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National Disability Strategy: PM’s ‘down payment on building back fairer’ is just 29.5p
The government’s new National Disability Strategy – which promises to bring about “practical and lasting change” – has promised just 29.5p in new funding for every disabled person in the UK.
Analysis by Disability News Service (DNS) has shown the government has pledged just £4.13 million of new funding in the strategy, despite claims by prime minister Boris Johnson that the document is the “down payment” on his promise to “build back better and fairer, for all our disabled people”.
Although ministers claimed last month that the commitments in the strategy were “supported by £1.6bn of funding”, more than a billion pounds of that was announced in last year’s spending review as part of a rise in spending on special educational needs, much of it allocated to supporting segregated schools.
The government has yet to explain where the other £500 million funding has been allocated, but it is not thought to be new money.
The few promises of new funding include up to £1 million to improve the accessibility of seaports on the Isle of Wight and the Isles of Scilly; £180,000 for an autism awareness campaign; £1.5 million to help the smallest bus companies provide audio-visual information on their services; an extra £450,000 for new Changing Places toilets across the transport network; and up to £1 million to develop a new Centre for Assistive and Accessible Technology.
But when divided among the 14.1 million disabled people the strategy says there are in the UK, this total of £4.13 million amounts to just 29.5p per person.
The lack of new funding will add to the impression that the strategy has been padded out with promises to carry out research, hold consultations and discussions on further action, and update or improve existing schemes (see separate story).
Mark Harrison, a member of the steering group of the Reclaiming Our Futures Alliance (ROFA), said the new funding of just 29.5p per disabled person was “an insult”.
He described the strategy as “smoke and mirrors”, and he added: “It puts all the responsibility on disabled people to overcome the barriers, rather than removing the barriers.
“It’s a list of announcements, it’s not a strategy.”
Fazilet Hadi, head of policy for Disability Rights UK and speaking on behalf of the new DPO Forum England, a network of many of the country’s leading organisations of disabled people, pointed out that even the small amount of new funding had been taken from existing budgets.
She said: “The £1.6 billion spend announced as part of the National Disability Strategy was money already allocated to departmental budgets from previous spending reviews.”
Tracey Lazard, chief executive of Inclusion London, said the apparent new funding of just £4.13 million showed that the “so called strategy is really nothing more than a cynical re-packaging of current polices and current budgets, all of which have failed to get our rights and equality back on track”.
The government’s Disability Unit passed questions on the strategy to the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).
A DWP spokesperson refused to answer any questions about the analysis, and instead referred DNS to a press release issued at the time of the strategy’s publication, which he said “outlines the Government position on the National Disability Strategy”.
He added: “We have no further comments to make at this stage.”
19 August 2021
National Disability Strategy: New analysis shows document is ‘just cynical repackaging’
New analysis of the government’s National Disability Strategy has exposed its lack of bold initiatives and new funding, and has revealed how ministers have padded it out with scores of consultations, reviews and vague pledges.
Many of the commitments included in the strategy, published last month, involve promises to carry out research, discussions on possible further action, or pledges to update or improve existing schemes.
The lack of clear, well-funded, wide-ranging action on disability equality comes despite ministers having nearly six years to produce the new strategy, since the last update on its previous attempt, Fulfilling Potential, which was quietly dropped.
The prime minister, Boris Johnson, promises in the new strategy that it will bring about “practical and lasting change” and help the government “build back better and fairer, for all our disabled people”.
He also claims that the strategy is “the most far-reaching endeavour in this area for a generation or more, not merely a set of worthy aspirations but a concrete plan for the future”.
But leading disabled campaigners this week instead described it as “all front and nothing behind it”, and “full of tweaks and not much substance”.
The government’s publicity around the strategy said it included “100 immediate commitments” and was supported by £1.6 billion of funding.
But in-depth analysis of the strategy document shows the plan has been padded out with scores of pledges to “discuss” or “consider” further action, to commission lengthy research, and to carry out reviews of existing policies.
It shows that most of the investment mentioned in the strategy (at least £1.1 billion and probably even more than that) was announced or allocated last year, with just £4.13 million in new funding described in the document (see separate story).
The government has yet to explain where the other £500 million funding has been allocated, but it is not thought to be new money.
The analysis shows only about 30 new commitments to take action to address the barriers disabled people face, and nearly all of them are limited in scope.
The new commitments include a long-overdue replacement for the Access to Elected Office fund; an accessibility audit of facilities at all 2,565 mainline railway stations in Britain; and a pledge by MI6 to aim for disabled people to make up nine per cent of its staff by 2025.
At least seven of the 30 commitments – such as promises to publish proposals on adult social care reform and to improve the delivery of accessible new homes by the end of this year – are so lacking in detail it is not possible to tell what impact they might have on disability equality.
