British Sign Language

Lilian Greenwood Excerpts

Tuesday 17th October 2023 Westminster Hall

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

I am proud to speak today as the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on deafness and as a patron of the Nottinghamshire Deaf Society. I congratulate the right hon. Member for Norwich North (Chloe Smith) on securing today’s debate and on setting out so clearly the context of the British Sign Language report 2022. She posed important questions for the Minister. As the former Minister for Disabled People in the Department for Work and Pensions, she played an important role in the BSL Bill’s becoming law. She once told me that she considers it her proudest achievement in Government.

The annual general meeting of the APPG on deafness takes place next Wednesday. I hope some Members here today will be present and I hope that the right hon. Member will become an officer of the group. I look forward to working with her to ensure that the needs of deaf people and those who experience hearing loss are properly represented here in Parliament and lead to real improvements for them.

It is a testament to the skill and determination of my former colleague Rosie Cooper, the former Member for West Lancashire, that she was able to unite the House in support of the landmark piece of legislation that finally set official recognition for British Sign Language in statute. That was an important achievement. As Rosie said in her speech on the Bill’s Second Reading,

“I want to finally recognise BSL in statute—not just a gesture but a law that requires positive action from the Government, with real progress to put deaf people on an equal footing with those of us who hear. For every deaf person, like my parents, who has been ignored, misunderstood, or even treated as unintelligent simply for relying on BSL, this recognition will be clear and a message that their language is equal and should be treated as equal.”—[Official Report, 28 January 2022; Vol. 707, c. 1227.]

The passing of the Act was a huge moment for all the members of the BSL Act Now! coalition, including RNID, the British Deaf Association and David Buxton, and many other organisations that had campaigned for many years to secure that recognition.

But recognition alone was never enough and never the intention of the Act, which was only the first step on an equally if not more important journey towards equality for deaf people. The BSL Act will have succeeded only if it leads to better access to communication for deaf people and real, meaningful change in their life chances and experiences. That means ensuring that Government communications on new laws, policies, proposals and publications, which affect all our lives, are produced in BSL to better serve the deaf community. It means ensuring that Departments’ social media posts and websites are accessible to BSL users. If deaf people who are BSL users cannot access that information, they will be denied the support, information and activities they need and excluded from full participation in decision making.

As has already been said, part 2 of the Act requires the Secretary of State to publish a report on the promotion and facilitation of BSL by each Department—essentially, to set out how they will provide information to deaf BSL users in their communications—and it is that report that we are debating. As the RNID briefing points out, the lack of accessible information from official sources can lead to people feeling anxious, feeling angry and, in some cases, being at risk of believing fake news. That is why it is so disappointing to learn that 11 Departments produced no communications in BSL at all during the reporting period, and that only six reported having used BSL for publicity. As RNID set out, only the DWP and the Cabinet Office made public announcements about policy or changes to the law in BSL, and the Treasury produced no BSL publications during the cost of living crisis, leaving BSL users in the dark about what support is available for them. The Department of Health and Social Care had only one consultation document translated into BSL.

Much as I welcome the report and the fact that we now have transparency and can see what the situation is, it tells us that the Government are simply not doing enough. That has to change. I hope that the Minister, who I suspect is very committed to this issue, agrees that there is much more to do and is determined to ensure that much more happens. It is welcome that the Government have committed to providing annual reports for the next five years, and I hope that next year’s report will show a significant improvement in the provision of BSL content across Government. I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say about how he is going to ensure that that happens. There needs to be an understanding across all Departments that BSL really matters and must be prioritised, and that if it is not we will be letting down a significant proportion of the deaf population.

There are some omissions from the BSL Act. For example, it does not require No. 10 to report on its BSL provision. Will the Minister commit to reporting on No. 10’s BSL provision? That would send a clear message of leadership. We all remember the deep concern and anger at the lack of BSL interpretation at daily briefings during the covid pandemic, which left BSL users without access to essential health and other information. That was rightly challenged, and I am sure the Government have learned from it. By including No. 10 in their reporting, they would send a clear message that lessons have been learned and about their commitment to making things different in the future.

