July 19, 2004

People diagnosed with a mental illness are to be protected from discrimination at work in the same way as those with physical disabilities, under planned law to be pushed through parliament before the next election.

Workers with stress will be given greater protection under the new rules which will recognise some mental health conditions as a disability.

The legislation will also mean employers will not be able to sack staff diagnosed with serious mental health illnesses, as well as cancer or multiple sclerosis.

The measures were introduced by Andrew Smith, the work and pensions secretary, who has said he will amend the government's draft disability discrimination bill to incorporate recommendations from a joint committee of MPs and peers.

Employers will be required to make adjustments for people diagosed with mental health conditions. These will include a right to flexibility in working hours to enable them to attend counselling.

Up to now, people with mental health problems have not had the right to special consideration from employers unless they could prove their condition was "clinically well-recognised".

For thousands of mentally ill people, it was virtually impossible to establish an exact medical condition causing their problems.

A department spokesman told societyguardian.co.uk: "A better way to understand it might be to imagine that if the same requirement applied to physical disabilities (which it doesn't), it would exclude someone who had, for example, very serious, long-term and disabling spinal pain, if that pain couldn't be pinned down by a doctor to any known condition."

Mr Smith told a conference of the charity Scope: "In years to come, the treatment of disabled people typical of the last century - and still too often the case today - will be seen as an affront to their humanity. It is the last great cause of emancipation of our time."

See societyguardian.co.uk article in full

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