Brexit: Disabled People

Baroness Sherlock Excerpts

Thursday 2nd February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, this fascinating brief debate serves to highlight the enormity of the task facing both the Government and Parliament in the months and years ahead, as we seek to understand and then deal with all the implications of the decision to leave the EU. Will the Minister tell the House how the Government propose to enable us to scrutinise the issues as they start to emerge? Will there be pre-legislative scrutiny of the great repeal Bill to ensure Parliament is sighted on the areas where the Government are unable or unwilling simply to transfer current provision across, or where, as various noble Lords have mentioned, there is a need for some regulatory or enforcement mechanism that is currently Europe-wide?

Like my noble friend Lord McKenzie, I read the White Paper carefully—I even searched the electronic version—and I could not find the words “disabled”, “disabled people” or “disability” anywhere in it. Will the Minister tell the House how much thinking the Government have begun to do on the impact on disabled people of the decision to leave the EU? Has his department developed a strategy to engage with key stakeholders in the field and, through those stakeholders, directly with disabled people, both to consult them and to reassure them that it is engaged with the issues? My noble friend Lord McKenzie made some important points about the commitment to enshrining long-term protections for disabled people in our law. Will the Minister also commit to enshrining in law those protections for disabled people that currently derive not from EU legislation but, for example, from judgments of the European Courts?

The question of transport was raised by the noble Baronesses, Lady Scott and Lady Thomas of Winchester, and the noble Lords, Lord Addington and Lord Low, among others. I should be very interested in the answers about blue badge recognition and accessible transport, raised by the noble Lord, Lord Low.

The matter of health and social care is absolutely crucial. Disabled people have a higher than average need to access health and social care. We have heard already about how many disabled people will be accessing health services in other EU nations and are very anxious about what will happen next. The noble Baroness, Lady Scott, mentioned the EHIC. What are the Government doing about that? Are they beginning negotiations on this—how high on their priority list will it be? If not, what will they do to enable disabled people to obtain appropriate insurance care? Have they begun discussions with the insurance industry or representative bodies in the financial services sector?

The question of social care is the one that exercised noble Lords most. We have heard all kinds of figures. The one I drew out from the Skills for Care website suggests that there are currently 90,000 EU nationals working in adult social care in England alone—some 7% of the workforce. Can the Minister give the House a definitive figure for how many non-UK EU nationals are working in social care, and tell us what he intends to do to ensure that that workforce is protected? Do the Government have a plan to enable those people to carry on working? Obviously, I think they should allow all EU residents who are settled here to carry on, but what are the Government doing specifically about social care?

I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell, who always takes these issues and gives them such a clear reality when she describes her own experience of what it means in practice for one after another EU national to come in. The point she made is crucial. This is not a technicality but the difference between disabled people living independent lives and not living independent lives. The Minister should hear how concerned people around the House are about this. What do the Government plan to do?

The noble Baroness, Lady Thomas, raised the really important question of social security entitlements. What do the Government plan to do about the entitlement to benefits of disabled EU nationals who have been resident in the UK? Conversely, do Ministers have a plan for dealing with the benefit entitlement of disabled UK citizens who have been ordinarily resident in another EU state? If they suddenly have to return to the UK, will they be entitled to full support? What comes through crediting towards benefit entitlement if time is spent in another EU country?

I would be interested to hear the answer to the question on ESF funding, and how disability organisations will be protected in the longer term, past 2020. We have only just begun to scratch the surface. The House needs to hear from the Minister today, first, some hard answers to questions. The Government have had seven months to think about these issues, and we look forward to hearing what they have to say. Secondly, we want to know that the Government are taking this seriously. It is not just a question of each department looking at regulations in silos. Who in government is taking responsibility for having a strategic look at the impact of Brexit on disabled people as a whole, making sure that nothing is missed and, ideally, doing what the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans said and showing that the UK can be a leader in this field? That is the very least we deserve to hear.