Labour conference: Party chief pledges to put an end to disability discrimination
Labour’s general secretary has promised that he will put an end to the years of discrimination experienced by disabled party members.
David Evans, the party’s general secretary since last year, told a Disability Labour fringe meeting that he would personally ensure that the party dealt with the issues, which have been raised repeatedly by disabled members.
His comments came amid amounting anger at Labour’s continuing failure to act on discrimination within the party, despite promises by deputy leader Angela Rayner during her campaign to secure the post 18 months ago.
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, both nationally and locally.
Labour’s shadow minister for disabled people, Vicky Foxcroft, said this week that she plans to meet soon with Rayner and Anneliese Dodds, the party’s chair, to discuss concerns reported by DNS about discrimination and disablism within the party.
These concerns were heightened by Labour’s decision to hold its annual conference in Brighton this week, despite previously promising Disability Labour that its next five annual conferences would be held in Liverpool, which is seen as far more accessible.
As with previous Brighton conferences, this week has seen multiple complaints about access, including from Disability Labour members who arrived for their first fringe meeting – on the subject of ableism – to find a stage with no access for wheelchair-users.
One disabled party member later told the conference how she had been complaining about light sensitivity issues at party conferences for years, and this week was recovering from seizures in a room in the main conference venue when a party official warned her that a photographer would soon be taking pictures using a flash.
But rather than the photographer being asked to turn off their flash as a reasonable adjustment, she was asked to leave the room.
There was frustration among disabled members at Rayner’s failure to follow through on her pledge to act on disability discrimination within the party.
Emily Pomroy-Smith, a Disability Labour member who stood as the party’s candidate in South West Wiltshire at the 2019 general election, told DNS: “It’s very disappointing when anyone, no matter their role, makes a promise and doesn’t deliver.
“It’s now about putting words into action.”
She said that Brighton had “not been fun” as a delegate who is a wheelchair-user, not only because of physical barriers but also because of the lack of information about access to venues.
She said: “There are barriers everywhere here.”
Kathy Bole, chair of Disability Labour, told the fringe meeting on ableism that many disabled delegates were eating meals in their hotel rooms because they were unable to access restaurants in Brighton.
She said: “We would like all of you to go back to your constituency Labour parties (CLPs) and say, ‘Never again in Brighton.’
“It is a nightmare, and it can never be made accessible.”
Jonathan Farr, treasurer of Disability Labour, told the meeting: “We have an ableist society and the Labour party is ableist.
“If we want as a society, let alone a party, to get the best out of everybody, we need to make sure that we are inclusive.
“The party is still not getting the whole issue of ableism and we need to shout.
“We need to shout within our CLPs, we need to shout at every opportunity, because if we don’t, we won’t be heard.”
One new chair of a CLP told the meeting about long-standing issues over discrimination, particularly over a lengthy battle to persuade the local party to have an accessible toilet installed in the Labour MP’s offices.
Disabled party members had been told it could not be done because “it was a choice between the disabled access bathroom and not having enough resources to campaign for our MP’s re-election, and things like that”.
Farr told DNS later that the promise Evans had made was good news, but only “if he can actually deliver on his promise”.
Bole added: “It’s a big job. I don’t want him to talk the talk, I want him to walk the walk.”
Foxcroft, who attended both Disability Labour fringe meetings, said Evans “knows we need to do better” and would work with Disability Labour, Ellen Morrison – the party’s disabled members’ representative on its national executive committee (NEC) – and others to ensure that happens.
She said: “We know things weren’t perfect at conference this year and we will work with Disability Labour, our NEC rep for disabled people and others to ensure this is rectified in the future.”
She said she would be meeting with Rayner and Dodds “to talk about some of the concerns raised by Disability News Service”.
She added: “The Labour party is the party disabled people should know and trust will deliver for them.”
Bole told DNS that she had later lost her temper with Evans – following his pledge to the fringe meeting – after a distressed delegate with a mobility impairment described how she had been forced to walk all the way around the outside of The Brighton Centre, the main conference venue, because of a mid-conference change in policy that meant delegates were no longer allowed to enter through the back entrance.
Bole said: “She was obviously struggling [but] they flat out refused. She then had to hobble around the outside of the building and come in the front entrance.”
Bole is now writing a report on this week’s access failures to send to Evans.
