Disabled People

Lord Low of Dalston Excerpts

Thursday 28th June 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Low of Dalston (CB)]

My Lords, I declare my interests as set out in the register. I join others in congratulating the right reverend Prelate on her impressive maiden speech and also the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas, on securing this debate. It is extremely timely because the challenges facing disabled people are at a critical point. There is something of a stand-off between disabled people, their organisations and the Government, and the Government just do not seem to be listening.

In Being Disabled in Britain—A Journey Less Equal, the Equality and Human Rights Commission recently assessed the state of equality and human rights for disabled people in Britain and concluded:

“While progress has been made in some areas, the overall picture … is that disabled people are facing more barriers and falling further behind. … millions of disabled people … are still not being treated as equal citizens and continue to be denied the everyday rights non-disabled people take for granted, such as being able to access transport, appropriate health services and housing, or benefit from education and employment. The disability pay gap is persistent and widening, access to justice has deteriorated, and welfare reforms have significantly affected the already low living standards of disabled people”.


Since 2016, the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities has published two reports examining the UK’s record on disability. In both reports the committee expressed serious concerns that the level of protection and support provided to disabled people was not adequate. In 2016, the committee considered a formal complaint under the optional protocol from a number of organisations of disabled people and found that, as a result of austerity measures, there was reliable evidence of “grave or systematic violations” of disabled people’s rights to an adequate standard of living and social protection, to work and employment, and to independent living. After reviewing the UK in August 2017, the committee published its concluding observations, which raised significant concerns about disability rights in the UK and made over 80 recommendations for action by the UK Government and the devolved Governments of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

In March this year, the EHRC published a cumulative impact assessment of the impact of changes to the tax and benefit system since 2010 on different groups—something the Government said could not be done. Households with one or more disabled members are significantly more adversely affected than those with no disabled members. On average, families with a disabled adult have lost about £2,500 a year since the changes in 2010. If the family also includes a disabled child, the impact is just over £6,500—over 13% of average net income. This compares to a reduction of about £1,000 for non-disabled families. Negative impacts are particularly large for households with more disabled members and more severely disabled members. On average, disabled lone parents with at least one disabled child fare even worse, losing almost £3 out of every £10 of their net income. In cash terms, their average losses are almost £10,000 a year. Figures from the Institute for Fiscal Studies and Professor John Hills of LSE tell a very similar story.

Of all the challenges facing disabled people, one of the greatest is the Government themselves. When opposing the £29 a week cut to employment and support allowance which the Government introduced in 2016, I said:

“By this action, the Government have betrayed the trust of disabled people and they should not be surprised if they forfeit it for the rest of their time in office”.—[Official Report, 7/3/16; col. 1074.]


That is still my view, but the Government could still begin to turn things round if they got behind the UN committee’s recommendations and began implementing them—and reversed the cut to ESA, of course. A good start would be for them to begin engaging with disabled people and their organisations, which they are not doing at the moment. They could hold a summit with organisations for disabled people to co-produce an action plan for taking the rights of disabled people forward or, slightly more long term, they could set up a task force with the same agenda, like the Labour Government did at the beginning of their term in 1997. I should be most interested to hear whether the Minister would be interested in taking either of these ideas forward with her colleagues.