Equality Act 2010

The Equality Act 2010 defines a disabled person as someone who has “a physical or mental impairment which has a substantial and long-term adverse effect on his or her ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities”. However, the Equality Act (Disability) Regulations 2010 specifically exclude from the definition addiction to alcohol, nicotine or any other substance (except where the addiction originally resulted from the administration of medically-prescribed drugs).

Conditions which are caused by or linked to an addiction, such as liver disease or long-term depression for example, could be a disability under the Act, which looks at the effect of the impairment rather than its cause. There were a number of judgments (before the Equality Act 2010 came into force) where people with impairments that were the result of an addiction were deemed to be covered by equality legislation. For example:

• in Power v Panasonic UK Ltd [2003] IRLR 151, the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) held that an employee’s depression was capable of amounting to a disability under the Act, even though it may have been caused by her alcoholism; and

• in Hutchison 3G UK Ltd v Mason (EAT 0369/03), the EAT upheld a decision that the employer had discriminated against an employee when it sacked him while he was addicted to cocaine and depressed. It found that, despite the cocaine addiction, the employee’s depression amounted to a disability and that his absences were related to the disability.