Among the many other concerns passed to Disability Labour this week have been about documents not emailed in the accessible formats requested; a shortage of enablers to support disabled delegates in the main conference hall; accessible toilets used by non-disabled people; a lack of signposting to the scooter-charging area; poor quality mobility scooters provided in The Brighton Centre; and delegates who were unable to find the disability and first aid hubs because they had been moved to a less accessible location than the previous Labour conference in Brighton.
*Rayner wrote a report in late March 2020, which included 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 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.
But DNS has been unable to find evidence of any of the actions being implemented since Rayner became deputy leader.
30 September 2021
Labour conference: Kendall refuses four times to say if she backs free social care
Labour’s shadow social care minister has refused four times to say if she supports the idea of free social care.
Liz Kendall had been asked by Disability News Service (DNS) whether she was in favour of free social care, and what she thought of the National Independent Living Support Service (NILSS) model for social care reform devised by the disabled people’s movement.
NILSS, which was approved by Labour conference in 2019, would provide a universal right to independent living that was “enshrined in law”, and would introduce free social care in England, funded by national and progressive taxation.
NILSS was also backed by Labour leader Keir Starmer during his Labour leadership campaign last year, but it was ignored in a major speech on care reform by Kendall in May.
In that speech she made no reference to the idea of free social care, or proposals for a right to independent living enshrined in law.
But she said on Monday: “I absolutely want independent living for disabled adults, absolutely non-negotiable, I want national eligibility criteria, national standards, national pay and terms and conditions for staff.”
But she said she was “not keen” on the system being run by Whitehall.
She said: “I really believe we need to have locally, absolutely locally run and delivered services.”
This vision appears to differ slightly from the NILSS proposals, which would be “managed by central government, led by Disabled people, and delivered locally in co-production with Disabled people”.
On free social care, Kendall said there was “absolutely an argument that there is a fundamental unfairness in the system because if you are unlucky enough to get serious dementia you end up having to pay for your care but if you are unlucky enough to get cancer you get that care for free”.
But she did not say whether a Labour government would introduce free social care.
When DNS asked her to clarify her position, she said: “I’ve just given my answer.”
Asked again, she said: “There’s a fundamental unfairness in the situation, in the system at the moment, and I really believe that needs sorting out.”
Asked a fourth time if she wanted to see free social care across the board, Kendall said: “I’ve given the answer; we will be setting out more details about our policies as we come to the next election.”
Despite her refusal to be clear on whether she supported free social care, she did refer in her initial answer to the 2014 Barker review, which she said “very well explained that we need to get to a system where that unfairness is removed”.
In fact, the Barker review called for the government to “make all social care for those with ‘critical’ needs free at the point of use”, to “extend this to ‘substantial’ social care needs as the economy improves” and by 2025 “provide support for ‘moderate’ needs as well”.
Kendall’s comments come only three months after Labour’s shadow leader of the House of Commons, Thangam Debbonaire, said in an online meeting that backing free social care for disabled and older people would just “give the Tories a stick to beat Labour with” and would lose Labour the next election.
Kendall was speaking at a fringe meeting, organised by The Health Foundation, at Labour’s annual conference in Brighton.
A little over an hour earlier, at an event hosted by The World Transformed political festival, also in Brighton, Disabled People Against Cuts activist Martha Foulds, herself a social care recipient with a personal budget, had said the principle of charging for care was “really shameful”.
She said: “People who access social care should get it for free, whatever age they are, they should get it for free. It’s not a luxury, it should be a right.”
She added: “We need a NILSS that guarantees free social care for people at any age, remembering that actually half of the social care budget goes on people under 65.
“And we need that to be co-produced with disabled people and the government.”
Kendall told her fringe event later that a Labour government would not get reform right “unless the most important people, the people who use services and support, are actually driving and shaping… co-producing their services and support”.
She laid out the basic principles of a Labour government’s 10-year plan for social care, which she said would transform access to services and support – where there are currently 300,000 people on council waiting-lists for care – and provide a “fundamental shift” towards “prevention and early intervention”, including “decent home adaptations”, the use of technology and new forms of services and support.
She said another principle would be to “guarantee independence, choice and control for disabled adults and make that an absolute reality”.
Kendall said: “A third of the users of social care and a half of the budget is for working-age adults with disabilities but they have been almost entirely excluded and neglected in the debate. This has got to change.”
