Contents
Government’s response to UN committee ‘was insult to disabled people’ 1
UN committee asks government: ‘Why are you demonising disabled people?’ 4
MPs undermine key government claim, days after it defended its record at the UN 7
It was emergency planning that was vulnerable during Covid, not disabled people, inquiry is told 10
Government finally set to act on housing accessibility standards 11
Maggie Davis: Tributes to pioneer, rebel and advocate 14
‘Underhand tactics’ could still see disabled people forced into care homes, say campaigners 18
Disabled-led business seeks new clients after being hit by rise of AI 20
Other disability-related stories covered by mainstream media this week 21
Government’s response to UN committee ‘was insult to disabled people’
Disabled people’s organisations from across the UK have described the government’s evidence to a UN disability rights committee this week as “an insult to disabled people” and full of “half-truths, untruths” and “empty assertions”.
Representatives from more than 10 disabled people’s organisations (DPOs) were in Geneva to witness the evidence given by the UK government as it attempted to persuade the committee it had made progress since being found guilty of “grave and systematic violations” of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in 2016.
But they have told Disability News Service (DNS) that the evidence provided by a delegation of civil servants from the Disability Unit, the Department for Work and Pensions and the Department of Health and Social Care failed to address key concerns raised more than seven years ago by the UN committee on the rights of disabled people.
In an initial statement on Monday afternoon, Alexandra Gowlland, deputy director of the Disability Unit, pointed to a string of recent government policies across disability strategy, social security, housing, social care and employment, nearly all of which have been widely discredited (see separate story).
She and fellow civil servants were also asked to respond to concerns and questions raised by members of the committee.
But representatives of the DPOs that had travelled to Geneva to brief the committee and watch the session say they were appalled at the evidence given by the UK government’s delegation.
Ellen Clifford, who coordinates the coalition of DPOs that monitors the implementation of the convention in the UK, told DNS that the UK government’s representatives had “avoided all of the substantive issues with which the special inquiry is concerned, and failed to answer any of the committee’s questions.
“They chose instead to talk out their time on issues irrelevant to the inquiry and in a misleadingly positive light.
“We felt their approach was disrespectful to the committee and showed how little they value the lives of Deaf and disabled people.”
She said the questions and comments from the UN rapporteurs – the committee members who have led investigations into the UK’s progress – “showed how well they understand the true picture of what is happening and that they had really listened to and valued the evidence we submitted and the testimonies that were shared with them by Deaf and disabled people”.
John McArdle, co-founder of the Scottish-based grassroots group Black Triangle, said the failure of the UK delegation to address the issues raised by the committee was “insulting, not only to us, but to the United Nations, the rapporteurs and the institution itself”.
He told DNS that the UK government was guilty of “whitewashing and ignoring the rock-solid evidence” and that its delegation had kept trying to “dodge the bullets” by not addressing the issues raised by committee members.
He said Gowlland had failed to respond to the significant criticisms of the work capability assessment by the committee and “how dangerous the system is, how it has cost so, so many lives”.
He said: “If they’re not addressing these issues, then they’re completely evading their responsibilities under the convention.”
Svetlana Kotova, director of campaigns and justice at Inclusion London, told DNS: “The government’s response laid bare the fact that they have done nothing to progress our rights to independent living, employment or an adequate standard of living.
“Their update was a list of empty promises or laws that don’t give people any rights; and we know they are pushing reforms which will lead to further retrogression.
“We hope the UN disability committee will see beyond this and hold them to account.”
Kamran Mallick, chief executive of Disability Rights UK, said on Monday: “Although we are not surprised by the UK government’s response today, we still feel that their refusal to properly engage with this process is an insult to all disabled people whose experiences are reflected in the evidence we’ve provided to the UN.
“Despite requesting a delay last year, they have provided us with no new evidence – instead signposting to plans and policies that create no transformative change.
“The delegation shared all the ways they believe they’ve created progress for disabled people’s rights – but they know, just as we do, that no progress has been made.
“In fact, we have gone backwards.”
Natasha Hirst, president of the National Union of Journalists and the disability representative on its national executive, said the UK government’s delegation had “not stood up well to the scrutiny of the committee”.
She said: “Their empty assertions of being committed to improving disabled people’s lives are in clear contrast with the daily reality of poverty, exclusion and a frequently punitive social security system.
“Planned reforms and continued negative rhetoric about disabled people will only make things worse.”
Rhian Davies, chief executive of Disability Wales, also said the UK government’s evidence was “far removed from the reality of disabled people’s lives and experiences since 2016”.
She said: “We are not shocked, but appalled, by the lack of acknowledgement concerning the deaths of disabled people awaiting assessment decisions, the criticism of DDPOs* regarding recent policy such as the health and disability white paper or the harm caused by the disablist ‘benefit scroungers’ stereotyping promoted by the UK government.”
Mark Harrison, a member of the steering group of the Reclaiming Our Futures Alliance, said: “The UNCRPD committee is not fooled by the half-truths, untruths and smokescreen presented by representatives of the British government.
“They know the Tories are completely hostile to human rights and equality for disabled people.
“The UK delegation has presented the realities of human rights violations that demonstrate ongoing and deepening grave and systematic attacks on living standards and deaths from benefit and cuts to community support services.”
