Brexit: Disabled People

Baroness Thomas of Winchester Excerpts

Thursday 2nd February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Thomas of Winchester (LD)]

My Lords, this is a timely debate. Thanks to my noble friend Lady Scott, we have heard forcefully this afternoon some of the real worries about Brexit both from disabled people themselves—I am one—and others. Perhaps the main one concerns what will happen to the thousands of personal assistants from the EU who give top-quality care to severely disabled people if there is no free movement. Who knew, before the referendum, that Brexit might mean that all the EU directives, which have made life so much better for disabled people travelling throughout Europe, for example, or even accessing public sector websites, might have to be negotiated all over again? Or will they? Who knows?

There is now a terrible uncertainty about what will happen in the future. Will we have reciprocity for all the working people from the EU who are settled in this country to stay after Brexit? This is perhaps the greatest worry for many disabled people, as they are now used to the high standards and attitudes of many EU care workers, as the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell of Surbiton, has said. I must straightaway ask the Minister whether he thinks there is any chance of an exemption from the restriction on the free movement of labour for staff in social care and NHS services. I repeat my noble friend’s question about whether there are any disabled people on the NHS Europe transition team.

The word “reciprocity” is very important in the field of social security as well as care. There has been a long-standing provision in EU law to co-ordinate social security schemes for people moving within the EU and EEA. This is a very important protection for disabled people who may want to reside in other EU or EEA member states. These co-ordination rules, such as allowing a person’s contributions paid in one country to count towards entitlement to benefit in another country, or allowing certain benefits to be taken abroad with them, are there to support free movement. What will happen in the future? What about those people who have lived and worked in more than one member state and paid national insurance in those countries?

At present, a person who moves from one member state to another has access to benefits in the host country if they are economically active or can support themselves. Working EU and EEA migrants are entitled to in-work benefits on the same basis as nationals of the host country, but this could all change. Will the Minister say which department is in charge of these negotiations? If there is no certainty for many months, quite a lot of disabled UK nationals living abroad are likely to return to the UK, where they may well need care services and quite possibly supported housing, thus adding to the strain that services are experiencing.

I turn briefly to the great repeal Bill, which, as we know, will annul the European Communities Act 1972 and transpose EU law into domestic law. The difficulty will come when the Government decide which laws will be scrapped altogether. The wretched Red Tape Challenge does not give us any confidence, as the report of the Equality Act 2010 and Disability Committee makes clear. This is about regulations being burdensome; it does not seem to matter that their disappearance might make life more burdensome for disabled people. So we are particularly concerned about hard-won rights in the fields of, for example, product design, air and rail travel, employment, building accessibility, public sector website accessibility and many others. Can the Minister assure us that disabled people will be in the forefront of negotiations on any matter that affects them directly?