She neglected to mention that her own major speech in May had itself neglected to discuss working-age disabled adults and focused instead on older people’s care.
Labour’s plan would also have to focus on the need for a new deal for care workers, she said, and providing new rights for families, including ensuring that their existing rights under the Care Act are implemented.
She was dismissive of the government’s latest social care proposals, which were announced earlier this month but were attacked across the disabled people’s movement for their inadequate level of funding, the failure to address the needs of working-age disabled people, the lack of detail, and the disproportionate impact of the plans on lower-income workers.
Kendall said the government’s plan – a new 1.25 per cent national insurance levy and a similar rise in dividend tax rates, ringfenced for health and social care, but with most of the new funding put aside for the NHS, at least for the first three years – “won’t come near to fixing the crisis in social care”.
She said the plan “will not provide a penny of extra money for social care now” while there was “no guarantee of money in the future either” and it “will not provide a single extra minute of care”.
Anna Severwright, a convenor of the Social Care Future network and a social care service-user, told the fringe meeting that the government’s announcement “didn’t actually give us any hope that anything was going to change”.
She said: “What I hear from so many people is the fight to get any support, that it’s a real struggle, many people don’t qualify, you have to wait until you almost hit a crisis point before you get any support.”
She said the Department of Health and Social Care planned to publish a social care white paper by the end of the year, but it was clear they were consulting “some very senior people in the sector” but not “people like myself who use social care or people who work in the front line of social care”.
She said: “We have to do better. We have to be aiming to give people full lives.
“More resources, better used. Giving people like myself more control over what that money is spent on.
“The power imbalance at the moment is huge.
“I feel fear every time I’m reviewed because I think are they going to cut my hours.
“We have to trust people that they are the experts in their lives and that we know what would work for us.
“My line to the government is that this has to be brave and transformational. If we are just tinkering around the edges of an already broken system, it won’t be enough.”
30 September 2021
Labour conference: Concern over Starmer’s ‘hard-working families first’ pledge
Disabled Labour activists have raised concerns about their leader’s promise to “always put hard-working families and their priorities first”, and his failure to mention disabled people, in a 12,000-word essay published on the eve of his party’s annual conference.
The essay was designed to set out Keir Starmer’s vision for a “fairer, more secure and prosperous Britain, built on Labour values”.
But disabled party members – already angry at Labour’s continuing failure to address disability discrimination within the party – said this week at the conference in Brighton that they were frustrated but not surprised at their leader’s failure to talk about the oppression disabled people faced in society and Labour’s plans to tackle it.
Their concerns were heightened by the failure of shadow transport secretary Jim McMahon to mention the barriers faced by disabled people in accessing public transport in his conference speech, and the failure of shadow housing secretary Lucy Powell to mention the accessible housing crisis in her speech.
The concerns are likely to be heightened yet further by Starmer’s 7,000-word conference speech yesterday (Wednesday), in which he mentioned “people with disabilities” just once.
That single reference sounded as if it had been shoehorned into the speech, possibly in an attempt to deal with mounting concerns over disability discrimination (see separate story) within the party.
Starmer told conference delegates: “I believe that our diversity is one of the things that makes this country great.
“As this country continues to change, as we slowly liberate the talents of more people, as we name and tackle discrimination, as we make a better place for people with disabilities, I believe we grow as a country.”
But his speech also echoed his essay’s pledge that a Labour government would focus on the needs of “working families”, telling conference: “That’s why I am so proud to lead a party whose name is Labour.
“Don’t forget it. Labour. The party of working people.”
Despite a significant section addressing health – including mental health – a brief mention of social care, and a reference to how “artificial intelligence can help tuition, especially for students with special needs”, the concerns of millions of disabled people were ignored in the speech.
This may be seen as particularly insensitive in a year in which nearly 60 per cent of COVID-related deaths have been of disabled people, with many of those deaths – according to researchers backed by the Office for National Statistics – possibly caused by discrimination by the government as it responded to the pandemic, and discrimination within the NHS.
Speaking before the leader’s speech, Emily Pomroy-Smith, a Disability Labour member who stood as the Labour candidate in South West Wiltshire at the 2019 general election, said she had been concerned at the “dog whistle” reference to “hard-working families” in the Starmer essay.
She said: “It sets me on edge. Working families is just short-hand for ‘not scroungers’.
“Our value is not dictated by how much we put in or take out of the state.
