Employers will still be able to discriminate against disabled people - as long as they can come up with 'justifiable reasons', according to the minister for the disabled, William Hague.
His limited proposals for anti-discrimination legislation outlined on November 24 fall far short of the civil rights which disabled groups have been demanding, and the private members Bill from Labour MP Roger Berry which ministers surreptitiously arranged to have defeated earlier this year.
Scrapped under the new plan is the current quota scheme under which employers with 20 or more staff are obliged to employ at least By a health promotion worker TO GIVE an injection to every child at school between the ages of 5 and 16 is an immense task. It is also very expensive.
But the Tories, notorious for their reluctance to spend money on public health initiatives, have decided to do iust that.
We might assume it is for a good reason - we have been told there is going to be a measles epidemic and children might die.
Money has been spent on a prime time TV advert that has gone out showing a real horror story of grieving parents in a stark hospital setting following the death of a child three percent of registered disabled people. The scheme has been almost universally ignored, with little or no effort made to force firms to comply.
Instead it will be made unlawful for an employer to treat a disabled person less favourably than others - unless there are "justifiable reasons'.
Employers will have to make a 'reasonable adjustment where that would help overcome the practical effects of disability' - but not if the firm employs fewer than 20 staff, or if the costs are 'excessive'.
Employers 'where practical' will have to remove physical and communication barriers preventing access by disabled people to goods and services - but again 'only to the extent that they are readily achievable and subject to a financial limit. drugs? ....was it some other terrible socially inflicted disease? NO IT WAS MEASLES!"
If they are going to this much trouble, they must be spending millions for the benefit of our children - aren't they? Not necessarilv.
Last year only one person died of measles. Even if we had an epidemic, the consequences would not be as severe as the side effects of the drugs have been predicted to be.
Who supports it?
I cannot find a Public Health Consultant ( and I have spoken to quite a few) who thinks it is a good idea.
One is very worried that we do not really know the risks to a child who is having the second ...."was it injection (the first being part of Although one of the main claimed reasons for defeating Mr Berry's Bill was its alleged £17 billion cost of implementation, the new government plan has not yet been costed.
One estimate is that it would cost employers about £50m extra per year for the next 15 years, though the Institute of Directors, predictably, complained that the proposals contained 'openended commitments which could prove very costly'.
From the toothless proposals on display so far, it is clear that the only extra jobs to be created will be for the nominees to the new quango which is to be set up to advise the government, the National Disability Council.
All this is further evidence that the Tories are committed to spending little and doing less for the disabled. the MMR that all children in Britain are offered early in life.
Another said angrily will be side effects, and it is totally unnecessary.
There appear to be three main risks:
• Anaphylactic shock. This is a similar to a cardiac arrest where the body goes into shock and needs immediate treatment (adrenaline).
It is thought that the chance of this happening (normally within 20 minutes after the injection) atter a second injection is quite high.
In hospitals and casualty units the vaccination is given normally with an anaphylactic pack (a ready drawn up injection of the appropriate dose of adrenaline) handy - but the packs are quite expensive and have a