Procedure and Privileges

Lord Shinkwin Excerpts

Tuesday 13th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Shinkwin (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley of Knighton. I will confine my remarks to the impact of the Select Committee’s proposals relating to participation by disabled Members of your Lordships’ House.

For me, these proposals are best summed up by the assertion in paragraph 45 of the Select Committee’s report that:

“The contribution disabled members make to the House’s debates and decisions is integral to the work of the House”.


The measures proposed will, as my noble friend the Leader of the House made clear, give effect to that very welcome affirmation. It is an affirmation not just of the disabled Members of your Lordships’ House but of the collective expertise and experience that, together, the House brings to the legislative and scrutiny process of this diverse United Kingdom.

I agree with those noble Lords who rightly feel passionate about the ability of your Lordships’ House to subject the Government to effective scrutiny, which is of course essential for the exercise of parliamentary democracy. It is no less essential that we recognise that if it is to the exclusion of diversity—in this case disability—scrutiny is less effective because it fails to draw on the breadth of lived experience of all noble Lords to which my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay of Clashfern alluded. For a House which prides itself on that unique combination of expertise and experience not to accommodate the needs of its disabled Members, for example, to be able to contribute remotely, particularly for disability-related reasons, does not make sense.

Like the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, I was dismayed to hear some of the comments made when the House last debated these issues. While this may not have been the intention, as a disabled Member of the House, I was left feeling not only that I and other disabled Members did not add value to our proceedings and debates but that the very validity of our contributions was in question.

We are fortunate to command a wealth of wisdom because of the range of expertise and experience that other noble Lords have referred to. It is also an inescapable fact that many noble Lords are wealthy to a disproportionate extent relative to the general population. I begrudge no one their wealth, but with wealth comes responsibility—a responsibility to ensure that it cannot be used as a stick with which our detractors can beat your Lordships’ House. We urgently need to become more representative and more diverse, especially in relation to disability, because diversity is our best defence against such attacks. The measures under consideration today, and the way they have been developed in meaningful consultation with disabled Members, recognise that and enable it to happen.

I close with this observation. It gives me no pleasure to say that the way in which we are addressing this need, particularly regarding how disabled Members have been listened to and meaningfully involved in developing these proposals, is in marked contrast to the unfortunate way in which I fear that the DWP has traduced the Prime Minister’s promise of

“the most ambitious and transformative disability plan in a generation”

to mere rhetoric. The cynicism with which the DWP has treated disabled people in the development of the national disability strategy, which is apparently due to be bounced on us next week, is staggering. I thank the Lord Speaker, the Clerk of the Parliaments and the Procedure and Privileges Committee for taking a very different approach. I urge noble Lords to support these proposals.