Covid-19: Disability-Inclusive Response

Debbie Abrahams Excerpts

Thursday 15th October 2020 Westminster Hall

[Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Rosindell, and I congratulate the hon. Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Dr Cameron) on her speech. It is also a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Beaconsfield (Joy Morrissey), who made some fantastic points that I absolutely support.

In the four or so minutes that I have, I would like to make the following brief points. First, covid is a disease of poverty: people with existing health conditions or disabilities are particularly at risk of contracting the virus and, unfortunately, suffering its worst effects. Data from the Office for National Statistics shows that between March and July, disabled people accounted for three-fifths of covid deaths in England and Wales, and the ONS has said that this is probably an underestimate. There were more than 27,500 coronavirus-related deaths of disabled people, compared with 18,800 deaths of non-disabled people. Disabled women are nearly 11 times more likely to die than non-disabled women; for men, the figure is about six and a half times.

Why is that happening? As I have just said, covid is a disease of poverty, and we know that disabled people are more likely to live in poverty than non-disabled people. Last year’s very good Disability Benefits Consortium report showed that on average, disabled people have lost £1,200 every year over the past decade, compared with £300 for a non-disabled person. That figure significantly increases when there is more than one disabled person in a household, and of course we must not forget the extra costs that disabled people face as a result of their disability, which are about £538 extra a month. Overall, £36 billion will have been taken out of social security support for working-age people by 2022.

On top of that, I am afraid that the shielding system the Government set up was completely useless. The Greater Manchester Disabled People’s Panel did a large-scale survey that it published in July, which revealed that one in five people had been included in the Government’s shielding list. The 80% who were excluded did not get any of the support that was available to officially shielded people. Given that the majority of disabled people were not shielded, one would think that the Government would recognise that fact, and that additional financial support would be provided through social security—not at all. Poor disabled people were faced with the additional dilemma of having extra costs on top of their extra costs. They had to get food somehow: did they go into debt? Did they get food delivery schemes that they had to pay for, or did they risk their health and go to the shops?

As the Select Committee on Work and Pensions heard during our coronavirus inquiry in April, and as we were already anecdotally aware of people saying, disabled people in work were more likely to be made redundant than non-disabled people. Citizens Advice then showed in its survey that more than a third of disabled people were likely to be made redundant, compared with 17% of the working-age population as a whole. Access to Work is meant to enable disabled people to stay in work, so I ask the Minister this: of the 4.1 million disabled people able to work, how many more disabled people have been able to avail themselves of the support over and above the 43,400 who have done so since the covid pandemic?

What can we do about it? We need to have a supportive shielding system that identifies vulnerable people not via an algorithm but at a local level, with disabled people’s organisations. They have been completely excluded from any decisions made about what is going to affect them. It is not good enough. That needs to be done for all tiers of the new system. Personally, I believe we should be going for a national circuit-breaker. I am a former public health consultant and we know that, because of seeding, local lockdowns will not work.

Access to Work must be extended to ensure that disabled people can work from home wherever possible, or furloughed on 100% pay. The Government must monitor any unlawful discrimination of disabled people in the workplace through the Equality and Human Rights Commission, and must take enforcement action where that is happening. The Government must transfer resources to local authorities not just in terms of the national Test and Trace programme, but also to ensure that adequate support is made available to protect and support disabled people. We are at war with this virus, and the Treasury need to recognise that and invest and support our people appropriately, including disabled people.