Disabled People

Baroness Wyld Excerpts

Thursday 28th June 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Wyld (Con)]

My Lords, I add my congratulations to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London on her powerful and moving maiden speech. It is an honour to follow her, and I look forward to getting to know her here and outside the Chamber.

I will talk today about disabled people in public life, picking up on the comments made by my noble friend Lord Holmes, because this was my area of focus during my time in Downing Street. I have spoken before about the work the Government have done to increase the number of women on public boards and the very clear outcomes achieved. But it is important that we acknowledge that we simply have not had the same success in attracting or appointing more disabled people to sit on the boards of government departments, public bodies and advisory bodies. All of these have hard and soft power to affect lives across the nation. We will not get the solutions to the problems your Lordships are exploring today unless we empower more of those we also want to help.

I can say with genuine confidence that there has not been a lack of will. But the statistics from OCPA on disability—and, indeed, on BAME—show that while there has been some slow progress in recent years, we need to work harder. I therefore warmly welcome this review, to be led by my noble friend Lord Holmes, and I can think of no better person to lead it. I will offer some early observations.

Although there is growing evidence-based consensus across public and private sectors that diversity improves outcomes, there is a long way to go. I look back to recent years, when the Cabinet Office held events to attract more people into public appointments. Many people—I have to say, they were usually able-bodied men—told us privately that it felt like identity mattered more than merit. I want an open conversation about this because we should tackle it in the context of why it matters that we attract more disabled people into public life.

Disabled people are held to the same standard as anyone seeking a role in public life. Just as those who are not disabled will not always get a job, a disabled person may go through the process and not be appointed, but as long as the opportunity has been there and the process has definitely been fair, that can be an entirely appropriate outcome. However, that does not mean that we should not be out there, looking for and encouraging the best talent in disabled communities to come and help us, and identifying the barriers to making this happen. We can hear from today’s examples that public life benefits so much from first-hand experience and knowledge of the specific issues that disabled people face. That life experience really matters.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas, said, we also need to be clear that we are not looking to disabled individuals to participate simply in issues specific to disability. To be honest, in the cross-governmental meetings that I went to, I genuinely think that we became guilty of that sort of siloed thinking that can happen when you have simply got a bit stuck on what seems a difficult issue. I hope, therefore, that the review will explore ways to widen awareness of the range of roles across public life, from our museums to our regulators to our lottery distributors and beyond. This needs to recognise that there is no homogenous disabled strand of society, just as there is no homogenous group called “women”. Both the public and private sectors have rightly invested huge amounts of time and energy in thinking about the multifaceted reasons why women have not always had equality of opportunity. We need to invest the same time and energy in listening actively and responding to disabled communities, because the steps that we have taken so far in outreach and unconscious bias training—which, to be fair, were not aimed simply at increasing numbers of women—have not sufficiently brought other groups through the pipeline. There is a breadth and depth of experience of dealing with modern employment and society among disabled people that we fail to tap into at our cost.

We can be optimistic. Disabled people are already leading agendas in public life—we need only to look around this House. Without minimising the barriers faced by disabled people in terms of prejudice and perception gaps, there is also evidence that, culturally, we as a society increasingly understand that different does not mean unable. My children are growing up watching people with different disabilities read the bedtime story on CBeebies, and they cheered on Lost Voice Guy winning “Britain’s Got Talent”, commenting not that he is disabled but that he comes from Newcastle, like their mum. I think my girls would be absolutely amazed to know that we have had to commission this review. Let us make sure that ours is the last generation that has to do so.

I have absolutely no doubt that my noble friend the Minister will encourage all Front-Bench colleagues and advisory teams to engage fully with the review led by my noble friend Lord Holmes. I should like to see another push, led from the top, for truly diverse shortlists and appointment panels that go beyond the gender debate. I look forward to insightful and action-focused results.