British Sign Language Bill

Chris Clarkson Excerpts

Friday 28th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Chris Clarkson (Heywood and Middleton) (Con)]

I start by thanking the hon. Member for West Lancashire (Rosie Cooper) for introducing the Bill. It is a remarkable thing for a private Member’s Bill to affect so many lives so positively. I echo the comments of some of her colleagues; I think her mum and dad will be incredibly proud of what she is doing. I also thank the Minister. I have had the privilege of being on two of her Bill Committees, and to describe her as just being on top of her brief would be to do her a serious misjustice.

I am a linguist. We have had several of them in the Chamber but they all seem to have disappeared just as I started speaking. My hon. Friend the Member for Dudley North (Marco Longhi) talked down his inestimable talents, and my hon. Friend the Member for Hyndburn (Sara Britcliffe) is, I think, the only Member of Parliament who speaks Catalan. I decided I wanted to do something different in Hansard when I first got here, and so far I have managed to include German, French, Japanese, Latin, Arabic, Farsi, Hebrew, Māori, Welsh and, this morning, Icelandic.

Communication is something I am very passionate about, and I want to drill down into that. The Bill is about not just fairness, although fairness is at its very heart, but recognition. It is about how we recognise and understand one another, and understand that some people communicate differently but are no less valuable to our national conversation. As my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for South Swindon (Sir Robert Buckland)—who has also gone—mentioned, the issue does not affect just the hard of hearing community. My mum worked in a special school and some of her greatest joy came when she learnt Makaton, which is another form of sign language used to communicate with profoundly disabled children. For some of those children, it was the only way of getting their message across. It is an awful way of phrasing it, but to be heard in that way is incredibly important.

I want to reflect on a personal musing. There are two best ways to understand people. One is food. As hon. Members can tell from the increasingly structural nature of my suits, I have leant into that one quite severely. The other is language. It informs how people behave in the world and how people view things. I was very lucky to grow up in Germany, so I grew up bilingual. I think in two languages. That has definitely shaped the way I view the world. I assume—I am sure the hon. Member for West Lancashire will correct me if I am wrong—that it must be the same, and it gives us a different perspective on the world. I have to simultaneously think twice, and to understand and reason things. That causes me to see other people’s perspectives more clearly.

There are at least 90,000 people in this country who see the world differently and have not been recognised by this Parliament, which is a serious misjustice. We are also addressing the fact that, as a community, we are not looking to our own heritage. As we have heard, British Sign Language is over 200 years old. We have almost disregarded a part of that heritage. That is phenomenal, especially considering some of the ignorant attitudes towards disability in the past: we had this wonderful way of communication that grew naturally, with its own grammar, syntax and community within our community, and we have not been addressing that. As a member of different minority community, I know how badly that hurts. It really does hurt not to be recognised and treated the same just because of who you are and how you choose to live. I will not labour the point because there have been some far more eloquent speeches than mine, but I will add another little language to my list by saying to the hon. Lady, [In British Sign Language: “Thank you, and well done.”].