Tony O’Reilly, from Northern Ireland’s Northwest Forum of People with Disabilities, said: “Over these last months we gave our evidence to the… committee supported by facts and the strong testimony of Deaf and disabled people.
“All of us together sought to shine a light on the truth of our perilous situation.
“The fact that the UK government and the devolved administrations sought to hide in the dark refusing to answer directly the questions of this esteemed committee is shameful and another barrier to the full realisation of our human rights as Deaf and disabled people.”
Clifford, a member of the national steering committee of Disabled People Against Cuts, also highlighted the “size and strength” of the delegation of DPOs to Geneva, which was boosted for the first time by disabled trade unionists, and she pointed to the “hard work and support from those back in the UK”.
She said this “gave us confidence that when we come home we can build a strong resistance movement to oppose further cuts to social security and to demand a right to adequate support to live and be fully included in the community”.
Kotova also praised the “solidarity among disabled people and DPOs across UK nations”.
She said: “If anything, this process can help us build on this as a movement as we will have to keep on fighting.”
*Deaf and disabled people’s organisations
21 March 2024
UN committee asks government: ‘Why are you demonising disabled people?’
A United Nations committee has accused the UK government of demonising disabled people and treating them as “undeserving citizens” by preparing to fund tax cuts through slashing disability benefits.
Members of the UN’s committee on the rights of disabled people provided a string of examples of how the government had continued to breach its obligations under the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
They pointed to a benefits system that traumatised claimants and led to some taking their own lives; increasing rates of institutionalisation; and a disproportionate number of disabled people who were now too poor to heat their own homes or buy food.
The committee’s Australian vice-chair, Rosemary Kayess, said the social security system and rhetoric from ministers “devalues disabled people and undermines their human dignity”, and she suggested the government had breached its treaty obligations to “combat stereotypes, prejudices and harmful practices relating to disabled people”.
Kayess told a delegation of civil servants in Geneva that there was evidence of “regression” in how the UK government was meeting its obligations under the convention.
The committee was cross-examining the delegation, which included representatives from the devolved governments of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, on progress since the UK government was found guilty of grave and systematic violations of the UN convention in 2016 as a result of breaches of articles on social security, employment and independent living.
Following the session, and the “significant” amount of written and oral evidence provided by disabled people, disabled people’s organisations and allies, the committee will now prepare a report on its findings.
Kayess, a human rights lawyer and Australia’s new disability discrimination commissioner, told the UK’s delegation on Monday: “We see a reform agenda that is framed in a political narrative that demonises disabled people, including proposals to cut disability benefits to reward working people by cutting taxes, which tells disabled people they are undeserving citizens.
“And this is coupled with an onerous and complex social benefit system that is the basis for trauma and preventable mental distress.”
Kayess said the committee had found a “pervasive framework and rhetoric that devalues disabled people and undermines their human dignity” within the social security system, and she suggested the government had breached its obligations under the convention to “combat stereotypes, prejudices and harmful practices relating to disabled people”.
She said: “Reforms within social welfare benefits are premised on a notion that disabled people are undeserving and skiving off and defrauding the system.
“This has resulted in hate speech and hostility towards disabled people.”
She also pointed to “increasing rates of institutionalisation” of disabled people, including those “living in secure psychiatric facilities due to a lack of community-based support”, and others forced into residential homes because of inadequate care and support.
And she highlighted evidence of increased use of “restraints, restrictive practices and coercive measures” in institutions, and the shortage of safe, accessible housing.
She also questioned whether the government had failed to meet its obligations to “closely” and “actively” consult disabled people’s organisations when drawing up its National Disability Strategy.
Just as it did in 2016, the committee raised significant concerns about the “complex and onerous” work capability assessment process, and the use of “inexperienced and unqualified” assessors.
Another committee member, Professor Laverne Jacobs, a disability rights and human rights law expert from Canada, said there had been a “repeated pattern” of disabled people taking their own lives after being denied an adequate standard of living by the Department for Work and Pensions.
She asked the government what measures it would take to ensure that its benefit eligibility and work capability systems were “trauma informed so that they do not cause mental health crises, suicide, and death”.
But she also asked what “redress” it would offer to those who have experienced trauma caused by the social security and assessment systems, and to the families of those claimants who had lost their lives through this trauma.
Jacobs said the committee had heard of disabled people facing “intolerable situations, even death, while trying to comply with the eligibility requirements of the UK government’s benefit regimes”, including the work capability assessment process.
She said that evidence they had been given suggested a “significant and shameful gap” between the convention’s requirements and the lived experiences of disabled people in the UK.
And, she said, the evidence suggested a failure to provide an adequate standard of living for disabled people, including disabled women, girls and older people, with a “disproportionate” number of disabled people “living in poverty without the ability to heat their homes or purchase food”.
She also asked the UK government what measures it was taking to ensure that disabled people can enjoy their rights under the UN convention to live independently in the community, and to address the shortage of personal assistants.
And she asked what the government was doing to ensure that disabled refugees and asylum-seekers can enjoy their right to live independently and in the community in the UK.
She urged the UK government to “improve on its commitment” to the rights of disabled people and take “immediate steps to remedy the issues that we have highlighted today”.
A third committee member, human rights lawyer Miyeon Kim, from South Korea, asked the UK delegation about the “biggest death crisis in the history of the NHS”, after campaigners called last year for a criminal investigation into a mental health trust, following a report that found more than 8,400 deaths linked to the Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust.
