Disabled People

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

Thursday 28th June 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, it is a real honour to be able to speak after the new right reverend—and right honourable, for she is also a privy counsellor—Prelate the Bishop of London following her powerful maiden speech, in which she demonstrated her extraordinary life dedicated to Christ since her teens. We in this House note that she joins us as the third most senior cleric in the Church of England and the first woman in this role, after a meteoric rise from 2015 when she was made the Bishop of Crediton. She and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Gloucester were the first two women to be ordained as bishops in Canterbury Cathedral, and weeks later she was the first woman in the Church of England to lead an ordination service.

We have heard this afternoon of the impressive breadth of her experience beyond her priestly ministry and, indeed, of her many firsts in the Church. Bishop Sarah began her nursing career just over the river at St Thomas’ and around the corner at Westminster Hospital. It culminated in her appointment as Chief Nursing Officer and director of patient experience for England in 1999. It is worthy of note that she was the youngest woman to hold that position. Her passion for putting the patient first transformed nursing, perhaps most memorably through the new role of matron.

In her recent enthronement sermon at St Paul’s Cathedral, Bishop Sarah remarked that 150 years ago that week suffragettes had placed a bomb under the seat in which she had just been enthroned as the first woman to be Bishop of London. She said—I hope she will allow me to quote her—

“Let me reassure you, I do not come carrying bombs—or perhaps not literal ones, anyway. But I am aware that, as the first woman Bishop of London, I am necessarily subversive, and it’s a necessity I intend to embrace”.


This House and its predecessor, the King’s council of barons and bishops, have seen subversive bishops before, and I know that in welcoming the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London to your Lordships’ House we see before us a woman who will not be afraid to tackle difficult issues and who will speak truth to her faith and to power.

I thank and congratulate my colleague and noble friend Lady Thomas on securing this debate. Like her and the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, I was a member of the Lords Equality Act 2010 and Disability Committee. Today, in the brief time that is left available, I want to focus on the availability of short-term care and social support for disabled children in our country today. We have already heard from the noble Lord, Lord Patel, about the issues facing children’s hospices, so I shall not repeat those points. However, I want to highlight the Disabled Children’s Partnership’s survey of parents, which found that 64.9% of family members surveyed thought that the quality of social care services had worsened over the past few years; that over three-quarters of family members thought that the quality of health services had worsened over the past few years; and that nearly half said they knew there were plans to reduce social care for children in their area.

Some 49,000 babies, children and young people with life-limiting or life-threatening conditions need palliative care from the point at which their conditions are diagnosed or recognised—which is often, but not always, at birth—until the end of their lives. Parents usually provide the bulk of the round-the-clock care that these often seriously ill children need at home. It is crucial that they are able to access care and support throughout the trajectory of that child’s illness.

Most disabled children receive no regular support at all from outside their close family and friends, and the number who receive social care services—and the number of hours of support per week—is reducing. Yesterday, local councils warned of further cuts to come, and evidence gathered by the Local Government Association shows that local authorities are overspending their children’s social care budgets by £600 million. Can a national inquiry looking at the children’s palliative care strategy, including short breaks, and a family- centred and holistic approach to health and social care interventions, be established very soon? The Government need to issue joint guidance on short breaks to the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care and the Secretary of State for Education, and they need to make sure that funding matches the increased demand for children’s palliative care and that direction is given on commissioning responsibilities. It is vital that services—such as those at Nascot Lawn, which I have spoken about in your Lordships’ House many times, and which sadly is going to close—are not closed over the head of the services that these children need.

My grand-daughter has various life-limiting illnesses, and she regards them as special. Aged two, she talks about her feeding tube as her “special tube”. If disabled children can see the specialness and normality of their lives, it is up to us as a country to ensure that we provide the special support that they need to live their lives to the full.