Road Closures in Central London

Baroness Thomas of Winchester Excerpts

Tuesday 8th October 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, I agree with the noble Baroness about balance, and that is what the Met police are trying to achieve, but I cannot agree with her about the Extinction Rebellion protesters. I have had a little campaign of my own over the past 24 hours, which has been to go around photographing single-use plastics, which are strewn all over Westminster. The amount of pollution caused by the gridlocked cars is unbelievable, and the pictures of very old diesel 4x4s going along country roads on Sunday, as if somehow making a difference to the planet, were just ridiculous.

[Baroness Thomas of Winchester (LD)]

My Lords, we are all very glad that this is a peaceful demonstration, but it makes life very difficult for those of us who are disabled, particularly Members of this House who find walking very hard. At least we have wheels under us. What advice does the Minister have for us for next week, particularly starting on Monday? How will we get to the House to take part in debates on the Queen’s Speech? The weather may turn bad, and if there are no cars to bring us here, it will make life very difficult.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I understand that the protesters will not disrupt the Queen’s Speech. It would be quite ironic if they did, given that she will arrive in a horse and cart and they are driving trucks to London.

Disability-inclusive Development

Baroness Thomas of Winchester Excerpts

Thursday 13th December 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Thomas of Winchester (LD)]

My Lords, I salute the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, for securing this short debate on a very important subject which I fear has not made the headlines that it deserves—in this country, anyway. However, those of us who live in the disability landscape are used to comparative invisibility. It is very good for us here to lift our eyes from our travails for once to look outwards to the wider world, where we see millions of disabled people far worse off than we are.

I also pay tribute to the Secretary of State for this ground-breaking initiative. Formerly, she was Minister of State for Disabled People, a role that meant our paths often crossed. I am sure her experience in that department influenced her thinking on the global stage.

The strategy is right to emphasise the importance of access to education, particularly that of women and girls, which is not seen as important everywhere, even if a woman is not disabled. I spoke to Noshila in Pakistan on Sunday, who told me that women’s education, particularly in rural areas, could not be taken for granted, meaning that those who are widows or disabled struggled to earn any money. Because all disabled people find it so difficult to get jobs, some questioned why they should go to school, let alone university. She said that the whole mindset had to change.

I also had an interesting conversation with Rabia in Pakistan, who is almost blind. She is 25 and has a degree in international relations, but is finding it very difficult to get a job. Getting about is obviously a challenge for her. Dogs, even guide dogs for blind people, are not looked on favourably in Pakistan and I am told that even walking down the street with a white stick is sometimes ridiculed. I asked Rabia if she ever saw people using wheelchairs; she replied that this was uncommon. In any case, there is an acute shortage of wheelchairs in Pakistan, and many roads are too rutted for them. Interestingly, there is a jobs quota for companies in Pakistan to employ disabled people, which has recently been raised from 2% to 3%, but it is not enforced. We here know all about the question of no enforcement.

Turning briefly to the humanitarian context, this will be particularly important in war-torn countries such as Somalia. Perhaps the Minister might write to me about that, particularly the Garasbaley Community Development Organization, a self-help group in Mogadishu, which is doing great work. There must be hundreds of young people with disabilities as a result of the conflict there.

It is absolutely crucial that disabled people themselves must be involved at every stage. “Nothing about us without us” will not sound so poetic in other languages, but the sentiment should always be attempted and we must not think that we have all the answers. We should be eager to learn from other countries, where disabled people have to be far more creative in finding ways to live with a disability that we have to be, simply because there is no alternative.

As a newcomer to DfID, I am struck by its soaring rhetoric, although I am not sure about the image conjured up by “taking concrete leaps forward”. I see that there is to be DfID-wide disability inclusion delivery board and I make a plea that disabled people should not just be represented on it, but will be members of it.

