British Sign Language Week
Debate between Alison Hume and Jen Craft(2 weeks ago)
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Jen Craft
[In British Sign Language: I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention.] As people will see, we have tried to learn some parliamentary signs ahead of this debate. My hon. Friend is absolutely right—it is a question of accessibility. If someone is a British Sign Language first-language speaker, there are barriers to taking part in this House. There absolutely should not be. This is the House of Commons of the United Kingdom. There are 87,000 BSL first-language speakers and they absolutely deserve their place here as much as hearing people do. Too frequently, Government consultations, including on the national health service 10-year plan and the welfare reform Green Paper, have BSL interpretation as an afterthought, if it exists at all.
In wider society, we need to see a renewed focus on the needs and interests of the deaf community. Some 90% of deaf children are born to hearing parents, but support to learn BSL is based on a postcode lottery. Across the country, there is a patchwork of sign language services, with a mix of local authority and third-sector provision. According to research by the National Deaf Children’s Society, almost half of local authorities neither provide, fund nor commission any courses in sign language for families.
Alison Hume (Scarborough and Whitby) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Desmond. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jen Craft) on securing this debate.
In 2023-24, 26 children in north Yorkshire were registered with special educational needs due to a hearing impairment, yet support remains inadequate. To show my support for them and for the other children here today, I will now sign my name in BSL. [In British Sign Language: Alison.] Does my hon. Friend agree that deaf children need access to fluent signers as teachers?
Jen Craft
I completely agree: deaf children need qualified teachers of the deaf. I thank Mrs Smith, who is in the Public Gallery today—an exceptional teacher of the deaf in my constituency. I come back to the point about the patchwork of sign language provision for parents. There is an estimate that the availability of courses has fallen by 34% in certain areas since before the pandemic.
Parents are often told to access support through adult community colleges. While they provide an excellent grounding in BSL, it is usually irrelevant for the kind of conversations that parents need and want to have with their child. For example, my one-year-old daughter did not really have too much interest in how many brothers and sisters I have, what job I want to do or what my favourite colour is, but the signs for “milk”, “mummy”, “daddy”, “play”, “book” and, most importantly, “biscuit” very much caught her attention.
It is also hard for adults who are not naturally adept in learning languages to learn a completely new language in a way that meets their learning needs. I ask the Minister to work with me, the British Deaf Association and the National Deaf Children’s Society to build a pathway to ensure that parents of deaf children have access to relevant BSL lessons no matter where they grow up.