There was little attempt by the UK government to answer the questions asked by the committee members, with disabled people’s organisations who were present at the evidence session describing their attempts as “half-truths, untruths and smokescreen” (see separate story).
Alexandra Gowlland, deputy director of the Disability Unit, who had earlier delivered the UK government’s opening statement to the committee (see separate story), claimed it was committed to the UN convention, and pointed to the protection offered to disabled people by the Equality Act, including the public sector equality duty.
She told the committee: “Ensuring the voice of disabled people is properly heard is something which is very important to us in the UK government.”
Jennifer Heigham, DWP’s deputy director for strategy and briefing, pointed to the £105 billion in cost-of-living support the government had provided from 2022 to 2025, but failed to point out that working-age disabled people receiving non-means-tested disability benefits received just £150 a year in 2022 and another £150 in 2023-24 in disability-related cost-of-living payments.
She claimed the government was “delivering the most ambitious disability reform agenda in a generation” and was “proud to have a proven track record of increasing disability employment, and acting on disability discrimination, providing vital protections”.
And she said the government was “committed to ensuring our welfare system encourages and supports people into work, while providing a vital safety net for those who need it most”.
She added: “In the future, removing the work capability assessment will reduce the number of assessments people need to take to access benefits, give people the confidence to try work, and enable us to provide a more personalised approach.”
David Nuttall, deputy director of neurodiversity, diversity and learning disability at the Department of Health and Social Care, said the government was “investing in better training, accredited qualifications and launching a new national career structure for the adult social care workforce”.
And he said it had given new powers to the Care Quality Commission to inspect how local authorities were delivering their duties under the Care Act.
He claimed the government had “substantially invested in adult social care funding”, while the NHS long-term plan included a “long-term aim to improve community support for people with a learning disability, autistic people and those with serious mental illness”.
He said the government’s draft mental health bill – which appears to have been dumped by the government – included plans to tighten the criteria on when someone can be detained under the Mental Health Act “to ensure detention only happens where absolutely necessary”.
Apparently in response to the question from Miyeon Kim, he said the Care Quality Commission was “the independent regulator of health and social care in England and is responsible for making sure providers adhere to the fundamental standards to ensure services are safe, effective, person centred, responsive and well led”.
21 March 2024
MPs undermine key government claim, days after it defended its record at the UN
The government tried this week to persuade the UN that it has made “progress” since being found guilty of “grave and systematic violations” of the disability rights convention, just as MPs prepared to undermine one of its key claims.
A delegation of civil servants from the UK government, and three devolved governments, were in Geneva to be cross-examined by members of the UN committee on the rights of disabled people.
They had been asked to provide evidence of progress made since a 2016 report by the committee found the UK government guilty of repeated violations of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
That report followed the first high-level inquiry carried out by the committee and was the result of years of research and lobbying by Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC), which sent members to Geneva this week, alongside representatives of more than 10 other disabled people’s organisations (DPOs).
The UN committee found in November 2016 that the UK government had discriminated against disabled people on the right to an adequate standard of living and social protection, employment, and independent living.
But the UK government’s attempts to claim it has made progress since 2016 were described by the DPOs who watched its evidence on Monday as “an insult to disabled people” and full of “half-truths, untruths” and “empty assertions” (see separate story).
The UK government’s lead representative in Geneva, Alexandra Gowlland, deputy director of the Disability Unit, said the government was “fully committed” to implementing the convention.
She presented a list on Monday of what the government appeared to see as its main achievements on disability rights since 2016.
One of the areas she focused on was the right to independent living, detailed in article 19 of the convention.
In late 2016, the committee concluded that the UK government’s policies had “disproportionately affected persons with disabilities and hindered various aspects of their right to live independently and be included in the community”.
Gowlland pointed this week to a 2021 white paper published by the Department of Health and Social Care, People at the Heart of Care, with its “10 year vision for adult social care”, and claimed the government wanted “everyone to access high quality care that enables choice, control, and independence”.
But yesterday (Wednesday), just two days later, the Commons public accounts committee was concluding that the UK government was “falling short” on its promise to “fix the crisis in social care”, as “chronic understaffing, rising waiting lists and patchwork funding place sustained pressure on local authorities”.
The cross-party committee also concluded that the government had “no roadmap for achieving its vision, or any targets or milestones beyond 2025, with nothing meaningful in place to demonstrate progress”.
Gowlland also failed to mention to the UN committee that research by disabled campaigners has shown how tens of thousands of disabled people across England have been left in debt because they cannot pay their care charges.
The government also tried to take credit for two “landmark” pieces of legislation, the British Sign Language Act and the Down Syndrome Act, both of which were private members’ bills eventually supported by the government but were also criticised for failing to offer any strong new rights.
She also highlighted the government’s National Disability Strategy, which she described as “ambitious and comprehensive”, and the more recent Disability Action Plan, which have both been heavily criticised by DPOs for their lack of any co-production and for being full of empty promises.
Gowlland mentioned the Transforming Support white paper, published last spring by the Department for Work and Pensions and which disabled people’s organisations have described as not fit for purpose.
Those reforms, she said, focus “on what people can do rather than what they cannot”, a phrase used repeatedly by work and pensions ministers for decades, with the earliest known use by Labour’s social security secretary Alistair Darling in 1999.
