Children to be excluded from age discrimination protection

The Committee for Parliamentary Communities and Local Government has published a report about the Government’s plans to look at age discrimination laws.

Carolyne Willow, national co-ordinator of the Children’s Rights Alliance for England said about the report: ‘CRAE welcomes the Committee’s support for measures to tackle age discrimination, and its recommendation that there should be safeguards to protect positive age-related services.

‘We are extremely concerned, however, that the Government’s age discrimination proposals exclude children.

‘Children have specific age-related needs, but this does not justify negative age discrimination. The Government must ensure that children under 18 are given full protection under the new age discrimination law…it’s time this was taken as seriously as any other form of discrimination.’

Discrimination is when people are treated differently or unfairly because of something about them, like their age, gender, race, religion or sexuality.

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Posted on Thursday, August 02, 2007