Part 3 of the BSL Act requires the Government to produce guidance about the promotion and facilitation of BSL use, and the non-statutory BSL advisory board has a vital role in ensuring that deaf people’s lived experience is fully acknowledged and that they are a partner in the co-creation of that guidance. As the right hon. Member for Norwich North said, there is concern in the deaf community that they are still not sufficiently involved in departmental actions to ensure that changes truly meet the needs of BSL users. The slogan of the disability community is often, “Nothing about us without us,” and measures to ensure that those with lived experience are not just consulted about the guidance but partners in its creation would be very welcome.

As has already been said, the guidance can empower the deaf community if it sets out how public services should make reasonable adjustments for deaf BSL users. If it provides those minimum standards, those users will be better able to hold our public services to account and better able to seek redress when they fail to reach their needs. Setting that standard of expectation is clearly something that the guidance can and should do. I look forward to the Minister’s comments on that.

For too long, BSL users have faced unacceptable barriers to their full participation in society. For too long, their voices have been unheard, their independence undermined and their opportunities limited. The BSL Act must fulfil its potential and make a real difference to the lives of deaf BSL users, and the all-party parliamentary group and I will do our very best to ensure that those things happen.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tom Pursglove]

On the first part of the hon. Lady’s intervention, I am delighted to work with her to try to take that forward. At the start of my remarks, I said consistently that I recognise that we have further to travel, and I am certainly not complacent when it comes to performance across the whole of Government. As has been touched on, some of the performance around my Department—the Department for Work and Pensions —is at the top of the charts, which shows the emphasis that my ministerial colleagues in the Department and I place on this issue. I am trying to lead by example by ensuring that I demonstrate a real commitment and willingness to set a standard that I want Ministers and Departments across the board to follow. It is in that spirit that we move forward with this work.

To delve further into the issue of communications across Government, I could not be clearer that people who use BSL as their native language should be able to access the same information as native English speakers, whether that information is about their rights and responsibilities, their ability to access support or the opportunity to have their say on Government policy development by participating in a consultation. In the last year alone, the Government have ensured that BSL communications have been available for deaf BSL users across diverse subjects: providing timely updates about cost of living payments, sharing important information about the Home Office’s tackling domestic abuse plan and ensuring that BSL users could join in the celebrations for the coronation of our new King.

Individual Departments have focused their BSL communications on areas of greatest importance to deaf BSL users: the Department for Education published its “Special Educational Needs and Disabilities and Alternative Provision Improvement Plan” with BSL interpretation, the Ministry of Justice published advice in BSL for victims of rape and sexual assault, and the Department for Transport included BSL interpretation in its “it’s everyone’s journey” campaign.

I want to provide updates on two specific areas that have been raised in relation to cross-Government work and different parts of Government communicating those messages. The first is around the use of BSL in health services. The Department of Health and Social Care is committed to supporting the use of BSL and has used it in communications, such as to support the Down Syndrome Act 2022 call for evidence. The Department continues to look for further ways to promote the requirements of the BSL Act, including by sharing lessons learned from the production of the DSA call for evidence BSL videos with a view to improving BSL usage, monitoring and reporting across the Department.

Under the Equality Act 2010, health and social care organisations must make reasonable adjustments to ensure that disabled people are not disadvantaged when it comes to interpreters for GP and medical appointments. NHS organisations and publicly funded social care providers must comply with the accessible information standard to meet the communication needs of patients and carers with a disability, an impairment or sensory loss. NHS England has completed the review of the AIS, and the updates are now in the publication approval process.

Following Royal Assent for the British Sign Language Act and the legal recognition of British Sign Language as a language of England, Wales and Scotland, the Government Communication Service will promote and facilitate the use of British Sign Language in communication with the public where appropriate. Colleagues in the Department of Health and Social Care keep those matters under review. Again, I want Departments to set a standard that we then ask our public services, communities and society as a whole to follow.

The other area that I want to provide a brief update on is the BSL GCSE, for which there is huge appetite in this House and beyond. The public consultation on it has now closed. The Government are analysing the results of the consultation and working up the course content, and we will publish that as soon as we can. I recognise that there is a real demand for that BSL qualification, not least because of all the opportunities it will provide. Educating the next generation to have such skills at an early stage will have knock-on benefits: more people in our society will communicate with BSL and then, we hope, go on to have successful careers, promote the language, encourage others to adopt those skills, and participate in our communities and society in that way. I know that we all want to see that, and that is welcome.

