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Equality Bill

I strongly support this amendment. It seems to offer very helpful clarification of the new rights that we are enshrining to extend protection from direct discrimination and harassment on grounds of association or perception. These new rights are a major breakthrough for carers and colleagues of disabled people, but they need to be in the Bill. Why should they be hidden away in Explanatory Notes that probably only parliamentarians, lawyers and lobbyists ever read? We need these rights spelt out on the tin, so that people can access and use them more easily, rather than hidden away in the small print. Another major advantage of this amendment is that it focuses on the fact that it is the defendant's motivation for the discrimination that matters, not whether the claimant meets the stringent legal definition of disability. That seems to me to be entirely the right approach, and I very much hope that the Government will adopt it.