Disability: Premature Deaths

Baroness Fall Excerpts

Monday 17th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fall (Con) (Maiden Speech)]

My Lords, growing up in Moscow during the Cold War, this Parliament was a beacon of hope, freedom and democracy in a world struggling against totalitarianism and war. I could never have imagined that I would be part of it one day. It is an honour to address your Lordships for the first time, and I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, on bringing this very important matter to your Lordships’ attention this evening.

Although introduced to your Lordships’ Chamber last year, I was not permitted to speak until now and, while I see the attraction of a fully voting but silent Peer from the Whips’ point of view, I stand before you today with those days firmly behind me. I am deeply indebted to both my sponsors, my noble friends Lady Rawlings and Lord Feldman of Elstree, for their support, wisdom and friendship over many years. I want to pay tribute to my wonderful mentor, my noble friend Lord Sherbourne, and to the officials of this House, as well as to your Lordships on all sides of the Chamber, for the kindness and patience you have shown me over these past months.

My first political memory was of the Falklands War when I was 10 years old. My father was working for the then Foreign Secretary, my noble friend Lord Carrington, a much-loved and respected member of this House. His resignation taught me my first lesson in politics—that political lives, even of the best of us, are precarious things. The resignation of another good man brings me to this Chamber today. I am immensely proud to have served David Cameron for six years when he was Prime Minister and five years as leader of the Opposition, and I pay tribute to all that he achieved for our country: in mending our broken economy; in creating many new good schools; in meeting our commitment of 2% to our NATO allies while not turning our back on the world’s poor; and, most of all, in helping so many back to work in this country on a fair wage.

Being part of the legislature is certainly a whole new thing for me. Now that I am able to see at first hand how your Lordships shape and improve legislation, as well as inform our country’s debate, I am still more honoured, and I very much look forward to playing my part in the future work of this House.

I am a daughter of an American mother and a British diplomat. I admit to being a hereditary Atlanticist, and I dedicated some of my early career to the transatlantic relationship, working as the founding director of the bipartisan think tank, Atlantic Partnership. My father’s generation were the “Cold War warriors”, many of whom sit on all sides of this House today. So my upbringing taught me something else: that we must fight for the values that we hold dear, that they can never be taken for granted, and that it falls to each and every generation to safeguard what is precious to us—otherwise, we will have failed in our duty. For there is nothing that reflects more truly on the values of a society than how we treat our most vulnerable, which is why I am pleased to speak briefly in this debate today.

There are some among us who dedicate their lives to the care of those with learning disabilities, such as my wonderful sister, and so many other mums, dads, siblings and carers, as well as teachers in specialist schools, such as Fairley House, where I was a governor for years. We owe them our respect and gratitude. We take great pride as a nation in our National Health Service, that it is available to all and free for all, and we hope that everyone is treated with kindness and humanity—and treated as equals. Yet the tragedy of the original Mencap study that prompted this debate today is that there is not always equality of care, at least not for the six men and women with learning disabilities whose deaths were judged premature in the original report.

At the crux of the problem, there seems to lie a simple truth. Those with learning disabilities often struggle with the system when they most need it, often because they are afraid or confused, cannot explain what is wrong and have many medical problems in the first place. So there are issues with the diagnosis, then with the treatment—and sometimes, let us face it, the assumptions made about what sort of care they should or should not receive. These problems, taken together, put those with learning disabilities at a serious disadvantage. Sir Jonathan Michael, the chair of the independent inquiry, put it very well when he said:

“I have learned that ‘equal’ does not mean ‘the same’ and that ‘reasonable adjustments’ that are needed to make services equally accessible to people with learning disabilities are not particularly difficult to make”.

Those are simple adjustments to save lives.

I commend the work of all those who seek progress in this area, and ask that we do not take our eye off the ball. We owe it to the vulnerable among us, to their families and friends, and to our society as a whole, to be the best we can.