Equality and Human Rights Commission: Disability Commissioner

Baroness Thomas of Winchester Excerpts

Thursday 10th May 2018 Grand Committee

[Baroness Thomas of Winchester (LD)]

My Lords, I welcome this debate and thank the noble Lord, Lord Shinkwin, for the opportunity to say something about the EHRC’s approach to the disability agenda, even though his own experience with it is not a good one. The question before us, which is a valid and really rather difficult one, is whether the disability agenda is best served by those who have oversight of all the protected characteristics that concern the EHRC or whether it should be particularly promoted by one disabled commissioner with a dedicated committee. If the latter, should all the protected characteristics be treated in the same way?

As for disability, the practice in the recent past was a statutory disability committee chaired by a disabled commissioner, but there is now just an advisory committee with all the commissioners having a duty to oversee the disability agenda. If one were to ask a body of disabled people which model they would choose, I am pretty sure they would go for the former. The reason is simple: as we have heard, so much of life, public and private, is denied to disabled people even now and there are still so many battles to be fought, be that video relay services so that deaf people can take part in everyday life or wheelchair users wanting to travel independently on public transport without feeling that they are entering a lottery. They would want the strongest voice possible to get things changed. After all, there are so many different disabilities, all with their own particular problems.

The question of whether disabilities should ever have been bundled up with the other eight protected characteristics is at the heart of what the House of Lords equality and disability committee tackled in its March 2016 report. I am very pleased to say that our chairman will speak more about that. The committee made the point that the other protected characteristics need equality of treatment to bring about equality of opportunity but different treatment is required for disabled people. Although several of our committee’s witnesses wanted to go back to the old days of a separate commission, which we just heard about from the noble Baroness, Lady Prosser, our committee concluded that it was better to make improvements to the working of the Equality Act than to take disability out of it. The commission is quite open about its reasons for disbanding the Disability Committee, saying that it was often on a different page from the commission as a whole. It said that there should in future be a “managing of expectations”, which will inform its relationship with the new Disability Advisory Committee. I am afraid that I find that phrase rather chilling. Does that mean, “Be realistic, don’t ask for the moon” or, “We are not going to promote this issue at this time because we are concentrating on another non-disability matter altogether”?

The House of Lords equality and disability committee called for the statutory Disability Committee to be re-established as a “decision-making body” with ring-fenced resources to increase its visibility and influence, although the report acknowledged that this would have to be in the context of the EHRC as a whole. Contrary to the view, the 2013 independent review of the Disability Committee found that it was not as effective as it might have been and not “hard-wired” into the commission. I am not quite sure what that means in this context. Perhaps someone will enlighten me.

I am not persuaded that disability can be treated on the same footing as the other protected characteristics, particularly in view of the longer lives that both disabled and ordinary people are living now, meaning that ordinary people need services that disabled people need now. We need somebody shouting the odds from the rooftops on our behalf. Perhaps this is for a disability tsar, not the commission. Disabled people want a body that will not rest until it has brought about real change—not a body that has all the right words but not enough action.

Benefits: Two-Child Limit

Baroness Thomas of Winchester Excerpts

Monday 26th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates]

The benefit applies to those in work and those who are not. However, we were also seeking to introduce an element of fairness. People on very low incomes, in the low £20,000s , who may not have any children are forced to make very difficult decisions that impact upon themselves financially when they are about to have a child, and they will do so without any support—certainly child benefit, but also in terms of any additional support from the state. We feel it is only fair to them that other people ought to be in similar positions when considering whether to have a third or subsequent child.

[Baroness Thomas of Winchester (LD)]

My Lords, what is the effect of this policy on families with a disabled child? It is estimated by the Government themselves that around 100,000 disabled children could be affected, meaning that a family could lose around £1,400 a year, with transitional protection protecting only those already on universal credit, not new claimants.

[Lord Bates]

The noble Baroness is absolutely right to say that there are elements for disability and for severe disability regarding children, and those need to be protected. We maintain the assessment of the effectiveness through a number of different means, such as the households below average income survey, the universal credit data that we collect and the data on the benefits cap. As I said in answer to the right reverend Prelate, some very vulnerable people are impacted by this change, and we want to monitor it very carefully to make sure that they are protected.