Commission for Equality and Human Rights must engage with employers, says Employers' Forum on Disability
1st October 2007
Employers' Forum on Disability (EFD) today marks the launch of the Commission for Equality and Human Rights (CEHR), which replaces the Disability Rights Commission.
EFD believes that the new body must continue the work of the DRC by engaging effectively with both employers and disabled people as valued stakeholders, who must now turn to the CEHR for advice and support.
It must also ensure its own credibility in the eyes of the British public, by doing much more to promote equality - rather than encouraging Britain to ‘feel at ease' with this vague concept of ‘diversity'.
EFD chief executive Susan Scott-Parker says: "Our overarching purpose is to mobilise business as employers and service providers, behind the economic and social inclusion of disabled people.
"We know that the legal framework for anti-discrimination must be credible in the eyes of both employers and disabled people. The CEHR must take responsibility for the quality of that legal framework, or it will fail.
"We would also encourage the CEHR to start again on the proposed Single Equality Act, which in its draft form offers proposals which at best represent tinkering with the existing system - and which at worst threaten to undermine the recent hard won progress on disability."
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Notes to editors
Media enquiries, please contact:
Liz Nightingale, Communications Manager
Employers' Forum on Disability
Email: liz.nightingale@efd.org.uk
Telephone: 020 7403 3020
About Employers' Forum on Disability
Employers' Forum on Disability is the employers' organisation focused on disability as it affects employers and service providers. With over 400 members, EFD represents organisations that employ around 20 per cent of the UK workforce.Since its establishment in 1991, EFD has worked closely with government and other stakeholders, sharing best practice to make it easier to employ disabled people and serve disabled customers.