Down Syndrome Bill

Debate between Baroness Hollins and Lord Faulkner of Worcester

2nd reading
Friday 18th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hollins (CB)]

My Lords, I thank Mencap, Learning Disability England, the Down’s Syndrome Association and the National Down Syndrome Policy Group, among others, for their engagement with me in discussion about this Bill, including many who identify as having Down’s syndrome, their families and friends. I welcome those who have come in person to listen today, including the right honourable Member, Dr Liam Fox MP, who drafted the Bill so skilfully and steered it through the other place.

Like Dr Fox, I began my medical career as a GP, but I then went on to become a psychiatrist. I declare an interest: my adult son has a learning disability and he has many friends who have Down’s syndrome. I remind the House that most of my medical career as a psychiatrist involved my working directly with people with learning disabilities, including people of all ages with Down’s syndrome. I sometimes say that the most important thing I have ever done is to keep asking the question, “What about people with learning disabilities?” The thing is, unless you know somebody with a learning disability, it probably would not occur to you to ask that question. It is so hard to keep this community of people in mind. We saw it during the pandemic on our TV screens and in debate in Parliament. Care was synonymous with care homes for older people. The protection of people with a learning disability living in the community and of people with Down’s syndrome, who were eventually shown to be in very highest risk category for Covid-19, were largely overlooked.

A few questions and challenges have been raised about the Down Syndrome Bill, and it is important that they are aired. However, I also want to instil a spirit of hope in our debate today. My mentor, Professor Joan Bicknell, who sadly died a few years ago, taught me the art of holding in mind where we want to get to. I will respond to some of the concerns that have been brought to my attention and will consider them in the context of how children and adults with Down’s syndrome, and other people with learning disabilities, are currently living.

The Down Syndrome Bill has passed all its stages in the other place and I am very pleased that I was asked to help steer it through this House. It will require the Government to publish guidance on the specific needs of people with Down’s syndrome and how to meet them, and indeed to lay the guidance before Parliament. The relevant public authorities providing health, education and social care would then have to give due regard to this guidance in carrying out their functions under existing legislation, including the Care Act 2014 and Equality Act 2010. The Bill focuses on those with Down’s syndrome as one of the most diagnosed chromosomal disorders associated with a learning disability in England. There are over 40,000 people living with Down’s syndrome, most if not all of whom have some degree of learning disability.

Some are concerned that naming a Bill after a chromosomal condition is taking things back a few decades to a time when the medical model predominated, and that a diagnosis of Down’s syndrome on its own does not tell us anything about the extent of a person’s learning disability or other associated conditions that an individual might experience. A diagnosis is important to parents, who want to know why this child is different from the one they were expecting—and, for different reasons, a diagnosis is important to health and care professionals. Of course, it is important that any diagnosis does not define the person.

Implementation of the guidance must focus on the people behind the diagnosis, but a diagnosis does provide a framework to understand the common health needs associated with a specific disorder. It is important for health and care professionals supporting people to know and recognise the co-morbid health problems that are either specifically associated with or occur more frequently in people with Down’s syndrome. These include cataracts, hearing loss, obstructive sleep apnoea, low thyroid function, increased risk of leukaemia, congenital heart defects and early Alzheimer’s disease. When I was a young doctor, I remember children with congenital heart defects who were not treated because they had Down’s syndrome; a failure to intervene reduced their life expectancy and, often, their quality of life. A friend of my son had a heart attack and died before Christmas aged just 41—such a loss.

When there is a recognisable characteristic, such as the facial features that make Down’s syndrome recognisable, two problems may occur. The first is that any behavioural changes or health complaints may simply be attributed to the already identified condition. There is the tummy ache caused by a peptic ulcer that is blamed on Down’s syndrome rather than being investigated—this is called “diagnostic overshadowing”. The second is that people with Down’s syndrome are stereotyped as being always happy, docile, eternal children and so on. As Caroline Boudet put it in the Huffington Post in 2017:

“When you have Down syndrome, the first disability you have to face is the way people look at you. It’s based on received wisdom, society conveys misleading information about this extra chromosome and what it is supposed to cause. Each of us has prejudice in mind, this shows no ill-will but just a lack of knowledge”.


The majority of people with learning disabilities do not have a known cause; they and their families do not know the answer to the question “Why?”, just as in my son’s case. Their diagnosis is learning disability of unknown aetiology. Some people have a different genetic cause from Down’s syndrome, and some acquire a learning disability in the perinatal period. Their learning disability may not be recognised as quickly as that of people with Down’s syndrome; it may be their speech or behaviour that, as it were, gives them away, however hard they try to mask the differences to be accepted for who they are.

