EU Referendum and EU Reform (EUC Report)

Lord Low of Dalston Excerpts

Wednesday 15th June 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Low of Dalston (CB)]

My Lords, as I listened to the wonderful speeches of the noble Lords, Lord Jay, Lord Cormack and Lord Bilimoria—picking just three out of what could have been a much larger number; I could certainly have included the speech from the noble Lord, Lord Watson, which we have just heard—I found myself lamenting with a sinking feeling the fact that we did not hear more of them on the airwaves than Messrs Johnson and Gove and the other mendacious purveyors of snake oil, to whom we are so relentlessly subjected.

We should be grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, and his committee for making clear, particularly in their report on the process of withdrawing from the EU, a number of things that will be of pressing concern if the British people vote to leave the European Union. However, while the noble Lord’s committee has done us a signal service in helping to get to the bottom of these questions, I hope that they will remain purely academic, because I hope that the British people will not vote to withdraw from the European Union.

I say that as a disabled person because it is clear to me that disabled people will get a much better deal by remaining within the European Union. I therefore propose to come at this from a slightly different—I hope not too self-regarding—angle. In so far as it is self-regarding, I declare my interest as a disabled person, but I venture to think that what I say about the situation of disabled people could be said, mutatis mutandis, about numerous other specialised constituencies.

As president of the European Blind Union between 2003 and 2011, I was involved in advocating for disabled people’s rights at a European level. On the basis of that experience, I would argue that we were able to achieve a great deal for disabled people using EU mechanisms that we could not achieve at a national level. I said something about this in the debate on the humble Address three weeks ago, but I am even clearer about it now, having attended a seminar last week where disabled people considered whether they would be better off in or out of the EU. They were in no doubt that they would be better off in.

I could illustrate that by reference to a number of areas where the EU has competence to legislate, but I will limit myself to the single market, where disabled people probably have most to gain from remaining within the EU, and will take as examples just three pieces of legislation or proposed legislation.

In 2014, disabled people successfully influenced the revision of the EU’s public procurement directive. Accessibility is now a mandatory criterion for all public tenders above a certain financial threshold. According to the European Commission, public procurement accounts for 14% of the EU’s GDP. At home, according to a 2015 House of Commons briefing paper, in 2013-14 the UK public sector spent a total of £242 billion on the procurement of goods and services—33% of public sector spending. In sectors such as energy, transport, waste management, social protection and the provision of health and education services, public authorities are the main buyers, so public procurement regulations offer a substantial lever to improve accessibility and bring about change, just as they did in the United States many years ago.

Turning to accessibility of the world wide web, despite initial strong resistance from national Governments, we are now on course to have a European directive that will ensure the accessibility of all public sector bodies’ websites. It will cover their mobile applications and include an enforcement mechanism. This will ensure that disabled citizens can access e-government services right across Europe. In conjunction with the previously mentioned new rules on public procurement, this directive should ultimately ensure that industry delivers digital solutions that are accessible to all. We already have European standards for accessible information and communications technology—ICT—but technology is moving very fast in this area and it is good to have this new legislation to ensure that disabled people are able to keep up.

Finally, on accessibility of goods and services, the European Commission has now tabled a proposal for a directive that would harmonise accessibility requirements across the EU on a wide range of goods and services, including smartphones, computers, ticket machines, ATMs, retailers’ websites, banking, e-books and associated hardware, such as Amazon’s Kindle, as well as audio-visual media services and related equipment. Travel-related information is also included. Items not complying with the standards will not be able to be brought to market.

In the UK, neither the Disability Discrimination Act nor the Equality Act applies to manufacturers and manufactured goods. At first sight this is unfortunate, because that is where many accessibility barriers are built into the things that we need to use to live independently, to keep in touch with friends and family and generally to be part of the world in the same way as everybody else. But what initially looks like a major defect in disability legislation may ultimately be for the best. A harmonised market of 500 million EU consumers is far more attractive to industry than the much smaller UK market, and a common set of accessibility standards will drive innovation and encourage investment. This proposal does not include everything that one would want—it does not include white goods such as washing machines or microwaves—but it does provide a very good basis for legislative change.

Disabled people in the UK and across Europe have much to gain from the proposal for a European Accessibility Act, which is probably the most important piece of disability legislation yet to come out of Europe. In the debate on the humble Address, I spoke of one’s general philosophical orientation being more important than what the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, who will be speaking after me, more aptly termed “bean counting”. What I omitted to say was that, whereas the UK is often spoken of as punching above its weight, I have absolutely no doubt that, if we were to withdraw from the European Union, we would soon find ourselves punching well below our weight.