Unsafe excuses

I read today that a child with ADHD was excluded from a school trip, supposedly because of health and safety concerns - the school even went so far as to do a risk assessment. Sadly, health and safety is a common defence for discrimination and is often used spuriously. For instance, British Airways recently lost a case in which they claimed that it would be dangerous for a female pilot with children to work part-time, although the reasons for their concern were not fully explained. Perhaps they had heard too many jokes about women drivers and were worried about her three-point turns!

The solution is simple. Discrimination legislation should be tightened to ensure that health and safety can never be used as an excuse. If genuine risks do arise, these can be resolved straightforwardly by making additional adjustments for the relevant party, at the cost of the organisation concerned. If this happened then I'm pretty sure that any worries they have would disappear in a flash.