The variety of case studies in the first BSL report show pockets of good practice across the Departments named in the schedule to the BSL Act. Around half of policy Departments produced communications in BSL during the reporting period. But we know that we can go further, and produce more and better BSL content. It is important to note that different Departments will communicate with the public, whether in BSL or otherwise, in different ways, because of the fact that they have different responsibilities, different remits, different areas of interest and different communications, related to their specific areas of Government.

The Departments listed in the schedule to the BSL Act range from large operational Departments—like my own, the Department for Work and Pensions, which produces a large number of public communications every year—to much smaller Departments and offices that may not have had occasion to produce many public communications during the reporting period. Not all Departments are the same—one size does not fit all—but we know that there is room to improve and we have committed to doing so. With that in mind, there are four specific commitments that are recognised within the need to improve, which I will describe, because the Secretary of State has been clear about our determination to take greater action to drive forward progress, with four separate commitments to help us make progress.

First, although the BSL Act only requires for a BSL report to be published once every three years, I am pleased to confirm that the Secretary of State has made a commitment to publish a BSL report every year for at least the next five years. Again, that goes to the very point about transparency, and arguably is a tool to aid our conversations within Government around individual departmental performance, allowing us to continue to drive improvement, highlight successes, learn from the case studies in the first BSL report and remain accountable to the deaf community.

Secondly, we are committed to discussing the findings of the report at the next meeting of the ministerial disability champions, who are Ministers appointed by the Prime Minister to provide a personal lead in championing accessibility and opportunity for disabled people within their Departments. We have already done that, and the ministerial disability champions will work with their Departments to increase the use of BSL in their communications. The ministerial disability champions are specifically appointed to lead the inclusion agenda within their Departments, but I want to explore what more we can do to drive greater accountability and ownership of those actions, making sure that this inclusion agenda is right at the forefront of our thinking—and that we are doing these things up front, rather than their happening as an afterthought—when it comes to policy development, legislative change or any other announcements that we might make.

[Lilian Greenwood]

I was reflecting on the Minister’s comments just a few moments ago about the differences between Departments, and the way in which the information in the report is set out under different headings, such as “Public announcements about policy or changes to the law in BSL” and “Publications (plans, strategies…). That information is presented as a number, but it might be more useful if it the proportions were presented. For example, if we knew how many public announcements the Department had made and how many were also produced in BSL, we would have a better gauge of whether the Department was doing well or not so well, because I would hope that when a Department is making important announcements, it would automatically produce them in BSL as well as in English. Is that something that the Minister might consider in future reporting?

[Tom Pursglove]

I am of course very happy to consider suggestions as to how we can try to provide greater transparency around this performance and better itemise the output that Departments are making around communications, because I genuinely want this process to be a success. Getting it right is an important barometer of the inclusion agenda. Anything we can do to give people confidence that we are getting this right can only be a good thing, and I am willing to explore anything that aids transparency, so I will gladly take away the hon. Lady’s suggestion in the spirit with which it was made.

I return to the four commitments. Thirdly, building on these ongoing discussions, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions will ask each ministerial Department to produce a five-year BSL plan, setting out how it plans to improve its use of BSL. These plans will be included in the next published BSL report.

Fourthly, the Government Communication Service has published internal guidance for Departments that covers how to plan and deliver British Sign Language content where it is needed, to meet the needs of deaf BSL users. It has been written with the help of professionals and those with lived experience of British Sign Language.

In addition to those measures, I am pleased to confirm that officials will be working with the BSL Advisory Board to formulate the guidance specified in section 3 of the 2022 Act. That section places a duty on the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions to issue guidance promoting the facilitation and use of BSL. It is important to recognise both that all members of the advisory board have lived experience of BSL, and that we went through a thorough and proper process in making appointments to the board. Their work will include advice for relevant Departments on best practice to support BSL users in accordance with the Equality Act 2010, the public sector equality duty and the British Sign Language Act 2022. It will also contain broader advice on best practice for communicating with BSL users, including case studies to illustrate the value of providing BSL interpretation in communications with the public both in our central communications and in frontline services.

During the debates on the British Sign Language Act 2022, we heard Members recount the everyday experiences of their constituents in accessing public services. Again, let me be clear that it is not good enough to ask the hearing child of a deaf parent to relay an intimate health diagnosis or to deal with financial issues on behalf of their family. There should be a professional BSL interpreter in those circumstances to ensure dignity and respect to the deaf adult and their family members.