“There are many reasons why people can’t work and don’t work or are unable to work.”
And she said she was “not surprised” by Starmer’s exclusion of disabled people from his essay.
She said: “It is so normal for us not to be included. It is frustrating but it is also the way it always is.”
Also speaking before the leader’s speech, Jonathan Farr, treasurer of Disability Labour, said: “We need the top of the party to set an example to the rest of the party that disabled people and disabled members matter and are welcome and are going to be able to participate fully in the party.”
He said it had been “good to hear a slightly different perspective” from shadow work and pensions secretary Jonathan Reynolds in his speech to conference (see separate story).
Asked about the issues of discrimination within the party, and the Starmer essay, Vicky Foxcroft, Labour’s shadow minister for disabled people, said she would meet with deputy leader Angela Rayner and party chair Annelise Dodds “to talk about some of the concerns raised by Disability News Service”.
And she said that David Evans, the party’s general secretary, told a Disability Labour fringe meeting that he would personally ensure that Labour dealt with the concerns raised by disabled members about discrimination within the party.
30 September 2021
Labour conference: Reynolds pledges to work with disabled people to replace WCA
Labour’s shadow work and pensions secretary has pledged to work alongside disabled people to draw up plans to replace the “fitness for work” benefit assessment system that has been linked to the deaths of multiple claimants over the last decade.
Jonathan Reynolds told this week’s annual conference in Brighton that Labour would put “co-production at the heart” of the plans to replace the work capability assessment (WCA) system.
He also spoke of the “fear” experienced by claimants when they receive a letter from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).
He said: “When people receive a letter from the NHS, they don’t fear it. The same cannot be said of the DWP. We are going to change that.
“We will replace the current system of WCAs with a system that supports people to live the lives they want, not one that tries to catch people out to take away their support.
“Assessments focused on what people need to succeed, rather than one that treats them with suspicion.”
The WCA system was introduced under the last Labour government, in 2008, but the fatal flaws in the process, its links with the deaths of claimants, and ministers’ repeated refusal to fix those flaws – and even to cover up the links with deaths – have emerged only over the last 10 years under successive Conservative-led governments.
Reynolds also spoke of his son being diagnosed with autism and learning difficulties.
He said: “That’s never going to be easy. But what makes it worse is knowing a lot of government policy causes you to worry more, not less.”
He also repeated Labour’s pledge to “replace universal credit with a better system”, although he provided no details on what that would look like, other than changes to the earnings taper rate, which is currently 63 per cent*, although as high as 75 per cent once tax and national insurance are included.
He said that claimants on the lowest incomes “effectively pay a higher marginal rate of tax than their prime minister because of that taper rate”, and that a Labour government would change that taper rate and “make sure people keep more of the money they earn”.
Reynolds also attacked the government’s decision to end the temporary £20-a-week “uplift” that was handed to universal credit claimants at the start of the pandemic.
The uplift starts to be phased out this week.
Reynolds said it was the “biggest cut to the welfare state ever” and would be an “unmitigated disaster”.
Reynolds was speaking as activists from Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) held a week-long action to protest at the end of the uplift.
The #AudioRiot actions have also been protesting at the government’s failure to extend the uplift to claimants on legacy benefits, such as employment and support allowance, which is being fought through the courts, with the high court now due to hear the case in November.
The #AudioRiot actions included DPAC activists blocking Euston Road outside King’s Cross station in central London on Tuesday.
Activists also protested outside the offices of Chloe Smith, the new minister for disabled people, in Norwich this week, and handed in an open letter of demands on disability rights.
As part of the London action, activists occupied part of the station, and carried a “Tory Cuts Kill” DPAC banner through the King’s Cross terminal, before blocking Euston Road, causing it to be closed in both directions.
DPAC is due to protest again from 5.30pm today (Thursday) about the universal credit uplift – and also “to demand a fundamental overhaul of the social security system” – both on Twitter and outside Downing Street, alongside unions, other campaign groups and a representative of the Green party.
The continuing protests come as the government today launched a new £500 million Household Support Fund, which it claims “will support millions of households in England”, and will be distributed by councils in England, and is aimed at helping “vulnerable households” with “essentials” as the country “continues its recovery from the pandemic”.
The government did not link the new fund with the end of the universal credit uplift in its announcement.