In the entire strategy, there appears to be just one piece of new legislation promised by the government, a pledge to protect all disabled passengers of taxis and private hire vehicles from drivers who overcharge them or refuse to provide assistance.
Two other legislative measures – allowing British Sign Language-users to serve on juries, and addressing the discrimination faced by disabled voters – are already proceeding through parliament as minor parts of the government’s new police, crime, sentencing and courts bill, and its elections bill.
At least five of the 30 commitments were previously announced – including measures to force bus companies to provide audio-visual information on their services, and to provide tactile surfaces on railway platforms – in the months leading up to the strategy’s publication.
Much of the rest of the strategy has been padded out with commitments made months or even years ago – such as the ongoing review of the special educational needs system and the work being done by the Department for Work and Pensions to develop “a new approach to conditionality” for benefit claimants – or with pledges relating to existing schemes.
The strategy includes at least 13 promises to expand or improve long-established schemes, such as vague pledges to “update guidance” on inclusive mobility, to “go further” to support disabled civil servants, and to “improve supported internships”.
And there are at least 19 promises to “discuss”, “explore” or “consider” further action, including on opportunities for disabled people in the armed forces reserves, on how to make assistive technology part of everyday public services, and on improving high street access.
The commitments also include a string of government policies that offer possible benefits to disabled people as part of much wider mainstream schemes, such as plans to create a new north coast-to-coast national trail, to consult on flexible working, and to improve the public appointments system.
The strategy is also further padded out by as many as 27 promised reviews, pieces of research, and consultations, including a pledge to commission research into the design of bus stations and bus stops, a review of the effectiveness of the Access to Work awareness campaign, and research on barriers to apprenticeships.
Tracey Lazard, chief executive of Inclusion London, said: “Close inspection of the National Disability Strategy confirms what we already knew – that this so-called strategy is really nothing more than a cynical re-packaging of current polices and current budgets, all of which have failed to get our rights and equality back on track.
“The fact that there appears to be pledges of just £4.13 million in new funding (for a frankly random and non-strategic selection of activities) says it all.
“After 11 years of things getting worse not better for disabled people, we need and deserve a strategy that is genuinely strategic, with the power and resources to tackle the increasing poverty, segregation, discrimination and exclusion we face.
“We also need and deserve a government that is honest and transparent in its policymaking and committed to working with us.
“It’s an outrage that we seem to have neither.”
Fazilet Hadi, head of policy for Disability Rights UK and speaking on behalf of the new DPO Forum England, a network of many of the country’s leading disabled people’s organisations (DPOs), said: “The National Disability Strategy included no bold measures to tackle the appalling inequalities faced by disabled people of all ages.
“It was not aligned to the chancellor’s spending review nor plans for social care reform.
“Meaningful actions to increase benefit levels, support inclusive education, combat the disability employment gap, increase accessible housing, or reform social care were all missing.”
And she added: “The £1.6 billion spend announced as part of the National Disability Strategy was money already allocated to departmental budgets from previous spending reviews.”
Mark Harrison, a member of the steering group of the Reclaiming Our Futures Alliance, said the strategy was “the emperor’s new clothes” and “all front and nothing behind it”.
He said: “It’s certainly not a rights-based approach that is based on the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
“It puts all the responsibility on disabled people to overcome the barriers, rather than removing the barriers.
“When you boil it down, there’s nothing there, which is no surprise because they didn’t co-produce it or consult disabled people in any meaningful sense, and there’s no money in it for DPOs to self-organise and be part of the solution or hold the government to account.”
He highlighted research by Inclusion London, Shaping Our Lives and National Survivor User Network, which together has shown “the depth of crisis” facing DPOs.
He said: “In the face of all that evidence, to completely ignore DPOs is a disgrace.”
Kathy Bole, co-chair of both Chronic Illness Inclusion and Disability Labour, said she had been “disappointed but unsurprised” that the strategy appeared to be “full of tweaks and not much substance”.
She said: “The National Disability Strategy will not make the fundamental change that’s needed.
“Perhaps the future would have looked brighter if the government had engaged with service-users about what they wanted and needed.”
The Disability Unit passed questions about the DNS analysis onto the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).
A DWP spokesperson refused to answer any questions about the strategy, and instead referred DNS to the press release issued at the time of its publication, which he said “outlines the Government position on the National Disability Strategy”.
He added: “We have no further comments to make at this stage.”
19 August 2021
Silence of Labour’s deputy leader, 17 months after pledge to address party discrimination
Labour’s deputy leader has failed to explain what has happened to the promise she made 17 months ago that she would address the discrimination faced by disabled people in her party.
Angela Rayner pledged to tackle the many barriers disabled party members faced, as part of her successful campaign to secure the deputy leadership.
But 17 months on from her election, that promise does not appear to have been fulfilled.