Among her claims was that the government had overseen an increase in the number of disabled people in employment of 1. 3 million between 2017 and 2022, even though that claim has been repeatedly debunked by academics, who have made clear that it is deeply misleading.
Rather than mentioning the long and repeated delays to plans to force all new homes in England to be built to a higher basic standard of accessibility, Gowlland highlighted minor measures on supported housing, which she said “plays a vital role in delivering better life outcomes, improved well-being and health and greater independence for disabled people”.
She again sought to take credit for legislation that was introduced through a private members’ bill, this time the Supported Housing (Regulatory Oversight) Act, which the government “supported”.
On disability hate crime – something which she said was “completely unacceptable” – she highlighted awareness campaigns in 2018 and 2019, but failed to mention the government’s repeated failure to introduce tougher laws, as recommended by the Law Commission more than two years ago.
Gowlland also pointed to new laws from 2022 that allowed Deaf jurors to be assisted by British Sign Language interpreters in the jury deliberation room, without mentioning that the government had only acted after a judicial review of its failure to remove a ban and more than two decades of campaigning by Deaf activists.
In its evidence to the committee on Monday, the Scottish government highlighted policies such as its introduction of the new adult disability payment and child disability payment to replace personal independence payment, its decision to reopen the Independent Living Fund to new entrants, its introduction of free personal care, and its plans for a National Care Service.
The Welsh government spoke of its commitment to incorporate the UN convention into Welsh law, and how it commissioned a study of the effects of the response to the pandemic on disabled people, led by DPOs, which became the Locked Out report, and subsequently set up a Disability Rights Taskforce.
It also spoke of the Welsh government’s commitment to embedding the social model of disability “into everything it does” and how it was working on the taskforce in co-production with disabled people.
The Northern Ireland government pointed to its work on a disability and work strategy, and a new disability strategy, and its plans for a new hate crime bill, a draft strategic plan for learning disability, and an updated autism strategy.
21 March 2024
It was emergency planning that was vulnerable during Covid, not disabled people, inquiry is told
It was the emergency planning systems that proved to be “vulnerable” during the Covid pandemic, and not disabled people, the UK Covid inquiry has been told by two national disabled people’s organisations (DPOs).
Disability Wales and Disability Rights UK (DR UK) told the inquiry, sitting in Cardiff last week as it considered the impact of the pandemic in Wales, that the systems had relied on “chaotic improvisation” rather than the “pre-planning and practice” that was needed to ensure “collective resilience”.
They said the “dedicated machinery” needed to generate resilience in devolved and regional governments had to include disabled people as “leaders and managers” rather than them too often still being “managed and led”.
The two DPOs were delivering their joint closing statement (PDF) to the section of the inquiry examining decision-making and political governance in Wales.
They called for the Welsh government, civil servants, charities and the private sector to all develop “a far greater skill” in co-production and co-design.
In disaster management, they said, the aim of co-production and co-design “is not just to be kind, but to be smart”, which ensures that scientific advice “remains grounded in social reality”.
They called for taskforces to be set up for the UK and devolved nations – with representatives of DPOs – that would co-produce emergency risk assessments and planning for disabled people, with that work “channelled into general planning at various national, devolved and regional” levels of government.
They told the inquiry: “Human rights protection of disabled people matters in pandemics because they are the people that are disproportionately affected.”
For that reason, the UN conventions on the rights of disabled people, and on the rights of the child, must be incorporated into the laws of Wales and of the UK, they said.
Barrister Danny Friedman, from Matrix Chambers, who delivered the closing statement on behalf of Disability Wales and DR UK, said there also needed to be work to address the “truly profound” gaps in data collection and its analysis and how it is used.
He said: “We are supposed to be in the midst of an information revolution, but its possibilities have not reached yet the interests of marginalised people.”
He told the inquiry that the Welsh government had not routinely collected figures during the pandemic which would have shown how many disabled people and others with characteristics protected under the Equality Act were hospitalised and received treatment in intensive care.
And even though Wales has led the UK on the importance of the social model of disability for more than 20 years, it had still failed to gather information that would show what disabled people might need during the pandemic, Friedman said.
The two DPOs also told the inquiry that the flaws in UK devolution ensured that those people who were “on the margins” of the system – including disabled people – were “rendered vulnerable” during the pandemic.
But they also pointed out that it was in Wales – and not England or Scotland – that “close and dynamic collaborative meetings” took place between DPOs and the government, starting in early April 2020.
UK government ministers did not even discuss the pandemic’s impact on disabled people until 21 May, and they did not start their short-lived meetings with DPOs until July, they said.
The two DPOs said the problem in Wales was that it was “too small not to be taken for granted by Westminster”, which meant that it had been “informed about decisions rather than being consulted upon them on numerous occasions”.
This also meant that Wales was “limited in what it could do locally to really change its outcomes”.
21 March 2024
Government finally set to act on housing accessibility standards
The government is finally taking further steps towards introducing laws that would set a higher standard of accessibility for nearly all new homes in England.
The government promised in July 2022 that it would consult on new rules that would force all new homes to be built to the M4(2)* standard of accessibility, except for cases where this was “impractical and unachievable”.
An earlier consultation on raising accessibility standards had ended in December 2020, but when ministers finally responded, in July 2022, they announced this further consultation on the detail of the changes.
Housing minister Felicity Buchan finally confirmed on Monday that the second consultation would go ahead in the next few months, as she was questioned by the Commons levelling up, housing and communities committee in the final evidence session of its inquiry on housing for disabled people.
She said the government had decided there needed to be this second “technical” consultation to decide on the detail of the changes and “any exceptions to the rule”.
Philip White, director of the new Building Safety Regulator, which will be carrying out the consultation, said the 12-week technical consultation would be launched “between April and July” this year.
Buchan repeatedly told the committee that the government believed that decisions on how many accessible homes should be built should be taken by local authorities, including whether there should be a minimum of 10 per cent of new homes to be built to the M4(3) wheelchair-accessible standard.
She told the committee: “We don’t think it’s appropriate for central government to be setting those thresholds.
“It should be local housing need, local delivery plans for local people.”
Buchan said she didn’t have any figures “to hand” on how many accessible homes were being built.
Labour’s Ian Byrne said the evidence received during the committee’s inquiry was that there was “no confidence within the people that we interviewed” that leaving decisions to local authorities would produce significant numbers of wheelchair-accessible homes.
He asked if the government needed to “take a lead on this and make sure that that 10 per cent actually becomes a figure that can be achievable”.
Buchan suggested that when the government introduced M4(2) as a “base” level, it would provide “more time and resources for people to think about M4(3)” but that ministers wanted local authorities “to figure out what percentage of M4(3) they think is appropriate”.
Labour’s Nadia Whittome asked Buchan about evidence from disabled people that private sector landlords were refusing permission for tenants to make “even the most basic accessible adaptations, like installing a ramp or grab rails”.
Buchan said such permission should “not be unreasonably withheld” if it was an adaptation that “does not affect the structure of the fabric of the house”.
But Whittome said that a review commissioned by the government found only eight per cent of disabled facilities grants (DFGs) applications were from private tenants, even though about 19 per cent of disabled people lived in the private rented sector.
Buchan said this was one of the reasons the government was planning to abolish section 21 “no fault” evictions through its renters (reform) bill “so that people can ask for adaptations and those cannot be unreasonably refused”.
Whittome also told the minister that the number of social homes being built was falling under the government, with – last year – 22,000 social homes sold or demolished, and just 9,500 new ones built, with a net loss of more than 175,000 over the last 10 years.
And she said Disability Rights UK had told the committee that it did not matter how many accessible homes existed, if disabled people – who were more likely to be on low incomes –could not afford to live in them.
Whittome said the government did not have any targets for building new social housing.
She added: “Is that because you’re just not building very many?”
Buchan said the government had committed to build more social housing, but Whittome told her: “You have no target for building social homes and in the last year, which is consistent with the last 10 years, there has been a net loss of social homes.”
Conservative MP Mary Robinson had told Buchan earlier that hundreds of disabled people had engaged with the committee’s inquiry through a survey, a roundtable event and by providing written evidence, and there had been “unanimous agreement that we must build more accessible new-build homes”.
Conservative MP Tom Hunt questioned why the DFG system should be means-tested.
He said that many disabled people the committee had met felt they were “cut off from any kind of support” because they were earning too much to qualify for a DFG and were paying “a real big financial penalty” for having a physical impairment.
He said that “many people would see that there’s a sense of unfairness to that”.
He said: “I just think that many will feel… why should they have to pay for something which is completely not their fault… so I think some might ask… how is it any different from, say, access to health services?”
He added: “I couldn’t help but be moved by the conversations that I had, and I think other people on the committee feel the same way.”
Buchan said the government had spent £220 million on DFGs in 2015 which had now risen to £625 million a year, while 91 per cent of DFGs awarded were for less than £15,000.
She said: “It is a balance and clearly the reason that it is means-tested is that if someone really can pay then it’s appropriate that they should pay but it is getting that balance right and it’s making sure that we can use the money as effectively as possible because we want to be using the £625 million pounds as broadly and as effectively as we can.”
She added later: “We could certainly have a philosophical discussion on means-testing.
“All I want to say is that I’m in tremendous awe of disabled people and what they do and that’s why I do want housing that is accessible, we do want to help people with adapting properties.
“That’s the reason why we’ve got the grant, but I’m very much so looking forward to reading the committee’s report.”
Labour’s Mohammad Yasin asked why the government had not acted on a 2018 independent review of DFGs, which it commissioned and which recommended that the upper limit for DFGs, currently set at £30,000 in England, should rise with inflation.
He said the government had promised more than two years ago to consult on increasing the upper limit, as reported by Disability News Service last summer, but that it had so far failed to do so.
Buchan did not explain why the government had failed to meet that pledge, but she said local authorities had “flexibility” to increase the £30,000 limit in their own areas.
She also failed to explain why the government had failed to meet another promise made in 2021, to reform the DFG means test, which Yasin said was “very complex and difficult to navigate”.
Instead, she again pointed to the extra government funding, but she said the government had not ruled out making changes to the formula – nearly three years on – but that this “does require quite a lot of work” and “if you are changing a formula, there will be winners, there will be losers, there will be transitional arrangements, so we need to give it a lot of thought before we alter the formula, the test”.
