British and Irish Sign Language

Baroness Sherlock Excerpts

Thursday 3rd May 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Buscombe]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend. I entirely agree with him that in supporting access to communication for everyone, the exciting work of the NHS in fitting cochlear implants to babies and children is one example of why, as the Minister of State for Disabled People has said, it is clear that there is now a wealth of technological solutions with the power to make a real difference to someone’s ability to progress in education and also to find and keep a job. This means that we can use more of our devices. It offers more opportunities and a wider range of ways in which people can break down the barriers of hearing impairment. Of course, the majority of people with a hearing impairment are elderly and for the most part they do not use sign language.

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, I am sure the Minister would not in any way mean to suggest that people who use BSL should be thinking about other ways of communicating. I want to bring her back to the fact that in 2016, the Department for Work and Pensions introduced VRS for some of its services as a result of a recommendation from the DWP Select Committee that the department ought to be more accessible to BSL users. The Government said at the time:

“In the future, it is hoped that VRS can be rolled out across DWP’s complete range of services”.


I have had a look at the website and some services, such as applying for ESA or PIP, do seem to be available via this mechanism. But I looked on the universal credit website and could find no reference to it at all. Are the Government now saying that they no longer wish to do this at all and will therefore not be rolling it out, or that they will be rolling it out but have not got round to it yet?

[Baroness Buscombe]

I assure the noble Baroness that there is no question of our not supporting the use of BSL services. In fact, good, accessible services are the best way to remove or overcome barriers that BSL users and people with hearing loss face. We have worked closely with deaf people and their organisations on delivering improvements across a wide range of services, including those provided by the Department for Work and Pensions and across much of the public sector; this is also the case in private companies such as Barclays, Lloyds, Sky and Virgin Media. The reality is that a growing number of organisations in the private, public and voluntary sectors are providing access to their services for deaf BSL users via the video relay services. With respect to the Department for Work and Pensions, I reassure her that there is no question of our not considering this service for UC rollout, but I will certainly take that point back to the department to ensure that that is the case.