Covronavirus, Disability and Access to Services

Tulip Siddiq Excerpts

Thursday 15th April 2021 Westminster Hall

[Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab) [V]]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Graham. I thank the Women and Equalities Committee for its work on the report, which shines a light on issues that, sadly, have been too often overlooked throughout the pandemic. Before I get to the main points raised with me in the last year by my disabled constituents, I will echo the Committee’s findings about systemic issues in the SEND system and the way in which covid-19, and in my view the Government’s inadequate response to it, has exacerbated them.

The report correctly concludes that there must be targeted support for pupils with SEND to recover, and fundamental reform of the broken SEND system. I share the Committee’s hope that the Government’s SEND review will bring forth a blueprint for reform at the earliest opportunity. I feel that disabled people, much like children, have been an afterthought for the Government in the pandemic even though they have been disproportionally affected by the virus in health and social terms. We have seen that particularly in engagement and communications this past year, which the report rightly focuses on as a key issue facing disabled people.

Straight after the very first coronavirus press conference on 16 March 2020, I wrote to the Prime Minister requesting a British Sign Language interpreter. We eventually got one for the BBC coverage, but, despite the hefty £2.6 million price tag for the flash new press suite at Downing Street, no one thought to make provision for a BSL interpreter, as the right hon. Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes) said. Similarly, at the start of the crisis, it took weeks for written Government communications to be available in accessible formats or large fonts. As evidence gathered by the Committee shows, many deaf people and people with learning disabilities were not properly informed about what was happening around them or about the latest public health advice as Britain was plunged into lockdown. Lessons should have been learned from those early failures, but I am afraid that recent failures to provide BSL interpretation for Government communications indicate that they were not.

Face masks are another issue for deaf people and the hard of hearing. They are of course essential to protecting us against coronavirus, but they can be profoundly isolating for those who rely on lip-reading and facial expressions to communicate. In Parliament last year I raised several times the importance of rolling out clear face masks—those with a transparent strip over the mouth. Like the Committee, I was pleased to see procurement of clear face masks for NHS trusts towards the end of last year, and I echo the Committee’s call for a proper evaluation of the roll-out and an assessment of need across services. However, I remain concerned that the Department for Education’s guidance continues to state that there is

“currently very limited evidence regarding the effectiveness or safety of transparent face coverings”

given that they have been rolled out in health and care settings. I urge Ministers to take another look at that guidance to avoid teachers being unnecessarily put off using clear face masks and impeding the education of children with hearing loss.

I want to focus briefly on “do not attempt resuscitation” notices being issued without consent, which in the last year has, perhaps more than anything else, sowed mistrust among the disabled community and made many feel their lives were valued less than others’. During the first wave of coronavirus, some people with learning disabilities were told, shockingly, without prior consultation, that they would not be resuscitated if they were to fall ill from covid-19. The Care Quality Commission found that, since March 2020, more than 500 DNAR decisions were made without being agreed with the individual or their family beforehand and, in some cases, such decisions caused potentially avoidable deaths.

Given the outcry when that first happened, I was appalled to hear reports from Mencap that the same practice was happening again at the start of this year. As one constituent, who has been a care home operator and seen this issue affect elderly people in hospitals, wrote to me,

“imagine the horror and terrible stress now imposed on parents or relatives to think that their child or adult will not be given the absolute best care and may be abandoned by the NHS in their hour of most need”.

The truth is it that this is unimaginable, and it is something that we have fought to address.

I urge Ministers to heed the advice of the CQC by making urgent and wide-ranging improvements to care planning, including better training and information storage, and creating better oversight structures. What struck me most when reading this report is that there seems to be no one at the highest levels of Government actively thinking about the impact of policies and communications on disabled people. This failure to consider the needs of disabled people has to change, and I hope that this report and this debate can be part of that push to ensure that disabled people are properly represented and accounted for in policy making and Government decision taking, especially at moments of crisis.