Disabled People (Developing Countries)

Anne Begg Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd July 2014 Westminster Hall

[James Duddridge]

It needs to be done faster, and greater leadership would be fantastic, as the hon. Gentleman has said.

Closer to home, in my constituency, I recently attended a school assembly where the children spoke incredibly eloquently about the “Send all my friends to school” campaign. They informed me that 60 million children around the world are not in education, 19 million of whom have a disability. Investing in those people is absolutely essential.

[Dame Anne Begg (Aberdeen South) (Lab)]

Secondary 1 pupils from Kincorth academy have sent me drawings as part of “Send all my friends to school”—I think every second one is in a wheelchair—which I have now displayed in my office. Campaigns about sending friends to school, which have been run for a number of years, have really engaged young people and made them realise the importance of education not only for people abroad, but for them, because the campaigns force them to realise how important it is for them to go to school.

[James Duddridge]

I entirely agree with the hon. Lady. I was sent similar cut-outs, and I took some to Downing street when I visited the Prime Minister about another issue. Although the children at the school I visited in my constituency were eloquent and understood some of the problems, when I talked about living on a dollar a day, the lack of electricity and the lack of opportunity to go to school, one of the children piped up and asked, “But how do they charge their iPods?” The message gets through, but we have to keep repeating it. Campaigns such as “Send all my friends to school” are instrumental in raising awareness of what is happening in developing countries and in emphasising the value of education, whether in Cork, Southend or anywhere around the United Kingdom.

People with disabilities have a huge amount to contribute to society and benefit us all. A little support can go a long way in helping them to integrate in society and play a role.

[James Duddridge]

I could not agree more. Without advocacy, parts of the community have no voice at all. Anything that we can do to help give them a voice through advocacy sets people on the road of explaining what their problems are, accessing support, moving forward and being a part of society. The Special Olympics, which are for people who have intellectual rather than physical disabilities, fall squarely into that category. The term “intellectual disabilities” is used to distinguish those disabilities from mild learning difficulties such as dyslexia, and it refers to what we in the UK might call severe learning difficulties of an intellectual rather than a physical nature. Worldwide, 200 million adults and children have been identified as having intellectual disabilities, but research has shown that in at least three quarters of cases, intervention and assistance can make a transformational difference. That is not to say that we should leave behind the other quarter, but such investment is well leveraged and will transform people’s lives.

The Special Olympics is one of the world’s largest sporting organisations for children and adults. It provides year-round training and competitions for more than 4.2 million athletes in 170 countries. But the Special Olympics are about much more than just sport. They are about education, early intervention training, health screening, making communities more inclusive and bringing people with intellectual disabilities into the mainstream of the community. They are about identifying and being proud of individuals, rather than the cases I have heard of people being pushed to the back of the village and, in more extreme cases, chained to the tree as a way of monitoring them and keeping them subdued.

The international community is beginning to recognise that we cannot tackle poverty without addressing the issue of people with disabilities. The Select Committee on International Development recently published an incredibly good report, “Disability and Development”, which touched on all these issues. There is a huge opportunity for the UK to work on inclusion issues, on which we have been so good, in places around the world where we offer support. DFID already supports a diverse range of projects designed to benefit disabled people and disability rights programmes through supporting broader civil society organisations. I understand that in 2012-13, DFID spent just shy of £200 million on programmes designed to benefit disabled people. I welcome that, and I think that Members in all parts of the House would welcome that as a baseline from which to move up. I also welcome the pledge that all new DFID-funded school constructions will be accessible to disabled children, and I welcome the renewed support for the Disability Rights Fund, which helps small disabled people’s organisations in developing countries, and to which Ministers recently committed £2 million.

I welcome a number of new commitments that the Government spelled out in their response to the “Disability and Development” report, including one to publish a disability framework by November 2014—I think I know the Minister’s summer reading, at least in part. That framework will set out a

“clear commitment, approach and actions to strengthening disability in…policy, programmes and international work.”

DFID has set out commitments to scaling up inclusive programmes, to funding new research and to reviewing internal processes through the multilateral and bilateral aid reviews. Such commitments are extremely important.

Going forward, there are key questions about how DFID’s disability framework will be implemented. It is important that it addresses both the infrastructure required for disabled people to participate fully in society and the social barriers that they face, including stigma and underlying discrimination. It is essential that sufficient resources are ascribed to implementing the disability framework so that it enables the stated objectives to be achieved.

