Disabled People: User-led Organisations

Lord Addington Excerpts

Wednesday 8th June 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Addington]

My Lords, when I saw on the Order Paper the subject we are debating today and put my name down for it, I immediately thought of one thing: that it is sensible that user groups,—the people who suffer from disabilities—should be heard first. This is for selfish reasons for everyone else because, if you get a good idea of what the problems are, you stand a chance of taking the right action to address them quickly and concisely and thus save the costs involved in getting it wrong. Mistakes can, in certain cases, result in legal activity and often mean that the benefits and medical services have to pick up the pieces further down the line. Wear and tear on carers is another consideration. It is trying to get an understanding of where most mistakes in the system tend to be made. It is safe to say that there is good will from everyone involved, but people often make decisions and try to implement them but do not quite understand how to do so. They then find themselves in a corner and without the right amount of communication to be able to back off when they have made mistakes.

This is a Treasury Bench problem, no matter who is in government. The previous Government did their best to try on occasions. Sometimes they got it wrong, sometimes they got it right. I do not think at any point they were looking to get it wrong. We who have been giving advice in Parliament, through the contact we have with outside groups, have been able to reassess what is going on. Occasionally fashions in ideas may change but mainly it is based on practicality. That way we avoid those “does he take sugar?” mistakes. That way we try to get the correct information to those who are in power and making those decisions. User-led organisations are often a very good way of addressing these problems. They are not a magic bullet—in my own world of dyslexia, I have often met people who say, “We will do everything”. I am afraid dyslexics do not make terribly good secretaries of groups or good managers of diaries. People must make sure that they learn to ask for help; there have been occasions when they have failed by not being prepared to ask for enough help. If you experience problems, you will know when to ask for outside help and when to do something. We are talking about people with disabilities and once again—I have said it dozens of times and I will say it again—if any dyslexic says to me, “I am differently abled, not disabled”, I hand him an insurance form to fill out quickly and under pressure. When he has failed at that I say, “This is why we have legislation, this is why we have a framework, this is why we do the stuff we do. You are going to have to try to access support and help”. If we are going to fulfil our agenda of getting people into jobs, we must make sure people know how to give the correct assistance at the right time. We must talk to those who understand the problems to find out the correct way to make a change.

Having said all that—and here endeth the sermon—I say to the Government, “What are we doing to make sure you drag in this pool of expertise to make the job of Government easier?”. That is the big question. If we are not to continue with the previous model, how else do we do it? The noble Baroness, Lady Wheeler, spoke about sub-contracting and feeding into smaller groups as one way forward. Making sure that people who apply for these support jobs actually have contact with disabled people, and that it is seen as a benefit, would be a very sensible way forward. Thus, you may be able to combine the best of both worlds. Cats and skinning come to mind here, but it is making sure we get the correct information in. Those groups with outside experience will always have at least a very useful perspective on how to do this. We should also study how this will get through to the interface.

The noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, has had experience of this and I would be interested to hear what his take is from his own experience in office, when we had to deal with similar problems. I hope the noble Lord, Lord Freud, will not think me presumptuous by saying this is one occasion when you should listen to your political opponent because he has experienced it for quite a long time and indeed I bored him for a quite a long time on these and similar subjects. How can we encourage that interface? How will we make sure that we work properly to drag in the information? If we do not, we will make costly mistakes that will sometimes end in litigation and will always end in on-costs further down the line. How can we encourage people—and this is the big challenge to operators—to say, “I do not know the answer, can I go and get somebody who does?”. I find this is one of the most difficult parts of dealing with any government official, encouraging them to say, “I do not know, I will find out, let us figure out something else”. This is something that is very difficult to do by diktat. It is almost counterintuitive but it is vital to make sure it works properly. If the Minister can say something on this subject I will be eternally grateful.