Down Syndrome Bill

Debate between Jonathan Gullis and Lia Nici

3rd reading
Friday 4th February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Lia Nici (Great Grimsby) (Con)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox). As a newbie and a Back Bencher I still cannot quite believe that I am in the same place as him. This is a truly landmark Bill, and it has been fantastic to learn from him how such a Bill can be formed to make a real difference in human beings’ lives.

I am chair of the apprenticeship diversity champions network, and one of our aims is to get more people with learning difficulties and disabilities into apprenticeships and long-term work. The Bill will help to get employers to understand that people with Down syndrome are very able to work in their workplaces. After this debate, in National Apprenticeship Week next week, I will write to the top 100 apprenticeship providers to say that they need to think about employing more people who have Down syndrome and who have learning difficulties and disabilities more widely.

I do hate the term “disabilities”. It should be “differences” or “diversities”, because everybody can do some things and not others. I have felt for a long time that the word “disability” does a disservice to our fellow human beings. I feel blessed that, as I was growing up, my mother retrained as a social worker. She went to university, while she was working full time as a catering manager, to become an assistant social worker and went on to become a fully qualified one.

My mother specialised in learning difficulties and disabilities, so in my teenage years I had lots of discussions with her and learned about the different types of disabilities. She was and still is passionate about people with difficulties and disabilities having as full and independent lives as possible, which I have taken to heart and always thought about. We all want to be independent and to have fruitful and enjoyable lives, including work lives. If employers are watching or listening to this, or reading about it afterwards, they should start to think about taking on people who have Down syndrome, because they can add a fantastic extra dimension.

[Jonathan Gullis]

My hon. Friend is a doughty champion not just for Great Grimsby but for skills and apprenticeships across our country. She worked in the further education sector before entering this place, which goes to show the breadth of talent and life experience that we now have on both sides of the Chamber. Does she agree that that makes this a much more representative, diverse and better House of Commons?

[Lia Nici]

I thank my hon. Friend for his support and for his passion about education. We have many conversations about it, although I was worried at one point that he was going to say that I was teaching in further education before he was born, which, worryingly, might actually be true. We will brush over that.

I urge employers to think about taking on people who have Down syndrome. As the Bill is so specifically about Down syndrome, it will allow the message to be communicated much more widely to employers.

There is another reason I feel that this is a landmark Bill. Let me use a metaphor. One of my first jobs when I was 18 was as a barmaid in a country pub not far from Grimsby called the King’s Head, in a little village called Keelby. In the 1980s, pubs were part of their communities. They still are now, although perhaps not as much, sadly. One resident of the village—I will not use his proper name, as I have not asked his family’s permission, but we will call him Bob—lived across the road from the pub. He came into the pub every night and was welcomed by everybody. He had his own special tankard hanging up. When Bob came in there was a particular orange juice that he liked to drink at a particular strength—I had to learn how he liked his drink—and he had a pint with everybody. How England is embracing people with Down syndrome with the Bill is very much like how Bob was embraced in the pub. He was greeted as an equal, and joined in conversations and played pub games. It was very much part of his life. He was working at the time. Is it not lovely to think about how the country and, we hope, the wider United Kingdom can embrace the Bill?

As my right hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset says, it is important to have a named person in the ICS and care sectors.