*The DWP website says: “This means that for every £1 you earn over your work allowance (if you are eligible for one) your Universal Credit will be reduced by 63p.”
30 September 2021
Labour conference: Burnham calls on his party to back free social care
Former Labour health secretary Andy Burnham has called on his party to back a policy of providing free social care that he says would ensure independent living for disabled people.
Burnham, who has been the mayor of Greater Manchester since 2017, told a fringe meeting at Labour’s annual conference in Brighton that it was only the “cowardice of politicians” that was preventing a solution to the social care crisis.
He said that the social care and NHS systems needed to “speak the same language”, which meant “free at the point of use, based on need, not ability to pay”.
Burnham told the meeting, organised by the cross-party, cross-sector Future Social Care Coalition, that he believed the British public would “absolutely buy in” to the idea of social care being “there for you in the way the NHS is there for you”.
He stressed that his idea of a National Care Service was also about providing independent living for disabled people.
He said: “This is the thing when you hear the phrase National Care Service: people feel it is going to be top down or a medical model of support.
“Absolutely it doesn’t have to be like that at all. It should start with very personal, individual support in the home.”
He added: “‘Let’s make it really explicit. A National Care Service of the kind I’ve described this afternoon would massively enhance the lives of disabled people in this country, as long as it was personalised and it was individual and there was control there.
“It could hugely support independent living. It could give individuals and their families much greater peace of mind about the quality of what’s being provided.
“Too often that’s an afterthought in this debate and it needs to be a central consideration when we are talking about what the benefits of this system would be.
“The human benefits would be enormous on a system of this kind.”
Burnham said he believed the argument for such a system was “being slowly won”.
He criticised the government’s latest social care proposals, which were announced earlier this month but were attacked across the disabled people’s movement for their inadequate level of funding, the failure to address the needs of working-age disabled people, the lack of detail, and the disproportionate impact of the plans on lower-income workers.
Burnham said the government’s plan – a new 1.25 per cent national insurance levy and a similar rise in dividend tax rates, ringfenced for health and social care, but with most of the new funding put aside for the NHS, at least for the first three years – was “possibly the unfairest way of doing this”.
He said the government’s proposals would ask people on zero hours contracts to pay more tax, even though the plan would not actually improve the social care system but would protect the property assets of some better-off older people.
He argued instead for a care levy of 10 per cent on “everyone’s assets, savings and homes”, with a payment plan possibly to be agreed when someone reaches the age of 65.
He said: “I don’t think you can say we are going to have a new system of social care without the older generation making a contribution to that.
“Because it’s a care levy and not an inheritance tax, it is linked to what you are getting… even if you don’t need care in your lifetime… you’re getting peace of mind, the peace of mind the NHS provides for you.”
The crossbench peer Lord Kerslake, former head of the Civil Service and now chair of the housing and care provider Peabody, told the meeting that the government’s announcement “definitively does not solve the social care problem”, and would provide less than £1 billion a year extra over three years for social care.
He said: “This is a very fragile system. It’s a pressure system.
“We don’t know at what point it will stop functioning in the way it should do, but I think it’s getting pretty damn close to that now.”
The day after the fringe meeting, the social care crisis was highlighted again by the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman’s latest annual review of complaints in England, which reported an increase in the proportion of social care complaints it had upheld from 69 per cent to 72 per cent.
The ombudsman said that the faults it found in its investigations are “often not due to one-off errors caused by staff working under pressure, but are increasingly caused by the measures employed by councils and care providers to mitigate the squeeze on their resources”.
30 September 2021
Labour conference: MP accuses government of ‘gas-lighting’ social care during pandemic
A Labour MP who heard weekly reports on the “harrowing” impact of the pandemic on service-users and staff in social care through the early months of the crisis has accused the government of “gas-lighting” the sector by denying those experiences.
Helen Hayes MP, co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on adult social care, described to a fringe meeting at Labour’s party conference in Brighton some of the evidence she had heard from disabled people and others in the social care sector.
The all-party group had set up a working group, which included disabled people who managed their own care at home, as well as representatives of not-for-profit care providers and other social care organisations.
She told the fringe meeting, organised by the cross-party, cross-sector Future Social Care Coalition: “During the first wave of the pandemic, we met every single week to talk about what was going on on the ground.”
The working group heard of the challenges in accessing personal protective equipment (PPE), of COVID-positive patients being discharged from hospitals into care homes, and “the impact on residents and families and staff as COVID ripped through care homes because of those discharges that were happening from hospitals”.
