Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act 1970: 40th Anniversary

Lord Morris of Manchester Excerpts

Thursday 17th June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Morris of Manchester]

My Lords, I am most grateful to my noble friend for doing so much to secure and for having opened this, for me, deeply evocative debate. A parliamentarian with integrity to spare and an abiding commitment to social justice, he made plain again today his concern for the value of things as well as their cost. We first met a week or so after I entered the House of Commons in 1964. He then worked for Farmers Weekly, and I was Fred Peart’s Parliamentary Private Secretary at the then Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. He was a trusted friend then, and I am delighted to be calling him my noble friend today.

One of the penalties for longevity in parliamentary life is the loss, by attrition, of so many close and valued colleagues. The longer one survives here, the more colourful and crowded one's gallery of sorely missed friends becomes. Many of the most honoured in my own gallery are those who laboured with me to enact my Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Bill 40 years ago: the honourable John Astor, David Weitzman QC, Sir Neil Marten, Lewis Carter-Jones, Dr Michael Winstanley and, of course, the late and revered Davina, Lady Darcy de Knayth, among many more.

They were not all of one party. They were of all parties—and of none—but they were all of one mind. What united us was a shared determination that Westminster and Whitehall must no longer be allowed to ignore the rightful claims of long-term sick and disabled people. They must be free to live their lives as normally as possible in their own homes and their own families, to have the same opportunities to contribute to industry and society as everyone else and to receive support based on statutory rights.

Those who helped me to enact the Bill included, first of all, Jack Ashley, who was of inestimable help throughout. I rejoice that we remain in such close fellowship today. That he will be speaking in the debate is heart-warming and I very much look forward to hearing him. Happily Sue, the noble Baroness, Lady Masham, who made her maiden speech in this House in the Second Reading debate on my Bill in April 1970, is also with us to participate in this debate and I am delighted to see her. I know that the noble Earl, Lord Snowdon, very much wanted to be with us today but, sadly, it has proved impossible for him to be here.

For Back-Benchers in the House of Commons, winning first place in the annual Private Members’ ballot is the most coveted prize in the lottery of parliamentary life. That was the prize I won in November 1969, giving me the right to parliamentary time to introduce a Bill of my choosing. Not every honourable and right honourable Member felt that it was fair for me to have won the prize. Even Manny Shinwell, for whom, as a young, new Member I could do no wrong, felt that it was a little unfair. He had been in Parliament since 1922 and told me, “You know, it wasn’t your turn, Alf: you’ve only been here five years”, before adding, “but on reflection, I don’t think that it was mine either, just yet”.

Very few Members have a Bill ready to introduce, which is why some who win the ballot take one off the shelf, fully drafted and complete with offers of help with speeches, secretarial and other support from some well heeled pressure group. While I too had no Bill drafted, I knew what I would do. I was resolved to try to legislate on the problems and needs of long-term sick and disabled people as, in my view, the most deprived and neglected minority in Britain, but more realistically, perhaps, I wanted at least to put that policy area firmly on the parliamentary agenda.

Richard Crossman, then Secretary of State for Social Services, was not best pleased when he heard of my intention. In hard summary, his reaction was that if he had thought that such legislation was needed, he would already have introduced a Bill, not waited for me, with barely five years of parliamentary experience, to teach him social priorities.

Crossman was not alone among Ministers in wanting me to drop the whole idea. The Minister of Education asked me why I proposed to include in the Bill help for people with dyslexia which he said, “simply does not exist”, to which, having heard from a ministerial colleague of his that Treasury officials were describing my proposal as unaffordable, I was provoked to reply: “Then at least you can tell the Treasury that, ipso facto, it won't cost them anything”.

Official reaction to my proposals for helping children who are both blind and pre-lingually deaf and those with autism was no more supportive; so the Bill's prospects looked grim. Indeed, I was told by more than one organ of opinion that I was being overambitious in cramming my Bill with too much legislative change. To have any chance of success, they said, it must be toned down and made more affordable.

