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Planning Bill

My Lords, returning to the Disability Discrimination Act, the noble Baroness has described to me the three public sector equality duties: the disability duty under that Act; the race duty; and the gender duty. As the House will recognise, here I am particularly concerned with the disability duty. There is an overarching general duty on all public authorities to avoid discrimination, but that can be underpinned—to use the noble Baroness’s own word—by specific duties set out in secondary legislation. I understand that the IPC will be subject to the general duty, but I firmly believe that, when one deals with the complex structure of planning, the more specific duties should be applied to the work of the IPC. The noble Baroness has told me that when deciding which public authorities to list under specific duties, the Government consider such factors as whether the body has significant direct dealings with disabled service users, has a significant impact on the lives of disabled people, could be a significant employer of disabled people and is of sufficient size to support the duties. For planning legislation, the second point—whether it has a significant impact on the lives of disabled people—is important. There is no doubt whatever that buildings and other facilities which are to be accessed by the public have to be accessible by disabled people, and that would certainly include a number of major infrastructure projects. One of the complaints of the disabled community is that their pleas to planning authorities have not been met with much sympathy or acquiescence. On the contrary, they make the point again and again, if that kind of thing can be taken into account early in the design of a project, the necessary facilities for access can be made available at far less cost and in a far more acceptable way than if they have to be added later. I do not want to bang on about it, but it is very important. I know from my brief discussion with the noble Lord, Lord Low, that he fully accepts that view. He asked me to emphasise his support for what we are proposing here. We need the specific duties under the Disability Discrimination Act to be applied to the IPC. I beg to move.