British Sign Language

Vicky Foxcroft Excerpts

Tuesday 17th October 2023 Westminster Hall

[Vicky Foxcroft (Lewisham, Deptford) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms McVey. I am grateful for the opportunity to respond on behalf of the shadow Work and Pensions team, and I congratulate the right hon. Member for Norwich North (Chloe Smith) on securing the debate. We were opposite numbers for a time. I remember her enthusiastic support for the British Sign Language Act 2022 when it was progressing through Parliament, and she worked closely with our colleague at the time, Rosie Cooper. On the day the Bill received its Third Reading, I remember the right hon. Member for Norwich North saying:

“Today is a momentous day and I truly hope it will transform the lives of”

deaf-disabled

“people across the country.”

It has therefore been very telling to hear some of her concerns this afternoon. I genuinely hope that the Minister will work with her and others to ensure that the Act delivers what was hoped for on that day. It is interesting to find myself sharing common ground with her for once. I hope that the Minister will respond in detail to the many excellent points that have been raised. I am certainly glad that we have BSL interpretation today; that should happen a lot more across Parliament.

Like others before me, I will take a moment to pay tribute to the countless disabled people, friends, families, advocates, disabled people’s organisations and charities who campaigned for the Act. I had the absolute pleasure of meeting some of them along the way. As we have heard, the BSL Act was a major milestone for disabled-deaf people in the UK, not least because it led to BSL finally being recognised as a language. However, as has been said, progress on implementation of other parts of the Act has been a little disappointing.

The 2022 British Sign Language report recorded shockingly low figures for the amount of BSL communications being produced by Government Departments. That has important implications for co-production—something I am keen for Labour to deliver on if it wins the next general election. That word is thrown around quite frequently, but it is not always fully understood. Co-production means more than just engaging with or consulting the community we are working with, which in this case is the disabled-deaf and disabled communities. Proper co-production involves everyone working together on an equal basis right from the start, and coming to a decision or creating a service that works for all. One of the most basic steps on the path to successful co-production is ensuring that all communications are accessible.

The Minister often assures me that he and his civil servants are consulting or working with disabled people on policy. The 2022 BSL report shows that the Department for Work and Pensions and the Cabinet Office were the only Departments to make public announcements about policy or changes to the law in BSL. What is his response to the Royal National Institute for Deaf People’s observation that the Treasury, for example, produced no BSL publications about the cost of living crisis, leaving BSL users in the dark about what support is available to them? No. 10 is not required to report on its provision of BSL—something that I know the RNID and others would like changed.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood), chair of the all-party parliamentary group on deafness, said, all Government communications must be in BSL, and recognition of the issue alone is not enough. We succeed only if everyone has equal access. That is why we need No. 10 to report on BSL provision; we have to lead from the top. Many hon. Members will remember the “Where is the Interpreter?” campaign, which did an excellent job of highlighting that BSL users were excluded from the daily covid-19 briefings.

The third part of the Act offers the Government an important opportunity to create guidance on reasonable adjustments under the Equality Act 2010 for BSL users. It places a duty on the Secretary of State to issue guidance on the promotion and facilitation of BSL. As hon. Members will know and others have highlighted, the Equality Act obliges public authorities to make reasonable adjustments to remove the barriers that disabled people face in accessing their services. However, there is a lack of precedent on what constitutes a reasonable adjustment for a BSL user in that context. I would appreciate an update from the Minister on that, as I know BSL users are concerned that their adjustments are often seen as too expensive. As many Members have said, including the hon. Members for Strangford (Jim Shannon), and for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich (Dr Poulter), we have to make progress with a BSL GCSE.

I want to touch briefly on the lack of available data on BSL users. I have found that to be a significant issue across the Department for Work and Pensions, not just in relation to the issues that we are discussing. Without meaningful data on the number of people who use BSL, and the barriers that they face, it is incredibly difficult to identify their access needs accurately. At present, Government data includes them in other groups, such as those who are hearing impaired and those with difficulty hearing. That means there is no way to focus specifically on BSL users as a stand-alone group. The Government have committed to reforming and standardising the data that they capture on disability in both the national disability strategy and the draft disability action plan. Will the Minister tell us whether those documents will include BSL users as a stand-alone group? I end by saying that the Act was an important first step, but as this debate has shown, there is still a lot more work to do.

[The Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work (Tom Pursglove)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms McVey. I start by thanking my right hon. Friend the Member for Norwich North (Chloe Smith) for securing this debate; for her ongoing passion and leadership on this issue; and for her determination to deliver this landmark legislation, working with Rosie Cooper. She takes a close interest in the Government’s performance on this issue, and in wider issues affecting the deaf community. She wants us to take further steps to ensure that BSL is used more widely in society, and that more people can communicate through it.

