British Sign Language Week

Noah Law Excerpts

Thursday 20th March 2025 Westminster Hall

[Sir Stephen Timms]

I am very glad to do so; I completely agree with my hon. Friend.

This week gives us a chance to celebrate British Sign Language and Irish Sign Language. As we have heard, 151,000 people use BSL; 87,000 have it as their first language, and it is the UK’s fourth most widely used indigenous language. That is a very large group of people, with a great deal to contribute to our economy and our society.

It is right to take this week as an opportunity to highlight, as my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock said, the rich culture around BSL, of which many people are unaware. I was intrigued that American Sign Language is completely different from BSL; I think that arises from its origins not long after American independence when—I suppose understandably—Americans wanted more to do with the French than the British. That has shaped American Sign Language today.

We have heard about the 2022 Act, and I echo the tributes to our former colleague Rosie Cooper and to Chloe Smith, the then Minister. The Act is driving improved accessibility of Government communications and in this Government we are going to implement it in full. My hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock very reasonably asked why the BSL version of Tuesday’s Green Paper has not yet appeared. I can only apologise for that. The 12-week consultation clock will not start until all the accessible versions are published in early April, with a BSL version among them, so that BSL users will have a full 12 weeks to respond.

The BSL Act requires the Government to publish a British Sign Language report setting out each Department’s steps to promote and facilitate the use of BSL in public communications. The first, as the hon. Member for East Grinstead and Uckfield (Mims Davies) reminded us, was published in July 2023. The second was a bit delayed by the general election and appeared in December. I echo the commitment that she set out to annual publication in those first five years. As my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock said, BSL activity has more than doubled across Government since that first report, but there is still a long way to go, and I have noticed impatience in some quarters about the speed of progress.

The new Lead Ministers for Disability will have an important role here. We discussed the BSL Act and its reporting framework at our first meeting in December, and we did so again in our second meeting last week. We will keep progress under review, and of course I will have the opportunity to discuss there a number of the issues raised in this debate. We will also publish a BSL plan for each Government Department with the third BSL report, which we will be publishing in the summer.

In line with the commitment in our election manifesto, I work closely with disabled people and representative organisations to put their views and voices at the heart of all we do. Since July, I have met a wide range of deaf people’s organisations, along with other disability organisations. We have heard about the independent BSL Advisory Board, set up in the wake of the Act; it is co-chaired by Craig Crowley, chief executive of Action Deafness, who has done a fantastic job. The board has 15 members, mainly BSL users and all with lived and/or professional experience of the barriers facing deaf people.

I have been very impressed with the board’s work, drawing on the experience of its members and their knowledge of those barriers to develop priorities and a focus for its work, including setting up sub-groups on specific issues. For example, the health and social care sub-group is compiling recommendations based on deaf people’s experiences in the health service—we have heard about a number of those in this debate. I have also spoke to SignHealth, which has made the point to me that BSL users often struggle even to make a GP appointment and to communicate basic health information with the NHS. The report of that sub-group, with its recommendations, will appear later on this year.

Over the last year, the board has also discussed deaf access to sport with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. It presented at the British Deaf Association conference in Manchester, the theme of which was BSL in the early years, and I am grateful to the board co-chairs and other members for their commitment to improving the lives of deaf people and collaborating in order to do so.

I attended the education summit that the BSL Advisory Board organised at the Frank Barnes School for Deaf Children at King’s Cross last year. There were powerful contributions from senior leaders on the barriers that deaf children and their families face in education. That school is really interesting; it has a bilingual model of education and shares a playground with a hearing school, encouraging interaction between deaf and hearing children, contributing to the inclusion of everybody.

We want to enhance the status of BSL, and I agree with the points made in this debate that the GCSE will benefit BSL users generally, as well as those individual students who take it.

[Noah Law (St Austell and Newquay) (Lab)]

My constituent Sarah has been unable to afford a British Sign Language course for her son, which costs up to £400. I welcome the prospect of a GCSE in BSL, but that support is often unavailable where skills funding is not devolved. Can the Minister outline what steps he is taking to ensure that families in areas not yet devolved, such as Cornwall, can also affordably access BSL courses?

[Sir Stephen Timms]

The situation in Cornwall has also been raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Camborne and Redruth (Perran Moon). My understanding is that the adult skills fund will be devolved in Cornwall under the recent devolution agreement that has been reached. The fund will be devolved from the coming academic year 2025-26, so there is an opportunity for local decision making in the future. My hon. Friend the Member for Camborne and Redruth rightly made points about the way in which that funding has typically been used in the past, and the fact that the decision has certainly not always been made to provide courses along those lines. Following that devolution deal, there is at least the opportunity to do that.

I assure the House of our continuing commitment to the GCSE. Ofqual is now finalising the assessment arrangements for it, working closely with exam boards and BSL organisations to ensure that there is a fair and reliable assessment process. Ofqual met the BSL Advisory Board on 5 February to discuss that, and I think the board was generally reassured about the progress being made and the commitment to deliver. I am advised that the technical consultation that the hon. Member for Wokingham (Clive Jones) asked about will be launched in the next few weeks.