Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, whether his Department has made an assessment of the merits of defining fibromyalgia as a disability.

The Equality Act 2010 defines disability as a physical or mental impairment which has a substantial and long-term adverse effect on a person’s ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities.

Decisions about what meets this definition are not generally made on the basis of whether or not a person has a specific condition, but on the impact of that condition. The Equality Act 2010 specifies that only a very small number of health conditions (cancer, HIV infection and multiple sclerosis) are always considered to be disabilities.