Interestingly, one of the key assurances that my right hon. Friend gave during the passage of the legislation was to the hon. Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood), Chair of the APPG. She assured her, in Committee, that the Government would be open to scrutiny of the BSL Act, and that the first BSL report would be published on 31 July this year. That has happened, and today’s debate flows from that. I was heartened to hear that BSL will be a subject of interest to my right hon. Friend beyond her time in the House, and is something that she will campaign on passionately. Her advocacy on this issue, and that of Members from across the House—not just those who are here—is something of which Parliament can be proud. All of us, cross party, want to do our best to ensure accessible communication for everybody in society. It is to the Government’s credit that they got behind the Bill, and worked intensively with Rosie Cooper and the coalition, as was touched on, to shape and craft the legislation and ensure that we got it right.

The British Sign Language Act 2022 was the first private Member’s Bill drawn 20th in the ballot to become law in more than 20 years; that was a bit of parliamentary trivia for everybody this afternoon. That is not an insignificant achievement. It speaks to the cross-party support for the Act. Everybody came together from across the House to support that legislation, here as well as in the other place.

Many good, pertinent questions were raised in the debate, and I want to touch on them. As I say, the British Sign Language Act 2022 was warmly welcomed by the deaf community, and particularly by the BSL Act Now! campaign. Its members worked so hard, and in such a determined way, to put the issue firmly on the agenda. Arguably, that passion was reflected at BSL Fest in Guildford at the weekend. I was delighted to hear that my hon. Friend the Member for Guildford (Angela Richardson) was in attendance, was part of the celebrations and part of that important community in her area. We see those celebrations reflected in community initiatives up and down the country, which is heartening. They give ever greater prominence to the issue. All of us parliamentarians, and those of us in government, should place real emphasis on working in partnership with communities, charities and representative bodies to continue to evolve our work on this issue, and make sure that we live up to the ambition out there in our society for BSL.

It is a privilege to report today on the progress that we are making on the BSL Act, and to discuss the findings of the first BSL report, but candidly, there is more to do. The first BSL report is an important baseline to help us understand how the Government communicate vital information to a group of people with specific, distinct communication needs, and to encourage us to go further.

There are a couple of points that I want to touch on early in my remarks. One is the judicial review of BSL interpretation of the covid briefings during the pandemic. The judicial review found that the Government were meeting their obligations under the Equality Act 2010 with regard to BSL interpretation during the covid 19 briefings, and were compliant with the public sector equality duty. The court ruled that our policy of using on-screen British Sign Language interpreters during the pandemic was lawful. The judge ruled that it is not a legal requirement to provide an in-person BSL interpreter. There had been over 175 covid briefings by the date of the judgment, and in only two instances were they found to be unlawful because BSL was not provided on screen. Our priority has always been to reach the largest possible audience with important public information, and we will continue to ensure that BSL interpretation is made available where appropriate.

On No. 10, the BSL Act places a duty on the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions to collate and publish a report on BSL use in the ministerial Departments listed in the schedule to the Act. The intention behind the five-year plans mentioned in the BSL report is to build on the work already being done across the Departments that are placed under that reporting duty. No. 10 and the parliamentary estate are not ministerial Departments, and there is no statutory requirement on them to report on their use of BSL. However, guidance was recently published by the Government Communication Service that covers all of Government. I am assured that it will help communicators across Government to determine what public information should be produced in BSL, so that we meet the obligations set out in the public sector equality duty and the Equality Act 2010. I am very happy to explore that area further.

As for the parliamentary estate, I would be delighted to work cross-party with colleagues on engaging with the House authorities to see what they might be able to do. It is welcome that there is BSL interpretation of our proceedings this afternoon, but we should always strive to go further. I am very willing to engage constructively with others to achieve that.

[Vicky Foxcroft]

I welcome that offer, and will most certainly take the Minister up on it. As shadow Minister for Disabled People, I have struggled with the question of where funding for BSL interpretation should come from, including as regards the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority. The Minister is absolutely right: we should be leading on this issue. On No. 10 and interpreters at covid briefings, we should always strive to do better, and I do not think we did well enough at the time. We should keep the ambition to continually do better, instead of saying, “We weren’t done by the courts, apart from in two areas.”

[Tom Pursglove]

On the first part of the hon. Lady’s intervention, I am delighted to work with her to try to take that forward. At the start of my remarks, I said consistently that I recognise that we have further to travel, and I am certainly not complacent when it comes to performance across the whole of Government. As has been touched on, some of the performance around my Department—the Department for Work and Pensions —is at the top of the charts, which shows the emphasis that my ministerial colleagues in the Department and I place on this issue. I am trying to lead by example by ensuring that I demonstrate a real commitment and willingness to set a standard that I want Ministers and Departments across the board to follow. It is in that spirit that we move forward with this work.

