Government’s New Approach to Consultation: “Work in Progress” (SLSC Report)

Baroness Thomas of Winchester Excerpts

Monday 11th March 2013 Grand Committee

[Baroness Thomas of Winchester]

My Lords, I, too, applaud the committee’s report and strongly endorse its recommendations. I will just say a very quick word about why consultation is so important, particularly for disabled people. I absolutely accept that there are many sorts of disability, but let us take the disability of somebody such as me, with mobility problems. No one except a disabled person, or their carer or helper, can know what it is like to be disabled. That is why consultation, for this group of people, is so important. People have their eyes opened when they either go round with a disabled person or when they put themselves in a wheelchair. I know a lot of MPs have done just that to see what conditions are like in their constituencies. I note that many of the responses that the committee has highlighted are from charities with a lot of disabled people in them. I will not speak about the PIP regulations again but they are an absolutely classic example of why consultation is so important.

The other thing I will highlight is that a single website for publicising government consultations would be invaluable. At the moment they are all over the place and it is quite a scandal that the Government are expecting some organisations to respond in a very short timeframe. After all, the people in these organisations are usually paid very small amounts, because the organisations are funded by voluntary donations, with no state support. To make these people look all over the place for consultations from the Government is ridiculous. I thoroughly endorse the robust language of the report and hope that the Government are listening.