Life Skills and Citizenship

Lord Shinkwin Excerpts

Thursday 7th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Shinkwin (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Garden of Frognal, for securing this timely debate. I say timely because it follows the recent publication of the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s report, Progress on disability rights in the United Kingdom. I pay tribute at this point to the commission’s excellent chair, the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner of Margravine, for producing this report in the face of some very unpleasant distractions. I am sure my noble friend the Minister will share my concern that, as the commission has noted,

“Although some positive steps have been taken to combat bullying, more needs to be done to tackle negative stereotypes or prejudice against disabled people”.


As I can sadly attest, bullying and discriminatory behaviours in relation to disability start at school, and that is where the sneers, the snide remarks or worse—which I still encounter—need to be nipped in the bud. This is central to nurturing a society in which equality and respect for the individual inform citizenship.

The plethora of DfE guidance on the importance of respecting each other as unique and equal, and on how stereotypes, including those based on disability, can cause damage, is all very welcome. But in closing, I ask my noble friend, in responding to the important question of the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, if she could also explain what plans her department has to evaluate the impact of its guidance in terms of the lived experience of school and bullying from the perspective of pupils like Archie? Archie features in the BBC’s excellent key stage two class clips film for PSHE, “Archie’s Story: cerebral palsy”, which I commend to my noble friend and indeed to all noble Lords.