, as this will make discrimination law compliance and understanding easier. However, the Committee believes that disability discrimination requires a difference in approach compared to other equality law. Rather than being based on the idea of treating people in the same way, it should be predicated on the idea that we need to treat people differently to accord disabled people equal opportunities. The challenge is to bring disability discrimination law within that broad family of equality law whilst recognising those key differences.

The report finds that the Government still has a long way to go to achieve greater equality in employment for disabled people, carers and older workers. Whilst the overall employment rate of disabled people has increased, the employment rate for people with mental illness, phobias or panic has remained substantially lower (at just over 10%) than the employment rate for those with most other types of impairment. Therefore the Government needs to refresh its approach to supporting disabled people into employment and to make sure it reflects the added complexity of needs of people with mental illnesses and learning disabilities.

The report welcomes the Government’s decision to include carers in the single Equality Bill, which will give them the protection they currently lack in employment, the provision of goods, facilities and services and through public sector equality duties. However, this does not address the matter of flexible working - and in particular, it does not provide carers with a right to request reasonable adjustment, which may be necessary in order to ensure their effective participation in the workplace. The Committee believes that the Bill should make this provision.

Their report also identifies recruitment as the most common source of discrimination against disabled people. And it endorses the Disability Rights Taskforce’s recommendation that disability related enquiries before a job offer should be permitted only in very limited circumstances.

The Committee says it is also extremely concerned by the evidence from the Employers’ Forum on Disability that 85% of online recruitment sites were inaccessible and that 1.3 million people were being prevented from applying for jobs.