To delve further into the issue of communications across Government, I could not be clearer that people who use BSL as their native language should be able to access the same information as native English speakers, whether that information is about their rights and responsibilities, their ability to access support or the opportunity to have their say on Government policy development by participating in a consultation. In the last year alone, the Government have ensured that BSL communications have been available for deaf BSL users across diverse subjects: providing timely updates about cost of living payments, sharing important information about the Home Office’s tackling domestic abuse plan and ensuring that BSL users could join in the celebrations for the coronation of our new King.

Individual Departments have focused their BSL communications on areas of greatest importance to deaf BSL users: the Department for Education published its “Special Educational Needs and Disabilities and Alternative Provision Improvement Plan” with BSL interpretation, the Ministry of Justice published advice in BSL for victims of rape and sexual assault, and the Department for Transport included BSL interpretation in its “it’s everyone’s journey” campaign.

I want to provide updates on two specific areas that have been raised in relation to cross-Government work and different parts of Government communicating those messages. The first is around the use of BSL in health services. The Department of Health and Social Care is committed to supporting the use of BSL and has used it in communications, such as to support the Down Syndrome Act 2022 call for evidence. The Department continues to look for further ways to promote the requirements of the BSL Act, including by sharing lessons learned from the production of the DSA call for evidence BSL videos with a view to improving BSL usage, monitoring and reporting across the Department.

Under the Equality Act 2010, health and social care organisations must make reasonable adjustments to ensure that disabled people are not disadvantaged when it comes to interpreters for GP and medical appointments. NHS organisations and publicly funded social care providers must comply with the accessible information standard to meet the communication needs of patients and carers with a disability, an impairment or sensory loss. NHS England has completed the review of the AIS, and the updates are now in the publication approval process.

Following Royal Assent for the British Sign Language Act and the legal recognition of British Sign Language as a language of England, Wales and Scotland, the Government Communication Service will promote and facilitate the use of British Sign Language in communication with the public where appropriate. Colleagues in the Department of Health and Social Care keep those matters under review. Again, I want Departments to set a standard that we then ask our public services, communities and society as a whole to follow.

The other area that I want to provide a brief update on is the BSL GCSE, for which there is huge appetite in this House and beyond. The public consultation on it has now closed. The Government are analysing the results of the consultation and working up the course content, and we will publish that as soon as we can. I recognise that there is a real demand for that BSL qualification, not least because of all the opportunities it will provide. Educating the next generation to have such skills at an early stage will have knock-on benefits: more people in our society will communicate with BSL and then, we hope, go on to have successful careers, promote the language, encourage others to adopt those skills, and participate in our communities and society in that way. I know that we all want to see that, and that is welcome.

The variety of case studies in the first BSL report show pockets of good practice across the Departments named in the schedule to the BSL Act. Around half of policy Departments produced communications in BSL during the reporting period. But we know that we can go further, and produce more and better BSL content. It is important to note that different Departments will communicate with the public, whether in BSL or otherwise, in different ways, because of the fact that they have different responsibilities, different remits, different areas of interest and different communications, related to their specific areas of Government.

The Departments listed in the schedule to the BSL Act range from large operational Departments—like my own, the Department for Work and Pensions, which produces a large number of public communications every year—to much smaller Departments and offices that may not have had occasion to produce many public communications during the reporting period. Not all Departments are the same—one size does not fit all—but we know that there is room to improve and we have committed to doing so. With that in mind, there are four specific commitments that are recognised within the need to improve, which I will describe, because the Secretary of State has been clear about our determination to take greater action to drive forward progress, with four separate commitments to help us make progress.

First, although the BSL Act only requires for a BSL report to be published once every three years, I am pleased to confirm that the Secretary of State has made a commitment to publish a BSL report every year for at least the next five years. Again, that goes to the very point about transparency, and arguably is a tool to aid our conversations within Government around individual departmental performance, allowing us to continue to drive improvement, highlight successes, learn from the case studies in the first BSL report and remain accountable to the deaf community.

Secondly, we are committed to discussing the findings of the report at the next meeting of the ministerial disability champions, who are Ministers appointed by the Prime Minister to provide a personal lead in championing accessibility and opportunity for disabled people within their Departments. We have already done that, and the ministerial disability champions will work with their Departments to increase the use of BSL in their communications. The ministerial disability champions are specifically appointed to lead the inclusion agenda within their Departments, but I want to explore what more we can do to drive greater accountability and ownership of those actions, making sure that this inclusion agenda is right at the forefront of our thinking—and that we are doing these things up front, rather than their happening as an afterthought—when it comes to policy development, legislative change or any other announcements that we might make.