*Homes built to the M4(2) standard have 16 accessible or adaptable features, similar to the Lifetime Homes standard developed in the early 1990s to make homes more easily adaptable for lifetime use, while M4(3) homes are those that are supposed to be fully wheelchair-accessible
21 March 2024
Maggie Davis: Tributes to pioneer, rebel and advocate
Some of the country’s leading disabled activists have paid tribute to the “immense” contribution of Maggie Davis, an outspoken “rebel”, a powerful advocate and a pioneer of the independent living movement, who died last week at the age of 81.
She was best known for designing – with her late husband Ken – the Grove Road housing scheme, Britain’s first integrated co-operative housing development, which was opened in 1976 in Sutton-in-Ashfield, Nottinghamshire.
But friends and fellow activists this week also remembered a string of other ground-breaking projects, as well as her vision and determination to fight social injustice and oppression, while also being “a strong advocate for the voice of women” in the disabled people’s movement.
She had struggled for nearly a decade, before moving into Grove Road, to escape from a series of segregated residential units and care homes after becoming disabled in 1967.
While setting up Grove Road, and living in accommodation in nearby Derbyshire, she and her husband came up with the idea for DIAL – the first telephone advice and information line provided by and for disabled people – because of the problems they had had searching for disability-related information.
They set up DIAL in an unused cloakroom, with a single telephone, both provided by Derbyshire County Council, and with help from disabled colleagues.
In an interview with Disability News Service (DNS) in 2019, she said of their work: “There was no time for self-congratulations, and there was no place for it, it was just something that needed to be done.
“If we didn’t do it, nobody would. It was just hard work. It was a struggle for everybody, but it was galvanising at the time.”
Grove Road was a new building with three ground-floor flats designed for wheelchair-users, and three flats on the first floor for volunteer non-disabled tenants who would provide personal assistance support on a rota basis for the disabled people living on the ground floor.
She and her husband lived in the Grove Road development for six years before securing a mortgage and a grant to buy and adapt – including the installation of a through-ceiling lift – a semi-detached home of their own in Clay Cross, Derbyshire.
But the DIAL project also laid the foundations for the country’s first coalition of disabled people, Derbyshire Coalition of Disabled People, and then Derbyshire Centre for Integrated Living.
Maggie and Ken Davis had also helped set up the pioneering Union of the Physically Impaired Against Segregation (UPIAS), which played a crucial role in the development of the disabled people’s movement and what was later known as the social model of disability.
They had been among those disabled activists who responded to a letter in the Guardian written by Paul Hunt in 1972, which described how disabled people were being forced into “isolated unsuitable institutions where their views are ignored and they are subject to authoritarian and often cruel regimes”.
John Evans, a fellow independent living pioneer, described Maggie Davis as “one of the last remaining persons of the golden generation” of disabled activists, and he said her death was a “personal and historic loss”.
The contributions that she and her husband made to the independent living and disability movements were “immense”, he said.
He added: “They were both pioneers in opening the door of opportunities for other disabled people to live independently.”
Maggie and Ken Davis had joined Evans and other activists in setting up the first informal independent living network in the late 1970s, while Evans and fellow residents of a Leonard Cheshire care home in Hampshire were preparing their Project 81, which eventually secured their own escape into independent living.
He said: “We constantly stayed in touch with each other, sharing our ideas and inspiration and eventually the network grew into a wide-ranging group of independent living activists throughout the country.”
That network helped to “inspire and encourage others to do likewise as part of empowering ourselves to be more political in seeking further progress for change in the UK”, he said.
Baroness [Jane] Campbell, another independent living pioneer, from the generation that followed and learned from Maggie and Ken Davis, said the couple had provided “a blueprint” for developing centres for independent living across the country.
This blueprint also allowed the movement to start drafting a plan for laws that would eventually provide disabled people with the option to replace social services or NHS care with personal assistants, she said.
Thanks to their vision, and that of John Evans, independent living became “one of the essential components” of the British Council of Organisations of Disabled People (BCODP), said Baroness Campbell.
She said that the “vision, determination and bloody mindedness” of Maggie Davis had “spawned other younger women to join the independent living mission and develop her work liberating disabled people from residential care, or their childhood home with mum and dad with little prospect of leaving”.
Paul Hunt’s widow, Judy, a close and long-standing friend of Maggie Davis, said that when she reads articles her friend has written she is still “struck by the force of her words and power of her personality”.
She told DNS: “There was a rebel deep inside her that would not be silenced, and she put it endlessly to good use.
“She was never willing to give in to oppressive administrators of institutions, or others who treated people unjustly.”
She said that the contribution of Maggie and Ken Davis to the struggle against a disabling society was “profound”, and that they had broken through “many of the housing and community care barriers” that were still keeping many disabled people trapped in institutions in the 1970s.
She said: “They travelled to Scandinavia to bring back new ideas for accessible housing with support and showed by example what could be done” through the Grove Road scheme.
And she said they had moved “from one pioneering project to the next with insatiable determination”.
Judy Hunt said: “Maggie spoke with a refreshing directness against injustice of all kinds but particularly against oppression towards disabled people and women and set out to do something about it, such as campaigning for an accessible women’s refuge because there was nowhere locally disabled women facing violence could go.”
Maggie Davis was, she said, “a fighter and a fundamental believer in collective action”, and also “a great support to many people who turned to her”.
