International Day of Persons with Disabilities
Warinder Juss Excerpts(4 weeks ago)
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Debbie Abrahams
The hon. Member—a fellow member of the Work and Pensions Committee—makes a good point. I am sorry that I was unable to attend that event myself, but I will certainly give that matter some consideration, and I hope that the Government will, too.
More than 16 million people in the UK have a disability—nearly one in four of us—and nearly half of all disabilities are acquired during a person’s lifetime. In recognition of that, in 2009 the UK not only became a signatory to the UN convention on the rights of persons with disabilities, which includes 40 articles ranging from education and work and employment to the right to life, but enshrined disability as a protected characteristic in the Equality Act 2010. We should be proud that we as a country have adopted that, but now it is about how we put it into practice, because we have unfortunately gone backwards in many ways.
Despite the important moves that the then Government had undertaken, the austerity brought in by the coalition Government in 2010, and amplified by the Conservative Government in 2015, not only restricted financial and other state support for disabled people—adding further challenges to their lives—but created a culture of fear, particularly for those reliant on social security support who were unable to work. All too often, disabled people were treated as workshy, with the shirker-scrounger narrative perpetuated in policy and practice and, unfortunately, also in our media.
Warinder Juss (Wolverhampton West) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate on International Day of Persons with Disabilities. Does she agree that a lot of the disabilities that we need to be aware of are hidden disabilities such as autism, depression and other mental conditions? We do not see those disabilities directly, but we need to be aware of them, and to deal with issues such as unconscious bias that we sometimes come across.
Debbie Abrahams
My hon. Friend makes such an important point—I absolutely agree. I talked about societal barriers and a social model of disability; we need to recognise that disabilities can also be hidden, so I thank my hon. Friend for pointing that out.
The reality is that most people, disabled or not, try to do the right thing, but as the Joseph Rowntree Foundation has shown, if you are a disabled adult or a disabled child, your family is more likely to be living in poverty or destitution. Things became so bad that in 2016, the then Conservative Government were investigated for having breached the UN CRPD. Following an investigation, the UK Government were found guilty in 2017 of systemic violations. As a UN committee spokeswoman declared,
“the committee can confirm that some violations were grave, some others were systematic, and some were both: grave and systematic.”
In particular, the investigating committee found that the rights of disabled people to an adequate standard of living and social protection, to work and employment, and to independent living had been breached.
Oral Answers to Questions
Warinder Juss Excerpts(1 month, 2 weeks ago)
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Sir Stephen Timms
The strategy will be very clear about how we will tackle the scourge of child poverty, and the hon. Lady is absolutely right to highlight the importance of doing that. Labour voted against the two-child limit, but we will not promise change until we know how we are going to pay for it. That will be addressed in the work of the taskforce, with the results published in the spring.
Warinder Juss (Wolverhampton West) (Lab)
Alistair Strathern (Hitchin) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Andrew Western)
No specific assessment has been made of the impact of the household support fund on low-income households in 2025-26, although we hear routinely from local authorities across the country about the impact of the fund in supporting those who are struggling. An evaluation of the fourth iteration of the scheme, running from April 2023 to March 2024, will be published shortly, exploring the benefits of the more than 19 million awards made during this period.
Warinder Juss
I agree that the payment of winter fuel allowance should be means-tested, because many pensioners who receive the winter fuel allowance simply do not need it. However, there are pensioners who are not entitled to pension credit who will struggle to heat their homes. Can the Minister please confirm the extent to which the household support fund will assist those pensioners in my Wolverhampton West constituency?
Andrew Western
The household support fund is intended to support a wide range of households in need, including pensioner households. There has been no ringfencing of funding for specific groups since October 2022, meaning that local authorities have the flexibility to support pensioners who are just above the pension credit threshold. In the 2023-24 financial year, 26% of household support funding went towards meeting energy costs.