We must support the Government to develop their disability framework over the coming months and, crucially, to implement it over the coming years. The millennium development goals, to which I referred earlier and which were established in 2000, have fundamentally shaped international development over the past 14 years. The goals can be credited for the focus that they have brought to international development issues and for their contribution to the progress made over the years. Remarkable gains have been made on a number of different issues, but we are now looking at how to replace the millennium development goals. Unfortunately, they did not give enough prominence to disability issues. Before the UN meeting later this year, we have a window of opportunity to lobby the Government and for them to lobby other parliamentarians and representatives.

The Under-Secretary of State for International Development, the right hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Lynne Featherstone), has recognised that too few people with disabilities currently benefit from international aid, and has described the future poverty goals as

“a once-in-a-generation chance to finally put disability on the agenda.”

I could not agree more; this year, there really is an opportunity to get something set in stone. That opportunity is not going to come around again for another decade.

The Prime Minister’s appointment as co-chair of the UN high-level panel on the post-2015 development agenda was most welcome. He has shown great leadership over the broader golden thread, within which I would certainly include disability issues.

[Dame Anne Begg]

I share the hon. Gentleman’s concern that we have a once-in-a-decade opportunity to get this right. I see that the Minister is listening carefully in one of his first debates in his new job. Hopefully he will realise the importance of raising the issue of disability and mainstreaming it to ensure that disability is taken into account in everything that DFID does.

[James Duddridge]

I totally agree. I know that the Minister has already been involved in these issues in Rwanda, but I echo the hon. Lady’s call: he should continue his work in the coming years and use this window of opportunity as Minister of State during the period in which the vision for 2030 is set. That seems an unfeasibly long time away, but we are going to be fixing our goals, and it is essential that disability is at the heart of the report.

The UK is a member of the UN’s open working group, which is going to finalise some of the goals. There have been encouraging signs that the document will reflect the needs of disabled people. In particular, proposed goal 10, which is to reduce inequality between and within countries, is relevant to disabled people. Proposed goal 17, which focuses on the means of implementation and the global partnership for sustainable development, includes the need for disaggregated data by disability. Those are big words, but, basically, if we do not know how many people are disabled within the overall data set, we cannot monitor, country by country, progress on aid inputs and outputs.

Like others around the world, the UK Government are currently preparing for the intergovernmental negotiations in January 2015. There are a number of opportunities to support the needs of people with disabilities, and I would welcome the Minister’s comments on the UK’s approach to engaging people with disabilities in the ways that have been mentioned, as part of the post-2015 framework. All the issues must be incorporated into a broader framework across the full range of policy areas, including health, education and employment, to name a few. To ensure that that becomes a reality, it is important that the goals that make up the post-2015 framework clearly reflect all those needs. I would welcome the Minister’s comments on whether the UK will be championing explicit references to disabled people across the range of goals in the framework.

I am conscious that time is getting on, so I want to start to come to a conclusion. To monitor progress, we need a data revolution. We need the data coming out of developing countries so that we can benchmark the number of people with disabilities and monitor progress. Within those data, disaggregated by disability, we would need to see a number of things. First, we would need to see that the data would lead to a more informed policy-making process, allowing policy makers to see which areas it was necessary to target. Secondly, the data would need to enable initiatives supporting disabled people to be monitored. Thirdly, the data would need to provide civil society with the ability to hold Governments to account, locally and internationally, on those goals. I would welcome the Government’s comments on the steps they propose to support the development of those disaggregated data and on how they will be used.

Although the data are necessary to enable civil society to scrutinise decision making, it is also important that civil society can access and make use of those data. In particular, people with disabilities must be involved in the decision-making process. As a trustee of SHIELDS—Supporting, Helping, Informing Everyone with Learning Disabilities in Southend—I have seen the value of those with a whole range of disabilities. This is not a top-down process; those with disabilities should be included in looking at the data set and prioritising. Can the Minister elaborate on how the Government are working to ensure that people with disabilities have a voice at the table?

The links between disability and poverty are strong, meaning that it is not possible to overcome extreme poverty without dealing with these important issues. People with disabilities have a huge contribution to make to the development of their societies. Our fantastic 2012 Paralympic games and the remarkable performances from Team GB athletes started to help to change attitudes, showing Britain and the world that people with disabilities can achieve amazing things when the opportunity is available. If we are to improve the lives of those with disabilities in developing countries, they need our support. We have a window of opportunity.

I sought this debate to secure the opportunity for colleagues to lobby the Government and to make it clear that all eyes are on them. They must secure the necessary changes, seize the opportunity and make life better all around the world for those with disabilities and those born today with disabilities, so that their future and their place in society will be brighter and better. That will build a much stronger society for us all; one of which we can be proud.