Frances Hasler, who would later become a founder and chief executive of the National Centre for Independent Living, said it was Maggie and Ken Davis who had first introduced her to the social model of disability.
She said: “I remember Maggie being a strong advocate for the voice of women in the movement. She was also great at articulating the right to be ordinary.
“She was outspoken and determined because she needed to be, in order to get an ordinary thing – a home to live in and the wherewithal to live there.
“What set her apart was her willingness to share her experience and insights with other disabled women.”
In an interview with the Guardian, Davis had described the institutions she had been forced to live in after becoming disabled and before she met her husband, including years at Stoke Mandeville Hospital and in a hostel in its grounds, describing the “dehumanising” lack of any kind of privacy.
She told the Guardian: “Institutions are just tarted up poor law institutions.
“Where I was I could have been in two centuries ago – all the same attitudes.
“You were given pocket money – you’re impoverished, you are socially dead. It’s just an existence.”
The disabled writer and researcher Jenny Morris, who helped write the Labour government’s Improving the Life Chances of Disabled People white paper, said she hadn’t known her well, but she had “admired and learned from women like Maggie”.
She said: “The story of Maggie and Ken’s struggles and successes in living independently were an inspiration to me when I became disabled in 1983.
“They were an illustration of not only what individuals could do and change but also of the growing disability movement.”
In the 2019 DNS interview, Davis had spoken of how she feared that much of what she and her husband helped to achieve could be put at risk by the austerity policies of successive Conservative-led governments.
She said: “I think we all feel very proud of what we did but we are desolate about what we think we know is going to happen and that they will destroy it all.
“If no action is taken, then we could quite easily end up where we began, being incarcerated away from society, out of sight and out of the public mind.”
She said she was “terrified” about whether she would continue to receive the funding she needed for 24-7 support.
“With the constant eroding of funding, I am in constant fear of this being removed and me being forced back into institutional care, which I would not allow,” she said.
“It’s just horrendous. I can see it being taken away from me and being taken away from us. Every time they come to do an assessment, they try to take a bit more off me.”
She appealed then for disabled activists to “shout their outrage from the rooftops” about the government’s austerity policies and the creeping return to segregated, institutional living.
21 March 2024
‘Underhand tactics’ could still see disabled people forced into care homes, say campaigners
A council has been accused of using underhand tactics to cut millions of pounds from support packages and push disabled people into residential care, despite being forced to withdraw a controversial policy that could have had the same impact.
The grassroots group Bristol Reclaiming Independent Living (BRIL) said Bristol City Council was still trying to bring in the much-criticised policy “through the back door”, as it aims to save nearly £7 million from its funding of adult care and support packages in 2024-25.
Only last month, the council was forced to withdraw its draft Fair and Affordable Care Policy, which said disabled people could be offered a “residential or nursing home placement” if “a care package to remain at home would substantially exceed the affordability of residential care”.
It withdrew the draft policy after being threatened with legal action by BRIL, which argued that the proposals breached the Care Act, the Human Rights Act, and the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
The council instead set up a new group to “consider how to build a system to fairly allocate Adult Social Care funding within the agreed budget to meet the diverse needs of the population”.
But BRIL says that budget plans published last month (PDF) show the council now intends to increase the number of reviews of anyone receiving at least 40 hours care and support a week or a package worth at least £920 a week, to ensure the council is “delivering best value”.
BRIL fears this will again raise the possibility of disabled people being forced into residential care, and that it will deliver “an identical policy, just with a different name”, and that “best value” will mean a care home placement.
There are also serious concerns that a consultancy being used by the council to carry out “strengths-based” reviews of the support packages will receive a share of all the costs they manage to cut.
And BRIL fears that the temporary “locum” social workers the council is recruiting to carry out reviews will be paid bonuses according to how much they save the council by cutting care packages, just as happened in Southampton eight years ago.
The policy will affect nearly 200 people with what the council calls “complex” packages of support, with 34 of them being identified as “overdue” an annual review.
Analysis of the council’s latest budget documents (PDF) shows the council is now aiming to save nearly £7 million from its funding of adult care and support packages in 2024-25.
This includes more than £1.2 million by reviewing more care packages to ensure disabled people are “enabled to be as independent as possible” and to “support approaches which focus on an individuals’ personal strengths”.
Another £1 million will be found by focusing on “reablement” which will mean “more people go on to achieve improved independence, resulting in the need for less care and therefore reduced costs”.
The council also plans to cut costs by £1.35 million by reviewing the packages of disabled people who have left hospital after being sectioned under the Mental Health Act, which the council says will “support and improve independence, resulting in the need for less care and therefore reduced costs”.
Another £1.785 million will be cut by reviewing housing-related support which currently “helps people stay living independently in their homes”, while £1.5 million will be saved by reducing the number of longer-term care packages by increasing reviews of people who have moved from hospital into residential or nursing care.
Mark Williams, BRIL’s co-founder, told Disability News Service (DNS) they were “very worried and very angry”.
He said: “Very worried for all disabled people in Bristol and everywhere else, as if it’s coming here, it could be the same for everywhere.”
A BRIL spokesperson added: “We can only conclude that Bristol City Council has decided not to invest in the lives and futures of disabled people and families, and instead taken a short-term and budget-led approach that will cost all of us more, in human, social and economic terms.”
