---

Equality Bill

My Lords, this amendment would make an addition to the provisions in Schedule 1 for some people who experience depression. It would apply only to a person who has had a period of depression in the past five years that has had a substantial adverse effect on their ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities for a period of six months or more. It would enable them to always be treated as if that substantial adverse effect is likely to recur, and thus to meet the long-term element of the definition of disability. I recognise that depression can have a profound effect on a person’s life, but I do not consider that extending the Equality Bill in this way is the appropriate way forward. The Bill is intended to cover those people who are disabled in the generally accepted sense of the word. That is, they have a condition which is long-term, or even permanent. This is reflected in the current definition, which requires that a person must have an impairment that has a substantial and adverse effect on the ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities. These are issues that the noble Baroness referred to. That effect must have lasted, or be expected to last, at least 12 months, or for the rest of their lives. If the amendment was accepted, it would treat some people with depression more favourably than others who experience periods of ill health or impairment, which can also have substantial adverse effects, but where those effects last for only a few months. Ill health, or an impairment such as a broken limb, is not the same as a disability. I am sure that we all know that. I am sure that people in that position would not regard themselves as disabled, because their conditions are temporary and short term. A disability is by its nature more substantial, as the noble Baroness has acknowledged. What is being suggested here is a move away from the well established approach taken in the Disability Discrimination Act, which we are carrying forward to the Equality Bill. Sub-paragraph 2(2) already provides for people whose impairment has fluctuating or recurrent adverse effects, and that provision can help people with recurring periods of depression to gain the protection of the Bill. If a person has experienced a six-month period of depression, which had a substantial adverse effect on their normal day-to-day activities, and that effect is likely to recur, the Bill enables those effects to be treated as continuing. That would apply regardless of whether the previous period was within the past five years or not. Many people may experience separate and isolated periods of depression at traumatic times of their life—for example because of divorce, bereavement or redundancy. These do not necessarily arise from an underlying condition. I do not believe that it would be right to protect a person from discrimination on the basis of their having experienced two periods of depression, however substantial each one may have been, simply because they occurred within a period of five years. Changing the definition of "long term" just for depression, as this amendment proposes, would be unfair to other disabled people and would cause uncertainty, as there is no clear dividing line between depression and some other mental illnesses. The majority of disabled people do not have special provisions enabling them to meet the long-term condition of the definition, but they will have to show that the effects of their impairment have lasted, or are likely to last for at least 12 months. Given the provision already in Schedule 1, I consider it unnecessary to make the addition put forward in this amendment. In any case, to do so would fundamentally alter the way in which the long-term element of the definition in the Bill operates. On that basis, I ask the noble Baroness to withdraw the amendment.