And she said the working group also heard “the harrowing stories of people at home managing their own care”, who had been “really abandoned by the government”.
She told the meeting: “I don’t think we talk nearly enough about those people, who couldn’t access PPE, couldn’t access advice about how to keep themselves safe, many of whom ended up foregoing their own care because they were so terrified about contracting COVID at home because their care workers were going between many different households and sometimes into care homes as well.”
She said the contrast between these testimonies, which were coming in every week for months, and “the government’s line that they had thrown a protective ring around care homes” was “distressing”.
She added: “I don’t use this term lightly but it really felt like the government was gas-lighting the social care sector… simply denying the lived experience on the ground of a sector that really had been the last thought on the government’s mind as they entered the pandemic.”
But she said the pandemic had at least provided “very strong visibility” for a sector that “actually had been heading towards crisis for many, many years prior to that.”
30 September 2021
Labour conference: Party ‘showed contempt for autistic members’ by ignoring manifesto
Labour has been accused of showing “contempt” for autistic and other neurodivergent party members, after ignoring proposals they submitted as part of a policy development process.
A summary of the neurodiversity manifesto that was put together by members of Neurodivergent Labour was submitted to the party’s National Policy Forum, which has been consulting on new policies on social security, poverty and inequalities.
But the party conference in Brighton heard this week that not a word of the manifesto summary had been included in the National Policy Forum annual report (PDF), which was debated by conference this week.
The manifesto was drawn up by Neurodivergent Labour with the support of John McDonnell, Labour’s former shadow chancellor, who said at the last full party conference in 2019 that senior figures in the party had not done enough to take on the policies outlined in the manifesto.
The disabled activist and author Janine Booth, chair of Neurodivergent Labour, told the conference this week that despite neurodivergent people experiencing “discrimination, prejudice, social isolation and economic exclusion, made worse by Tory austerity”, there was “not a single word about neurodiversity” in more than 100 pages of policy in the report.
She said: “We submitted a comprehensive set of proposals that were widely supported, only to be ignored.”
Booth said that more than 200 party members and more than 100 constituency Labour parties around the country had signed a statement supporting these concerns.
The Transport Salaried Staffs’ Association (TSSA) union also raised concerns about the failure to include any of the proposals in the annual report.
Mick Carney, TSSA’s president, told the conference that the failure to mention the manifesto in the policy forum report was “a missed opportunity”.
Jonathan Farr, treasurer of Disability Labour, told Disability News Service later that the conference had paid “scant attention to disability in general”.
He said the manifesto was the second most popular online submission in the consultation on that part of the National Policy Forum process, “and yet not a single word of it went into the final document.
“How is that just or fair? If the Labour party actually cares about disabled people then they need to show that commitment by talking about all disabled people in their policy documents.”
Labour had not responded to a request to comment on the neurodiversity manifesto by noon today (Thursday).
30 September 2021
High-profile disability law firm forced into administration
A disabled lawyer who has taken scores of important disability discrimination cases has spoken of his regret after his law firm was forced to close because its credit facility was suddenly withdrawn.
There has been concern among disabled campaigners at Fry Law being forced into administration, and the potential impact on the availability of legal firms willing to take on disability discrimination cases.
Fry Law was seen as the leading firm in this area, and one of the few that would take on cases around access to goods and services.
Its founder, Chris Fry, took hundreds of cases on behalf of disabled people who alleged discrimination during the coronavirus pandemic, including around access to healthcare, access to supermarkets, and the government’s failure to provide British Sign Language interpreters at televised COVID-19 briefings.
Fry Law has also acted for a number of disabled people claiming discrimination by bus and train companies, and Fry worked pro bono for disabled activists opposed to the legalisation of assisted suicide on a high-profile judicial review case.
Fry Law also pioneered a link-up with a specialist insurance company that led to the launch of a new insurance policy that offered protection to disabled people – and others with “protected characteristics” – who took legal cases under the Equality Act.
It is not clear yet whether another law firm will take on this insurance policy.
There was also concern this week at the impact on disabled people who had ongoing cases with Fry Law, although Fry said that all of them should be taken on by other firms.
He told Disability News Service this week that his company had traded profitably ever since it was created in 2017, and he blamed a complex series of factors for being forced into administration.