Disability News Service (DNS) has been reporting for several years on concerns raised by disabled Labour members about the barriers created by the party’s structures, policies and actions.
At the party’s last annual conference before the pandemic, in 2019, senior Labour figures were accused of discrimination and “oppression”, while the previous year a survey of disabled party activists revealed three-quarters of those questioned believed there was disability discrimination at all levels of the party.
DNS has been trying for 10 days to find out what action Rayner has taken to address these issues since being elected deputy leader.
But despite Labour’s press office twice insisting it would contact Rayner’s team about the questions, there has been no response from her office by noon today (Thursday).
Rayner said during her campaign last year: “The party needs to do more to ensure people have access to the resources they need to fully engage in party meetings and structures.”
And she called for “hard targets” on how many disabled people achieve positions within the party.
She also called for disabled party members to tell her how the party could ensure full inclusion, and subsequently wrote a report on her vision for making Labour more accessible to disabled people.
An online link to that report is now broken, with the error message reading: “The site you were looking for couldn’t be found.”
But DNS has seen a draft version of Rayner’s report, written in late March 2020, and which includes more than 20 actions that the party should carry out so it could become “the most accessible it has ever been”.
These included ending the practice of holding constituency Labour party (CLP) meetings in inaccessible venues; providing training for CLP chairs on how to deal with discrimination; all CLP disability officers to themselves be disabled people; the appointment of a national disability officer with an allocated budget; and the party to provide resources to help disabled members with the disability-related costs of standing for election.
DNS understands that few if any of the actions she called for in her final report have been implemented.
And Rayner, who learned British Sign Language as a trade union representative so she could support deaf colleagues, was a young carer for her disabled mum, and has two disabled sons, does not appear to have spoken publicly about how the party will fulfil these actions since she became deputy leader.
Kerena Marchant, who supported Rayner’s deputy leadership campaign and has spoken of the barriers she has faced within the party as a Deaf user of British Sign Language (BSL), said there was “no excuse” for the lack of action since Rayner was elected.
But she put most of the blame on the party rather than Rayner, and said the turmoil with Labour’s finances, which will reportedly lead to nearly a quarter of its staff being made redundant, was likely to have played a part in the lack of action.
She said: “Disabled people are still on the margins of the party and are excluded from participation in CLPs and elections.
“With staff redundancies I can’t see the party getting a disability officer.
“I know disabled people who didn’t stand in local elections in May because of a lack of access.
“The party has a lot of internal issues at the moment and disabled people are clearly not a priority.”
Marchant added: “The fact that CLPs have disability officers who aren’t disabled is an appalling practice that Angela wanted to end.
“BAME officers are BAME, women’s officers women. Some CLPs don’t even have disability officers.
“Sometimes it feels we aren’t even accepted as a minority group in the party.”
DNS approached Labour with questions for Rayner after the government finally published two long-awaited reports on the barriers faced by disabled politicians in England and Wales.
One of those reports found that political parties and institutions such as local councils have repeatedly broken equality laws by failing to make reasonable adjustments for disabled politicians.
19 August 2021
Worldwide ‘WeThe15’ campaign ‘will be led and controlled by disabled people’
A major international disability rights campaign, launched today ahead of the Tokyo Paralympics, will be run and controlled by disabled people, the two international organisations spearheading the programme have promised.
WeThe15* is backed by a coalition of 20 international organisations from the worlds of sport, human rights, policy, business, arts and entertainment.
It is headed by the International Disability Alliance (IDA) – which itself is run and controlled by disabled people and disabled people’s organisations (DPOs) – and the International Paralympic Committee (IPC).
The aim is to “intensify political will to support and strengthen” the implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) over the next decade.
This means the UK government itself is likely to come under pressure, particularly as IDA hopes to push for greater involvement of DPOs in policy design, an issue in which ministers have faced significant criticism and are facing legal action in the high court.
The campaign will prioritise different topics through its 10 years, beginning with access to COVID-19 vaccinations for disabled people and then – probably – access to assistive devices.
The campaign brings together IPC, IDA, sports organisations such as the Deaf-led International Committee of Sports for the Deaf and the Invictus Games Foundation, and other international organisations including the European Commission and UN Human Rights, and leading businesses.
Despite the presence of multiple mainstream organisations and businesses as campaign partners, Disability News Service (DNS) has been assured by both IDA and IPC that WeThe15 will be a campaign led and controlled by disabled people.
An IDA spokesperson said: “Persons with disabilities representing IDA, the IPC, and those working at many partner organisations were involved at every stage of the development of the campaign, and will continue to lead Wethe15 in the implementation phase of the campaign.
“It is by nature a campaign for persons with disabilities by persons with disabilities.”
