Covronavirus, Disability and Access to Services

Kim Johnson Excerpts

Thursday 15th April 2021 Westminster Hall

[Kim Johnson (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab) [V]]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Graham. This pandemic has been one of poverty and inequality. Pre-existing health, housing, employment and income inequalities have combined to form a perfect storm for disabled people.

In my role on the Women and Equalities Committee, I have listened to so many heartbreaking and shocking stories of the barriers that disabled people have faced during the pandemic. Disabled people have overwhelmingly been abandoned without the basic support they need to survive or live in dignity—from the suspension of local authority’s legal responsibilities to provide basic social care, to the reduction of access to activities and day centres, to an increase in isolation and loneliness, and difficulties in accessing healthcare, education and even food.

Mencap’s “My Health, My Life” report into inaccessible healthcare during covid highlighted some truly shocking realities faced by people with a learning disability during the pandemic. Some people with a learning disability were told that they may not receive life-saving treatment. Some were encouraged to avoid hospital and were asked to consent to DNRs. Overstretched and under-resourced hospitals meant there was a reduction in learning disability nurses, and some acute learning disability nurses were redeployed to other units.

While we welcome the Government’s commitment in their written response to the report to more funding for local authorities, their reference to the recent hike in the social care council precept raised concerns that they intend to place the burden for social care on those least able to pay for it. Such an approach is both unfair and completely unable to meet the scale of the challenge. This Government are in denial of the social care crisis that we are facing.

Can the Minister explain how this Government can claim a levelling-up agenda while forcing the costs of the crisis in social care on to the worst-off through this regressive taxation? About 60% of people in the UK who have died from coronavirus are disabled. Will the Minister please explain in clear terms why the Government have not taken up our report’s recommendation for an independent inquiry into the disproportionate deaths and adverse outcomes for disabled people from the pandemic? Also, why did the Government reject the recommendation for a statutory code of practice on the public sector equality duty?

We are having this debate in the most tragic of circumstances. What will it take for this Government to act? Disabled people’s lives must be valued equally. This Government have a responsibility to take action against the disadvantage and discrimination that put the mental and physical health of disabled people at risk. To do that, the Government must commit to full and transparent engagement with disabled people and groups about their concerns during the pandemic when forming a proposed national strategy for disabled people, upholding the principle of “nothing about us without us”.

Everyone has the fundamental right to live in safety and in dignity, with full access to health, social care and education. The report and the evidence we have heard has shown that we have failed disabled people by not upholding these basic rights during the pandemic. The report must be a turning point. The Government must investigate their failures, involve disabled people in developing a national strategy to uphold, protect and strength the rights of disabled people, and commit to significant and progressive funding to tackle our crisis in social care and ensure that disabled people can live in safety and in dignity.