Disabled Students Allowance

Debate between Andrew Smith and Yasmin Qureshi

Wednesday 2nd July 2014 Westminster Hall

[Mr Andrew Smith (Oxford East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard). His powerful arguments and testimony, like those of my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett), underline the argument made by the hon. Gentleman who represents the other place, the hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert). I agreed with everything he said in his opening speech.

I was particularly keen to take part in the debate because in our area we are lucky to have not only two great universities but ACE centre south—ACE stands for aids to communication and education—which has achieved great things working with students with severe communication disabilities and giving them a voice. Twenty years ago, many of them would have been locked in a world without communication and unable to go to school, let alone university. Now, however, some of the young people whom the centre has helped have got PhDs. Quite rightly, there was cross-party support to save the ACE centre when it had financial difficulties in 2012. We need a big cross-party effort to stave off the cuts to DSA. It is heartening to see so many Members present and to hear the arguments from both sides of the Chamber.

The cuts risk rolling back what has been achieved and blocking access to education for many disabled students from poorer backgrounds, in particular, including those who have dyslexia and other specific learning difficulties.

[Yasmin Qureshi]

Bolton university in my constituency is not rich and has 900 students who receive DSA. Imagine the impact of the proposals on those students and the university, which has not got the resources to look after them if they do not have enough money.

[Mr Smith]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. As has been said, there is a real danger that the proposals will provide universities and other institutions with a perverse disincentive, with the best will in the world, to accommodate all the students that they would like, especially those who have the most severe disabilities. Like other hon. Members, I have been contacted by many students, academic support staff and lecturers who are appalled, as I am, by the proposed cuts. I recently had the pleasure of speaking to the disability officers of the two university student unions in my constituency. They brought powerful testimony of how students at both Oxford’s universities have benefited from DSA and are well on their way to building fulfilling careers. Their determination to help ensure that young people with disabilities have the same opportunities in future is inspiring. One of them told me:

“I pretty much failed the first year of my law degree due to my disability and not being fit to study. I couldn’t afford to buy any of the accessibility items I needed. DSA gave me a lifeline. With the specialist equipment including a specialist mouse bar, laptop, dictaphone, extra-large screen, specialist software, printing and book allowance and various other provisions, I was able to retake everything the following year and actually cope with the work load. Without DSA I wouldn’t be where I am now.”

Even under the current system, it is not easy to get support. One student in my constituency is having to get an unnecessary diagnosis of dyslexia because his diagnosis undertaken the previous year in the sixth form was not accepted by the DSA authorities. Since there is no clinical need for a new diagnosis, he is having to apply to the university hardship fund to pay for it privately.

For all its difficulties, DSA provides an essential lifeline for people with disabilities who without it would have to give up on their education and ambitions, or would not have been able to apply in the first place. Cutting it will make many disabled students’ lives much more difficult, but, worst of all, it will result in a country where people with disabilities begin to think that they cannot even aspire to higher education and must limit their ambitions. It will do incalculable damage to equality. I urge that the proposed cuts be abandoned.