British Sign Language Bill

Marion Fellows Excerpts

Friday 28th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Marion Fellows (Motherwell and Wishaw) (SNP)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for West Lancashire (Rosie Cooper) on her tenacity and organisation in getting the Bill to where it is. I am delighted to support the Bill to give BSL the legal status and public awareness that it needs to ensure that deaf people have full and equal access to education, employment, public services such as the NHS, information and legal processes, and that they can play a greater role in their communities more widely. I am particularly happy that the Bill has received Government support, as the Minister informed us yesterday.

Since 2003, disabled people’s organisations and disability charities have not stopped campaigning for BSL’s legal status. I thank the activists and organisations who have continued to fight to make it happen, such as the British Deaf Association, RNID and the Royal Association for Deaf people. In my constituency, the local Lanarkshire Deaf Club has been vocal in calling for such a Bill to raise and protect the status of the language in Scotland and the UK.

As has been mentioned, the Scottish Government have used their devolved powers to promote the use of BSL in Scotland and to engage with the deaf community to develop the first British Sign Language national strategy, which I commend to the Minister; I am sure that she is aware of it. Often, we do not need to reinvent the wheel and I am sure that she will take lots of good points from it and bring them forward. As part of the national strategy, the Scottish Government set up the BSL national advisory group to represent the views of BSL users and I am delighted about the British Sign Language council. Everything works better if lived experience is used at its foundation.

UK-wide legislation is needed, however, to ensure that British Sign Language gets legal protection as a language in its own right, and I am happy that that is now happening. It is an indigenous language of Scotland and the UK and, as such, deserves to finally have the legal recognition accorded to Gaelic and Welsh.

The Bill provides a great opportunity to break down barriers; to begin to create a more inclusive, equal and fair society for deaf people across the four nations; and for signers to be prominent in the public arena, as they are in Scotland. It is almost impossible for them not to be—even my party’s annual conference is signed front and centre, which is really useful and good. We need more inclusion across the public sector and I am pleased that the Bill will do that. I congratulate the hon. Member for West Lancashire again.