Disability History Month

Olly Glover Excerpts

Thursday 12th December 2024 Westminster Hall

[Olly Glover (Didcot and Wantage) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Mark.

I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Thurrock (Jen Craft) for securing the debate. Her speech covered a lot of ground, and she paid warm tribute to campaigners in her constituency and beyond. She told the story, with great eloquence, of the journey that is still in progress on disability rights. I remember her speaking with passion about the subject in her maiden speech, too.

The hon. Lady also spoke of the need to promote equality of access, and cited examples of how positive change in the workplace can be achieved through the right supportive schemes. She and other Members also mentioned the importance of the links with education and transport, reminding us that this issue cuts across all aspects of government and society. She was right to call on the Government to focus on support and positive action rather than sanctions and punishment.

The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) talked about the importance of supporting and encouraging people into work and gave the Northern Ireland context. He rightly reminded us that not all disabilities are visible. The hon. Member for West Bromwich (Sarah Coombes) spoke of the importance of support for carers and of high-quality transport to enable people to access society equally.

The hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Alison Griffiths) was right to cite the then Conservative Government’s contribution in the Disability Discrimination Act 1995. Hopefully we can all work together across the House to continue to reduce, and ultimately end, discrimination against disabled people, including in the workplace.

We must do far more to tackle barriers to work, including by providing more support for employers to change the way they view disability. In the Liberal Democrats’ manifesto, we committed to make the benefits system work better for disabled people by giving them, and organisations that represent them, a stronger voice in the design of benefit policies and processes. We would like work capability assessments to be brought in-house and personal independence payment assessments to be reformed to make the process more transparent and stop unnecessary reassessments and the use of informal assessments. We would also like to empower more people to enter the job market, including parents, carers and disabled people themselves, by making more use of technology and new ways of working.

We welcome the Government’s long-term ambition to achieve an 80% employment rate, and a number of measures in their “Get Britain Working” White Paper published last month. Under the Conservative Government, the UK was the only economy to see its employment rate fall over the past five years, and they undermined apprenticeships, left mental health services not fit for purpose and ran our NHS into the ground.

We welcome the Government’s proposed steps to improve access to skills, training and education and to reduce shockingly high mental health care waiting lists. However, we call on them to go further. We would like to see regular mental health check-ups made available and new mental health hubs in all communities. We would like to see more done on providing better flexible working, given that 52% of carers who apply for it have their application refused. The Government should guarantee that apprentices are paid at least the national minimum wage by scrapping the lower apprentice rate. I also note that disability charities such as Disability Rights UK have some concern about the balance between positive, supportive measures, and potential sanctions and punishment, in forthcoming legislation.

We have heard from many hon. Members about the importance of local charities and about particular constituency circumstances. More than 12,000 households in my Oxfordshire constituency of Didcot and Wantage include at least one disabled person, which represents nearly 28% of all households in the constituency. Thankfully, local authorities and charities work together to help provide assistance. Oxfordshire county council runs a community support service—hosted in the towns of Wantage and Wallingford—with activities and services to help people stay healthy, independent and engaged. As the years have moved on, the service in Wantage has adapted to meet the changing social care needs of the area. Wantage market garden was created in the green space behind the service and is now looked after by the community action group Sustainable Wantage, in partnership with care provider Style Acre and the county council. Services like these are vital for the inclusion and support of disabled people.

We know that on average, disabled people take far fewer trips per year than non-disabled people, which is why, in addition to improving bus and rail services, community transport services such as Vale Community Impact, Cholsey Volunteers, Didcot Volunteer Drivers and Wallingford Volunteer Drivers, are such an important lifeline. I am proud that Oxfordshire county council has awarded over £100,000 of grants to those organisations. Most railway stations in my constituency have seen accessibility improvements in recent times, but Cholsey is the busiest that currently lacks them. I call on Network Rail, Great Western Railway and the Government to support an accessibility scheme at that station.

We have heard from the hon. Members for Derby North (Catherine Atkinson) and for Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket (Peter Prinsley) about the importance of helping and supporting people with hearing loss. At the risk of oversharing, I am also afflicted by occasional earwax problems, so can certainly recognise that point. Perhaps I shall turn to the hon. Member for Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket for advice on how to deal with that vexing problem.

In conclusion, we must do more to support those with additional needs. I hear regularly from my constituents that accessing the support they need through personal independence applications is challenging to say the least. We must support employers to make reasonable adjustments for employees through schemes like Access to Work and, as the hon. Member for Strangford said, support children with special educational needs so that they can thrive in their education. We must also provide more funding for CAMHS, the child and adolescent mental health services. I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say.