Let us look at another challenge: that a Bill named after a condition that can be diagnosed prenatally and which could be eliminated, as it reportedly has been in Iceland, means that the Bill is not needed, and may present a challenge to women’s reproductive rights. But whatever noble Lords think about abortion, some of the 40,000 people currently diagnosed with Down’s syndrome will be around for 70 or more years. Life expectancy is getting longer. Even if no more babies were born with Down’s syndrome, every one of those 40,000 deserves a better deal than they are getting now. The Bill is simply about helping those born with Down’s syndrome to have their lives valued the same as those born without it, and to have their strengths acknowledged and their difficulties supported through an improved understanding of how Down’s syndrome can affect people and families.

The timing of this Bill complements proposals in other pieces of legislation currently being debated within Parliament. I welcome the acceptance by the Minister during debate in the other place of having a named person within each integrated care board to be accountable for the implementation of the guidance on the Down Syndrome Act. Her Majesty’s Government had already pledged in both the NHS Long Term Plan and the autism strategy that all integrated care boards will focus on autism and learning disabilities at the highest level; for example, by having a named executive lead for autism and learning disability. Just this week, the Minister in your Lordships’ House, the noble Baroness, Lady Penn, reconfirmed this commitment by saying,

“I confirm our intention that all integrated care boards should have a named learning disability and autism lead and that NHS England proposes to issue statutory guidance on this matter to assist integrated care boards. The Government are supportive of this approach and believe that learning disability and autism leads on every ICB would act as a voice for those with a learning disability and autism in commissioning decisions.”—[Official Report, 16/3/22; col. 396.]

The Minister also accepted my amendment to the Health and Care Bill, which puts mandatory training about learning disability and autism on the statute book. It is all happening this month. I believe that the passage of the Down Syndrome Bill through the other place last month and Her Majesty’s Government’s support for the Bill has assisted in getting both of these through.

I would like this Bill to go further and to include all people with learning disabilities. However, previous attempts to introduce Private Members’ Bills on learning disability have been unsuccessful, including the LB Bill and my own Learning Disabilities (Review of Services) Bill, which aimed to make provision for the Secretary of State to undertake a public consultation on the provision of comprehensive and integrated services for adults with learning disabilities. In his speech in Committee in the Commons on 26 January, Dr Liam Fox highlighted that, given the logistical difficulties in passing a Private Member’s Bill, a clear focus on one condition was needed to improve the chance of this legislation being passed. Supporting the Down Syndrome Bill is a step in the right direction and something that we can build on. In my view, it is an imperfect but pragmatic way forward and a good model for a PMB, and I believe that, if the Bill is welcomed in this House, it will indeed pass.

The Bill’s supporters expect it to set a precedent that will ultimately benefit the healthcare and support of everyone with a learning disability, not only those with Down’s syndrome. Dr Fox sees it as a bridgehead to open the door to better care and support for the whole community, but some in the wider learning disability community are worried that people with Down’s syndrome will get preferential treatment and that people with other diagnoses, despite having similar health and care needs, will be left even further behind. I ask for the noble Lord’s assurance that there will be transparency in the Bill’s implementation, specifically to ensure that resources allocated to support those with Down’s syndrome are not taken away from those currently supporting other people with learning disabilities.

We all know the financial pressures being experienced within adult social care. Many parents say the stress they experience is not about having somebody with a learning disability or with Down’s syndrome in the family; it is the constant battle with the authorities, whether over EHCPs, respite or something else. My current battle for my son is the cost of sleep-ins to sustain his independence.

It seems that it may be time for a new learning disability strategy, like the Valuing People White Paper I contributed to, with so many others, in 2001: something to tie together all the various pieces of ongoing work, including the soon-to-be-published Building the Right Support action plan, and in the light of the new integrated care systems, as well as the anticipated social care and Mental Health Act reforms. A new, overarching strategy could build on the provisions and benefits of the Bill for the wider learning disability community. I hope the Minister will be open to further discussions about the development of such a unifying strategy. Clarifying these concerns will ensure that the Bill is successful in its goal of improving the quality of life and health of people with Down’s syndrome, to raise awareness and foster inclusivity. There is such enthusiasm to get started on developing the guidance—it feels like the time is right.

In a spirit of hope, I agree with Dr Fox, who said,

“it is entirely possible that, when guidance is given and there is a named person on the integrated care board, the Bill’s provisions and the measures required to apply it would reasonably be applied to”—[Official Report, Commons, Down Syndrome Bill Committee, 26/1/22; col. 5.]

people with similar needs. As awareness of the care and support that people need increases, I hope more resources will be allocated. I beg to move.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Faulkner of Worcester) (Lab)]

I call the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell.