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Equality Bill

My Lords, we welcome the Government's decision to make explicit on the face of the Bill their intention on costs incurred by a duty holder making "reasonable adjustments" under Clause 20. A very helpful letter from the Minister stated that, ""in the existing legislation there is reference to not passing on costs of making reasonable adjustments in services and functions in the context of a different justification regime than applies in the Bill"." Can the Minister clarify this statement a little for the House? Clause 20, as I understand it, replaces similar provisions in the Disability Discrimination Act, with only a few changes. It introduces "substantial disadvantage" as a single threshold, applies the current practice by explicitly applying the third requirement to employment, and alters some of the language. These are only small changes from the Disability Discrimination Act. Why was the provision stating the cost of making a reasonable adjustment not also therefore transferred over? According to the Disability Charities Consortium, the Government had argued that they had included, ""sufficient safeguards that the costs of adjustments should not be passed on to disabled people"." If this was the intention, and the policy had been made explicit on the face of the Disability Discrimination Act, why did it take so long for it to be transferred over?