It must seem incredible and outrageous now, but from 1945 to 1964, there was no mention in any party manifesto of anything specifically about disabled people. Between 1959 and 1964, there was not one parliamentary debate nor even a single Question on disability. Westminster and Whitehall always had more pressing things to do than to respond to the claims of people with disabilities. The attitude of both was one of serene satisfaction with the status quo.

No one even knew how many disabled people there were in Britain. They were mostly seen or heard only by their families or, if they were in institutions, by those who controlled their lives. Even to talk then of as-of-right cash benefits for chronically sick and disabled people or for their carers was to invite ridicule. Local authority services were wholly discretionary and often non-existent. There were countless disabled people with every kind of moral justice on their side, but no statutory right whatever to vitally needed help.

That was how things were when, against all the odds, my Bill became law in 1970. Those who worked with me to enact it will remember how often and how close we came to disaster but, in the end, it was Dick Crossman's main Bill of that parliamentary Session that hit the rocks, while ours sailed safely by.

The Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Bill became an Act of 29 sections. It imposed new duties and responsibilities on 12 departments of state and became the model for legislation on disability in countries all over the world. It amended 39 existing Acts of Parliament in the interests of disabled people, including such major statutes as the Public Health Act 1936, the Education Act 1944, the National Health Service Act 1946, the National Assistance Act 1948 and the Housing Act 1957. It legislated also where neither here nor in any other country was there any existing law to amend: for example, its five sections on access for disabled people to the built environment. Claire Tomalin, a steadfast supporter, described the legislation as the Act that made disabled people visible; and that applied worldwide as one country after another adopted its provisions on access to all buildings open to the public, thus changing the lives of countless millions of disabled people.

Official statistics show that, since its passage into law, the Act has helped individually over 60 million people in the United Kingdom, more than our present population. Leaving aside its access sections, the Act provided, among other forms of help, for the world's first statutory provisions for: purpose-built housing for disabled people; adaptations to their homes; practical help in their homes; transport to and from services outside their homes; and the installation of telephones for housebound disabled people living alone. The blue badge scheme of special parking concessions for disabled drivers, of which there are now over 2.4 million beneficiaries, has also been important in increasing outdoor mobility, just as the Act's provision for the world's first Institute of Hearing Research has been of crucial importance globally in developing new help for people who are deaf or hard of hearing. Again, the improvements the Act provided in amending the war pensions scheme have helped countless war pensioners and war widows alike, and their benefits are well recognised by the ex-service community.

Forty years on, I well remember Harold Wilson telling me in the 1970s that there was no cause for me to worry about cuts in help for disabled people when the economy was under such daunting stress and the IMF became involved. He said that his policy would be that “the broadest backs must bear the biggest burden”, and he assured me that since my role was to help people with broken backs, among other severe disabilities, he would go on giving it high priority, and he was as good as his word.

Much apart from being cut, my budget increased, enabling me to legislate for the mobility allowance, the carers allowance and many more new benefits during the crisis. When I left the post of Minister for Disabled People after Labour's defeat in the 1979 general election, I told the House of Commons that there remained a long unfinished agenda of unmet need and, sadly, that is still the case today.

I conclude with the closing paragraph of my speech commending my Bill to the House of Commons on 5 December 1969. I said, Mr Speaker, if we could bequeath one precious gift to posterity, I would choose a society in which there is genuine compassion for the long-term sick and disabled people; where understanding is unostentatious and sincere; where needs come before means; where, if years cannot be added to the lives of the chronically sick, at least life can be added to their years; where the mobility of disabled people is restricted only by the bounds of technical progress and discovery; where people with disabilities have the fundamental right to participate in industry and society according to ability; where socially preventable distress is unknown; and where no one has cause to be ill at ease because of his or her disability.

That is how I explained the Act's purpose and why Marcel Napolitan, who represented disabled people in France with such distinction, called that day “un moment critique” for disabled people across the world. Much the best way of marking the 40th anniversary is to recognise that we still have much more to do to turn humane precept into practice and to make it our bounden duty to meet that challenge.