IDA said it was “very excited” about the “unique opportunity” to influence a world audience before the launch of the Paralympics.
An IDA spokesperson said it was “very confident” that WeThe15 would “lead to real change” for disabled people worldwide.
She said: “The full and effective implementation of the rights of persons with disabilities, as articulated in the CRPD, ensuring equality for persons with disabilities, requires continuous monitoring and vigilance.
“In recent years, we have seen setbacks and regression in many parts of the world, including during the COVID pandemic.
“It is essential that public awareness and political commitment to the full realisation of the rights of persons with disabilities be significantly strengthened.”
An IPC spokesperson underlined the commitment to ensuring the campaign is led and controlled by disabled people, and he told DNS that this would be built into its governance structure.
Ana Lucia Arellano, IDA’s chair, said: “Over the past 20 years, a lot has been achieved regarding the inclusion of persons with disabilities.
“We successfully advocated for the adoption of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, as well as to be included in the Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development.
“Looking into the future, we recognise that there is still a lot to be done if we want to achieve the full inclusion of more than a billion persons we represent.
“We need new creative and innovative approaches, and we need much broader coalition to achieve that.
“WeThe15 has a unique opportunity and responsibility to achieve exactly that – to be a platform where more and new actors will come together making the ‘Nothing about us without us’ a real change for all persons with disabilities.”
Michelle Bachelet, the UN high commissioner for human rights, said: “WeThe15 is bringing together a unique group of partners – disability-specific sports organisations, the disability rights movement, people from the private sector, researchers and the United Nations – to work together to change the narrative on disability, and to make human rights-based development a reality for persons with disabilities.
“We plan to build on the multiple Paralympic Games in Beijing, Paris, Milan and Los Angeles, particularly in the local communities, to make it clear that upholding and advancing the human rights of persons with disabilities is relevant, doable and necessary – for everyone’s benefit.”
To mark the launch, more than 125 landmarks around the world will be lit up purple this evening (Thursday), including New York’s Empire State Building, Tokyo Skytree, Rome’s Colosseum, the London Eye, and Niagara Falls between Canada and the USA.
A 90-second campaign film will be played during the Tokyo Paralympic Games opening ceremony on Tuesday (24 August) and will be aired across “multiple digital channels”, as well as on television channels in 60 countries, with the aim of reaching at least half a billion people by the end of September.
The IPC’s decision to launch the campaign marks a significant change in its approach to disability rights.
Its previous chair, Sir Philip Craven, even suggested that future hosts of the Olympic and Paralympic Games should not be judged on their countries’ human rights standards.
In 2012, before the London 2012 Paralympic Games, he described Atos – the company that had drawn heavy criticism over the “fitness for work” tests it conducted on behalf of the government – as a “top sponsor” of the IPC.
The previous year, the wheelchair-user and retired Paralympian had said that he objected to the use of the word “disabled” to describe someone, and that he would “definitely not” describe himself as a disabled person.
*They point to figures that show disabled people make up 15 per cent of the world’s population
19 August 2021
BBC deletes controversial ‘faking it’ social media post
The BBC has deleted a social media post that caused widespread anger among disabled campaigners for suggesting that some people with chronic illness were “faking” their health conditions on social media for “fame and money”.
The tweet linked to a documentary, Sickness and Lies, which claimed to explore “accusations of fakery” that have been directed at some disabled people with high profiles on social media.
The documentary, and the way it was promoted by BBC News on social media, were described as “wildly irresponsible”, with the BBC accused of spreading “harmful rhetoric”.
Now a BBC News tweet that asked if some “chronic illness influencers” were “faking it on social media for fame and money” has been removed by the BBC, although a link to the documentary remains, and the programme itself remains available to watch online.
A spokesperson for BBC News and Current Affairs told Disability News Service: “The original tweet does not reflect the full context of the programme and was removed.”
He said the BBC retained the link in the tweet because this followed its Twitter correction policy.
But he refused to say if the BBC had taken any further action, apart from removing the tweet, in response to the anger shown by disabled people about the documentary.
He also said the BBC did not comment on whether complaints have been made about programmes, other than through a fortnightly bulletin listing those programmes that have been subjected to more than 100 complaints.
The latest bulletin had not been published by 11am today (Thursday).
Last week, disabled writer Karl Knights said he believed the programme was “wildly irresponsible” and “downright dangerous” and “contributes to a culture where disabled people are constantly interrogated, always under suspicion”.
Catherine Hale, director of the disabled people’s organisation Chronic Illness Inclusion, said last week that the programme had been “edited, framed and trailed to perpetuate populist preoccupations with illness and disability faking, not to challenge it”.
Meanwhile, more than 3,000 people have signed a petition calling on the BBC to remove the documentary from its website.
19 August 2021
News provided by John Pring at www.disabilitynewsservice.com