Bristol City Council had failed to comment by noon today (Thursday), despite being approached by DNS last Friday.
21 March 2024
Disabled-led business seeks new clients after being hit by rise of AI
By Josephine Fay
A disabled-led business that provides work for more than 20 disabled freelancers at a time is urgently seeking new clients, and financial support, after its profits were severely hit by the rise of artificial intelligence (AI).
Academic Audio Transcription (AAT) has already raised more than £6,000 through a crowdfunder, but this is only enough to pay its overheads for a month.
Now it desperately needs to find new clients to secure its future.
The company specialises in transcribing lectures, conferences, workshops and interviews, and providing closed captioning services.
But its client base has been hit by the “problematic” rise of AI, while its biggest market, the university sector, is in “chaos”.
AAT’s founder Zara Bain believes that AI provides poorer quality transcripts than those produced by humans, failing to take account of accents or context and nearly always proving less accurate.
She said: “Whilst we’re not opposed to using technology, we believe that AI for transcription is deeply flawed.”
AI captions are also flawed and can often be inaccessible and inaccurate, failing to capture the names of people, places and organisations, she added.
She set up AAT seven years ago when she was forced to take medical leave from her PhD and needed to find a way to pay her rent and bills.
It offers work to its disabled freelancers “at the pace and capacity that people can manage”, allowing them to work remotely around their “flare-ups, crashes, relapses and remissions”.
Bain said that AAT has “transformed” the lives of its disabled freelancers.
She said: “A key part of our mission is to use our business to make fairly-paid, accessible work for predominantly disabled, chronically-ill and neurodivergent freelancers, where such work can be hard to come by, or often comes with inaccessible strings attached.”
At a time when the employment rate for disabled people remains about 30 percentage points below that of non-disabled people, with workplace discrimination still widespread, AAT’s inclusive work environment allows her team to work without the fear of discrimination or judgment, she said.
She decided to launch the company because she knew the importance of making content accessible.
She said: “People who are deaf or hard of hearing rely on captions or transcripts to access audio content like interviews, podcasts, and events.
“Transcription removes the barrier of audio-only information, allowing them to participate equally.
“This is also true for people who might struggle to process information through audio alone.
“A written transcript allows them to follow along, read at their own pace, and revisit key points.”
But as she says on the crowdfunder: “AAT is more than a business to us, it’s a manifestation of not just our belief in equality and equity of opportunity, but our need to realise that belief as a reality to pay our bills, feed ourselves and our kids, and keep ourselves engaged with stimulating work which contributes to projects that really do make a difference.”
21 March 2024
Other disability-related stories covered by mainstream media this week
The government has brought adult social care in England “to its knees” with years of uneven funding and a “woefully insufficient plan” to fill thousands of staff vacancies, MPs have said in a damning report on a system that provides long-term care for 835,000 people. The public accounts committee said “chronic underfunding, rising waiting lists and patchwork funding” has placed sustained pressure on local authorities, and the government is falling short on Boris Johnson’s promise in 2019 to “fix the crisis in social care once and for all”: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/mar/20/government-has-brought-adult-social-care-in-england-to-its-knees-mps-say
Benefit levels are too low with claimants unable to afford daily living costs, according to damning evidence given to MPs. In a report published today, the work and pensions committee highlighted the surging demand for foodbanks among those on benefits in recent years. They found low levels of support received by disabled people had a “negative physical and mental health impact, which could in turn affect their ability to work”: https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/dwp-benefits-too-low-people-32397711
A disabled woman who provided support to people affected by the Grenfell fire tragedy has been awarded £4.6 million compensation after getting PTSD and being sacked by a council. Rachael Wright-Turner was dismissed from her £125,000-a-year role by Hammersmith and Fulham council and sued the authority for disability discrimination and harassment. A tribunal found officers in the council had lied in its evidence, prompting the award which is thought to be highest-ever such award against a public body: https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/grenfell-victims-helper-awarded-46-32374410
A 16-year-old girl with “significant and chronic disabilities” who died in squalor at her family home in rural mid-Wales did not have a care plan in place, a child practice review into her death has found. Kaylea Titford, who had spina bifida and used a wheelchair, was found in conditions described as “unfit for any animal” in Newtown, Powys, leading to her parents being jailed for manslaughter by gross negligence. The review said that though many professionals were involved in Kaylea’s life, her care was not coordinated by a single person or organisation: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/mar/14/kaylea-titford-had-no-care-plan-in-place-when-she-died-review-finds
A disabled pedestrian whose actions led to the death of a 77-year-old cyclist who was riding on the pavement is to appeal her manslaughter conviction. Auriol Grey, 50, shouted an expletive and gestured aggressively towards Celia Ward, who then fell in front of a car, in Cambridgeshire in 2020. Grey, of Bradbury Place, Huntingdon, was jailed for three years in 2023. Court of Appeal judges gave the go-ahead for her to appeal her conviction at a hearing in London: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-68606255
A Devon woman is campaigning for blue badge holders to be able to use personal electric scooters on public land. Ella Wakley has a rare form of dwarfism which requires her to use an e-scooter, but said she risks being prosecuted when she uses it. The current law means privately-owned e-scooters are illegal to ride on public roads: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-devon-68574960
21 March 2024
News provided by John Pring at www.disabilitynewsservice.com