This included a “funding facility” that allowed him to set up the company, but was withdrawn two years later, and the increased demand for Fry Law’s services at the start of the pandemic in March 2020.
It was also unable to complete court cases – and so was not receiving revenue from those cases – because of widespread court closures at the start of the pandemic.
Several law firms have been involved in proposals to buy Fry Law over the last 15 months, and Fry said that the sudden cancellation of one deal had been “catastrophic”, leading to several Fry Law consultants leaving without giving notice.
He said this left the firm “critically under resourced and subject to floods of service level complaints as a result”, while the sudden withdrawal of funding by one of its creditors this summer meant administration was the only option, with Fry Law having debts of more than £100,000 that it was not able to pay.
Fry said that all the cases Fry Law had been dealing with would now be taken on by one of a consortium of firms, including Simpson Millar, SSB and Clear Law.
He said: “Fry Law closes as a business which has made a profit every year that it has traded, with an excellent track record, with cash in the bank and a caseload worth several million pounds.
“Whether or not Fry Law’s creditors will recover all of their money depends on whether the acquiring law firms do an effective job with the cases, and on the costs of the administration.
“I very much hope that all debts will be cleared over time. Those are factors which are outside of my control.”
He added: “For my part, I deeply regret losing control of Fry Law and feel bruised by the whole experience.”
He is now working on a freelance basis for the leading law firm Scott Moncrieff, and he said he was “looking forward to being able to focus on running cases and not a law firm”.
He said: “In essence I’ll be acting for fewer people but delivering a better service.”
And he said he had already been instructed to take on cases at Scott Moncrieff and would be leading legal cases on behalf of Deaf people, including working more closely with the Royal Association for Deaf people.
Fry promised that all compensation that was being held by Fry Law following successful legal actions was being “safely held”, and would be distributed by the administrators, Begbies Traynor*.
One possible positive from what has happened, he said, was that there were now “more firms to choose from” for those seeking to take disability discrimination cases.
*Any questions relating to Fry Law are being handled through the email address Fry.Law@btguk.com
30 September 2021
Mixed response from disabled activists to Heidi Crowter abortion case ruling
Disabled campaigners have given contrasting responses to a court’s high-profile ruling on whether abortion laws are discriminatory.
The high court dismissed a legal challenge that argued that it was “morally and ethically wrong” and discriminatory to allow disabled fetuses to be aborted up until the moment of birth.
The case has been spearheaded by Heidi Crowter, from Coventry, who has Down’s syndrome, and brought the case against the Department of Health and Social Care.
She was asking the high court to rule that allowing a fetus with Down’s syndrome to be aborted after the 24-week limit for non-disabled fetuses – under the 1967 Abortion Act – is incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights.
The law allows an abortion after 24 weeks if there is a “substantial risk” that if the child was born it would be “seriously handicapped”.
Crowter also wanted the court to declare that Down’s syndrome and other non-fatal impairments should not be considered a “serious handicap” under the act.
She was joined in the legal action by Máire Lea-Wilson, from Brentford, west London, and her two-year-old son Aidan, who has Down’s syndrome.
They had told the court that the UN’s committee on the rights of persons with disabilities called on the UK government four years ago to change its abortion law, arguing that it was “concerned about perceptions in society that stigmatize persons with disabilities as living a life of less value than that of others and about the termination of pregnancy at any stage on the basis of fetal impairment”.
They had also pointed to a report by the UN’s special rapporteur on the rights of persons with disabilities, who said in December 2019 that such abortion policies “aggravate” the message that disabled people “ought not to have been born”.
But the court ruled (PDF) last Thursday (23 September) that the law as it stands does not breach the European convention.
It also dismissed the attempt to persuade the court to declare that Down’s syndrome and other non-fatal impairments should not be considered a “serious handicap” under the act.
Lord Justice Singh and Mrs Justice Lieven said in their judgement that it was not clear what would happen if such abortions were to be outlawed, if “some women have been compelled by the fear of the criminal law to give birth to children who will not be loved or wanted”.
They added: “This is just one example of the intensely difficult issues which are better debated in Parliament, which can take account of different interests and viewpoints, rather than in litigation.”
Some disabled activists criticised the court’s decision, but others welcomed the judgement and warned that the legal action had risked harming women’s abortion rights.
