Covid-19: Disability-Inclusive Response

Alex Norris Excerpts

Thursday 15th October 2020 Westminster Hall

[Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr McCabe. I congratulate the hon. Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Dr Cameron) on securing this important debate about an issue that affects all our constituencies. Lots of people will be watching this debate online with interest, so I hope they feel that we have done the issue justice and see the strength of feeling. This is as full as this Chamber can be in these challenging times, which shows how much Members from across the House care about it.

The hon. Lady made particularly important points about accessibility and the Care Act easements, and other hon. Members also covered those issues. The hon. Member for Beaconsfield (Joy Morrissey) talked about retail, which you and I are passionate about, Mr McCabe. She talked about the experience of people with disabilities in accessing retail, and I will talk about that shortly. The hon. Member for Hastings and Rye (Sally-Ann Hart) and my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South (Andy Carter) made very important remarks about how this pandemic has not been felt equally. We have to be mindful of that when we design our approaches.

The hon. Member for Dudley South (Mike Wood) made particularly poignant comments about Care Act easements. We all had that in mind when we passed the Coronavirus Act 2020. We were all concerned about it, so if local government uses those easements sparingly, or indeed not at all, we will be pleased. We will all be keeping a keen eye on the situation, because we are all keen to drop that provision at the first moment we can.

The right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller), who as a former Chair of the Women and Equalities Committee has a strong track record in this area, made excellent points about accessible communications, I hope the Minister will take some time to reflect on those points and perhaps give us some good news. The hon. Gentleman from England’s next fine city, Southend, the Member for Southend West (Sir David Amess), raised an issue that I am very passionate about: endometriosis. I recently tabled a number of written questions on that topic, and I have to say that I did not get particularly persuasive answers back, so I hope he and other colleagues will help me with that. I knew he would mention the Music Man Project. I did not know they had not been able to get to Broadway, but I am sure that in time they will get there, and the hon. Gentleman might go with them to show them around.

Turning to the contributions from the Opposition side of the House, my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams) talked about the disproportionality of deaths from covid. The statistic that 60% of deaths are among people living with disabilities is a sobering one, and something that we have to be exceptionally mindful of. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) made a lovely point when he talked about this issue coming from the heart: that has very much been the theme of the debate. We all come here in good faith; that does not mean we do not profoundly disagree about some things, and we might have assertive conversations about them, but we are coming from the heart.

I will share some reflections later on the points that my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall (Florence Eshalomi) made about work, but that is a particularly important issue. As the hon. Member for St Albans (Daisy Cooper) was speaking, I was thinking about my concern about the SEND educational attainment gap in my community and across the country. I fear that current conditions will only make that more challenging.

My hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Olivia Blake) highlighted some of the pitfalls of home working and the need to help employers. I was romanced by the idea of an employers’ hub, because I believe that the vast majority of employers want to do the right thing, but we might need to help them do so. My hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate (Bambos Charalambous) shared the powerful story of his constituent Georgina. It was very difficult to hear, but it was important that it was heard, because those are the sorts of stories that exist up and down this country, and we have to do something about them.

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Vicky Foxcroft), who at this moment, I would rather was in my chair than me. She has been an outstanding champion for people with disabilities throughout this outbreak, fighting their corner in every single way, and the fact that the lifelong condition she is living with has prevented her from taking part today tells its own story. I do not think it reflects well on us that we have the technology to be much more inclusive, but choose not to use it, so I will pay tribute to her in my traditional way: stealing her ideas and passing them off as my own. [Laughter.] This one’s for you, Vicky.

I will discuss Scope’s disability report to add a little context, because it painted a striking, worrying picture. A quarter of respondents said they felt forgotten or ignored by the Government; half said they have had issues getting essential items; a third were extremely concerned about their mental health and wellbeing if they were required to self-isolate for more than three months; two thirds were concerned that they will not get the treatment they need if they contract the virus; and nine out of 10 reported themselves to be very worried or somewhat worried about the effect that the pandemic is having on their lives. That is the reality for people living with disabilities during coronavirus: whether it is the fact that supermarket deliveries that are hard to come by—that is now starting to happen again—social distancing, which other Members have raised, or benefits, there are lots of concerns. Many of these challenges are presented to us by the pandemic, but that is not a reason to ignore them; it is a reason for us to do our utmost to mitigate them as best we can.

As we go into the second wave, if that is how we choose to characterise it, we have to understand that we have seen some of these problems before. It behoves us to meet these challenges better on the second occasion, and we ought to be able to demonstrate clearly that we will do so. There might be some latitude when it comes to making mistakes the first time; there will be no latitude if we do the same thing again, so let us have clear support for people with disabilities, and let us have clear guidance around shielding. People have often asked me where shielding fits into the three-tier system—perhaps the Minister will cover that in his response.

I know we have collectively fired a lot of questions at the Minister, so I will give him the maximum available time to answer them all as fully as possible, but in the time remaining, I will make some constructive suggestions for him to consider, starting with the welfare system. We have called throughout the pandemic for a range of social security measures that would provide immediate support for disabled people. They include converting universal credit advances into grants rather than loans, ending the five-week wait entirely, suspending the benefit cap, and abolishing the two-child limit in universal credit. The uplift to universal credit is very welcome—we recognise that—and we have called for that to be extended to legacy benefits.

I hope the Minister will reflect on those measures and commit to a few of them since he is here. I hope he will also commit to the imminent publication of the Government’s national strategy for disabled people and the Green Paper on health and disability benefits and support. The response to the call for evidence on violence and abuse against shopworkers got blocked in the coronavirus communications, because there was a sense that there was no opportunity to communicate on anything else. Actually, we knew it was more necessary, because of the conditions for retail workers in the pandemic. The principle is the same here. The sooner we can see those things, the better our response and our support will be for those living with disabilities.

Moving on to the world of work, my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Hallam made a point about face-to-face assessments for in-work or not-in-work welfare benefits. Obviously, those were suspended in March. I think every MP has constituents who have had really horrible experiences at those assessments and talked about how that made them feel. I certainly felt a bit of relief that they were suspended. How have the Government used the time before they are resumed, or the system gets back on to a more normal footing, to come up with a more dignified, more humane and a fairer assessment process that does not cause such physical or mental harm to those who have to go through it? [Interruption.] The Minister speaks from a sedentary position; I am sure he will go on in even greater detail in just a couple of minutes.

On employment issues, there is guidance on covid-secure workplaces and the vast majority of employers are doing the right things. I would be interested in learning how the shoe drops for those who are not, particularly for those who are living with disabilities at work. We have heard stories from many colleagues that this is a particularly stressful situation, and we know that it is translating into rates of employment for those with and without disabilities and creating even greater disparities. In my three years as adult services lead in Nottingham, one of my greatest frustrations was our failure to make better progress on rates of employment for those living with disabilities. This will only make that more challenging.

The recent report from Citizens Advice has worried all of us. It found that 27% of disabled people face redundancy, rising to 37% of those whose disability has a substantial impact on their activities and nearly half of those who are extremely clinically vulnerable to coronavirus. None of us wants that to be the case and none of us thinks that it should be the case, so I would be interested to know the Minister’s views on why that is happening and what he intends to do about it. Otherwise, it will just be another disproportionality that those living with disabilities suffer from.

I have covered as much ground as I could in the time available and I want to leave the Minister plenty of time. In many senses, the Government are getting a second bite of the cherry. If they reflect on the experiences in the first wave, if they talk and engage those with disabilities as experts to co-design the services that they use and need, they can do much better this time. I hope to hear that commitment from the Minister today.