Brexit: Disabled People

Baroness Campbell of Surbiton Excerpts

Thursday 2nd February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Campbell of Surbiton (CB)]

My Lords, leaving the EU is very much a disability issue, with hidden risks that were not aired much during the referendum campaign. Therefore, I am most grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, for introducing this really important debate.

As time is short, I will concentrate on the area I am most familiar with: the workforce which facilitates independent living for disabled people such as me. I declare an interest as someone who has employed personal assistants from at least 10 EU countries during the past 25 years. I am not unusual. There are thousands of disabled people who do the same. Our personal assistants—some call them carers—are a mixture of UK and EU nationals. They are crucial to our independence and our freedom to enjoy a private and family life, to work, to socialise and to raise children. Our employees are funded mainly by social care or healthcare personal budgets. During the past 30 years, increasing numbers of disabled people have become employers.

When preparing for this debate, I searched for data on how many EU nationals were employed as personal assistants. I contacted the United Kingdom Homecare Association and independent living PA agencies, such as Independent Living Alternatives and PA Pool. No specific data were available but we know there are more than 70,000 EU citizens working in social care. I then contacted disabled employers through social media platforms to find out more about their reasons for seeking personal assistants from EU countries.

Everyone I heard from said first that the pool of potential UK employees was drying up, yet demand for care workers continued to rise. The EU workforce was therefore an essential supplement, and all were concerned about moves to restrict it. Other reasons given for recruiting EU nationals were a strong work ethic and reliability, and the fact that the job tends to attract single people, who, as a rule, are found to be more flexible in their working hours, giving much-valued opportunities for spontaneity. They are keen to fill live-in employment positions. This helps disabled people who live in rural villages where local employees are limited. Some commute to and from their home countries between work stints. Such flexibility is a win-win situation for both employers and employees.

I spoke also to John Evans, a quadriplegic man and pioneer of independent living for disabled people in the UK and internationally. He said:

“I have been free from residential care for 34 years, employing my own PAs who support me to have full control of my life. They have come from 15 different EU countries. Without their support I could not do my work at home and abroad. If the Government does not make some kind of arrangement to protect our access to the EU PA workforce, I will lose my freedom again”,


and he will have to return to residential care. We constantly hear about the threat to the NHS if restrictions to work in the UK are tightened. The PAs and carers employed by thousands of disabled people must be accorded the same attention; otherwise, the current social care crisis will worsen and disabled people will lose the right to independent living, as set out in Article 19 of the UN convention.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission shares my concern. In its evidence to the Joint Committee on Human Rights’ Brexit inquiry, it said that any change in Immigration Rules,

“should be subject to a rigorous equality and human rights impact assessment”.

Will the Minister assure the House that this assessment will be carried out rigorously and shared with Parliament? Will he also guarantee that disabled people and their organisations will be thoroughly involved in any Brexit developments regarding access to the EU workforce? Our independence depends on it.