Crowter and Lea-Wilson say that they will seek permission to take their case to the court of appeal.
They have a crowdfunding page to raise funds for the legal action, and they have so far raised more than £120,000.
In a statement, Crowter said: “I am really upset not to win but the fight is not over.
“The judges might not think it discriminates against me, the government might not think it discriminates against me but I am telling you that I do feel discriminated against…. and the verdict doesn’t change how I and thousands in the Down’s syndrome community feel.
“We face discrimination every day in schools, in the workplace and in society.
“And now thanks to this verdict the judges have upheld discrimination in the womb too. This is a very sad day, but I will keep fighting.”
Disabled campaigner Simone Aspis, director of consultancy Changing Perspectives, said the judgement was “very disappointing” and “sends a very powerful message that disabled people’s lives are of less value and that we should not be afforded the same rights as others in society”.
She said: “Whatever the laws are, if they embrace disability discrimination then the provisions must be challenged.
“Legislation that promotes disability discrimination in any single aspect of our lives allows disability discrimination to be justified in other aspects of our lives such as access to inclusive education, health, independent living, employment and alike.”
She added: “Heidi’s continuing fight to get the law changed so that disabled and non-disabled unborn babies have equal right to life whilst maintaining the woman’s right to have an abortion must be supported.
“In addition, pre-natal testing must be provided in a manner that does not promote disability discrimination.”
In a sign of the sensitivity and complexity of the issues involved in the case, and how the law as it stands pits those defending women’s rights against those campaigning for disability rights, the disabled women’s collective Sisters of Frida has not been able to comment on the high court judgement this week.
It said that it would be discussing reproductive justice soon, and a spokesperson added: “We have not had the capacity to comment as a collective with an intersectional perspective – we need a fuller discussion with more disabled women.”
Greater Manchester Coalition of Disabled People (GMCDP) praised Crowter for her “powerful activism” and for raising awareness “about the real lives of people of all ages with Down’s syndrome, to counteract the deep prejudice society holds”.
But GMCDP said it believed the high court’s ruling was the right one.
Dennis Queen, a spokesperson for GMCDP, said: “We think it’s the correct ruling, because we think the case could impinge on women’s rights.
“We do agree there is discrimination around termination dates, we just don’t think termination is the key problem – it’s the end result of a much earlier discrimination against women, and others who are pregnant, via the standard eugenic screening.
“We would suggest ways forward that uphold women’s rights and disability rights instead.”
In its statement, GMCDP said that testing for Down’s syndrome and spina bifida in pregnancy “has become standardised in the UK”.
It added: “This does lead to discrimination: in available termination dates; against disabled parents and parents-to-be; and against people who are expected to birth a child with impairment/s.
“The coalition think that challenging abortion law is not the best way forward, as this could undermine rights.
“Genetic screening, and how things proceed following diagnosis, are the key discriminations here.
“The coalition thinks there are other ways to move towards reducing or removing this discrimination and we are working on a position statement on reproductive rights that we hope to release soon.
“The coalition hopes our position statement will speak strongly for the rights of women and others who are pregnant, for disabled parents and parents to be, and for people who are expected to birth a child with impairment/s.”
Another disabled woman to speak out was author and journalist Dr Frances Ryan.
She said on Twitter: “Those wishing to shrink term limits would have you believe swathes of women are having late term abortions, thoughtlessly.
“Here’s reality: a tiny number sadly rely on them, typically because they’ve had to wait for medical diagnosis post-20 weeks.
“No woman wants a late term abortion. But it exists [because] medical conditions, largely fatal ones, don’t show until post-20 [weeks] and women need time to have further tests and mourn.
“It also protects marginalised women, such as [domestic violence] victims, who can’t access healthcare earlier.”
And Professor Tom Shakespeare, a leading disabled academic and co-director of the International Centre for Evidence in Disability at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said he was “glad” the high court had rejected the case.
He said on Twitter: “In 2020, there were 229 abortions on disability grounds after 24 weeks. Only 14 involved Down syndrome.
“The majority entailed complex anomalies, many of which were incompatible with life. While sad, this is a humane approach.
“And to put it into perspective, there were nearly 210,000 abortions in 2020. Total abortions performed under Ground E (ie disability) were 3,083.
“I do not think the answer to disability oppression is to make abortion harder to access.”
30 September 2021
News provided by John Pring at www.disabilitynewsservice.com
