Contents
DWP blocked researchers from discussing ‘shocking’ data on ESA suicide attempts in ‘unique’ report 4
Minister told it is ‘not too late’ to change direction and stop favouring big charities 11
Disability minister is ‘drawing up a list’ of potential actions to address barriers 13
Abuse of disabled supporters at live sports events is growing problem, survey finds 16
Other disability-related stories covered by mainstream media this week 17
Committee examining assisted suicide bill ‘is skewed’, ‘a stitch-up’… and may have breached UN convention
Disabled campaigners have raised serious concerns about the fairness of the committee of MPs that is carrying out detailed examination of a bill to legalise assisted suicide, after it prevented any disabled people’s organisations (DPOs) from giving evidence in person.
The actions of the committee, led by Labour MP Kim Leadbeater, appear to have breached the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD), and the duty it imposes to “closely consult with and actively involve” disabled people through DPOs when developing laws relating to disabled people.
It emerged on Tuesday that nearly two-thirds of the witnesses who will give oral evidence to the committee in the coming weeks have previously expressed support for legalising assisted suicide.
And, of the eight witnesses who were proposed by Leadbeater to give oral evidence about foreign countries and states that have legalised assisted suicide, all eight are in favour of legalisation, despite huge concerns about laws introduced in countries such as Belgium, the Netherlands, Canada, and parts of the US and Australia.
The list of proposed witnesses was put together by Leadbeater, who is trying to steer the private member’s bill – which will apply to England and Wales – through the House of Commons.
The committee she is leading – which is dominated by MPs who support legalisation – decided on Tuesday that it would not hear oral evidence from any DPOs, even though disabled people and their organisations have been at the heart of opposition to Leadbeater’s terminally ill adults (end of life) bill.
The first tranche of witnesses was published this morning (Thursday), and it includes no DPOs, although Chelsea Roff, the founder of Eat Breathe Thrive, which describes itself as “a community of people with lived experience of eating disorders”, is listed as a witness.
Disabled peer Baroness [Tanni] Grey-Thompson, an opponent of legalisation, told DNS yesterday that she was “very concerned” by the committee’s actions.
She said: “There must be balance in terms of the witnesses called and an impartial look at other jurisdictions.”
She added: “There are lots of claims that this is the most tightly-worded bill in the world, but I have not seen evidence of this.”
Tony Jennings, a prominent disabled activist, who usually focuses in his work on accessible transport, said he believed the actions of the committee show the parliamentary process “now looks like a stitch up”.
He said: “Disabled people will pay with their lives as there is no way to prevent coercion and the safeguards will not work.”
He said it was clear the evidence sessions would not be fair and balanced when nearly two-thirds of the witnesses will be in favour of legalisation.
He added: “Kim Leadbeater must now explain why there is no representation from disabled people’s groups so that they can express their specific concerns about the bill.”
He said the events of the week showed why disabled people were “terrified for their lives”.
Paula Peters, a member of the national steering group of Disabled People Against Cuts, told DNS that it was “deeply concerning and troubling” to see how the committee was selecting witnesses to give oral evidence, including blocking DPOs from appearing before the committee.
She said: “The committee seems very skewed towards the pro-assisted dying lobby and supporters. That’s unacceptable.”
She said it was an “appalling situation”, and she urged disabled people across England and Wales to contact their MPs and raise their worries and concerns about the committee’s actions.
The aim of Tuesday’s hearing was to agree when the committee would hear oral evidence from witnesses in the coming weeks, and which experts would be asked to give that evidence.
There was particular concern raised among opponents of the bill – and some of those who support legalisation – that Leadbeater and her supporters on the committee were refusing to allow an expert from the Royal College of Psychiatrists (RCP) to give evidence, despite huge concerns about the issues of capacity and the risk of coercion of people with terminal illness if the bill becomes law.
Conservative MP Kit Malthouse, a strong supporter of legalisation, claimed in Tuesday’s hearing that allowing someone from RCP to give evidence would create a risk that they would “double up” in their expertise with other medical experts, “which was not necessarily in the interests of time”.
Leadbeater was later forced to back down, and yesterday morning announced that an RCP expert would now be allowed to give evidence.
Among those the committee is refusing to hear evidence from is disabled activist Ellen Clifford, who was played a key role in coordinating disabled people’s opposition to the bill, and who coordinates the coalition of DPOs that monitors UNCRPD implementation in the UK.
The Conservative MP who has led opposition to the bill, Danny Kruger, told the committee on Tuesday that Clifford had just won a high court case she took against the last government over its benefit reforms (see separate story) and so was “no friend of my party”.
But he said she was “a very, very powerful advocate on behalf of disabled people” and played an important role as coordinator of the UN monitoring coalition.
The committee has so far refused to allow Clifford to be added to the list of witnesses.
There was also concern raised by the bill’s opponents on the committee about the failure to hear from critics of legalisation in countries such as Canada, which has some of the most permissive assisted suicide laws in the world and where “medical assistance in dying” was the sixth highest cause of death in 2022.
The committee is also only inviting evidence from experts from Australia who are in favour of legalisation, and not any of the leading Australian experts who have raised concerns about how assisted suicide laws have been implemented.
Kruger said it was vital to hear from politicians in Australia who were opposed to the legalisation and “continue to very profoundly oppose it on the grounds that it’s not working and it’s dangerous and it’s being expanded”.
Malthouse said there was no need to hear from experts in Canada, where legislation was “very different” to Leadbeater’s bill, and he claimed Leadbeater had produced a list of witnesses which was “a compromise”.
But Kruger told fellow members of the committee that it was “an unbalanced list” of witnesses.
He said his “quick analysis” of almost 60 names proposed by Leadbeater was that 38 of them were in favour of legalisation, and just 20 were opposed, while all eight from “foreign jurisdictions” were “supportive” of legalising assisted suicide.
He said: “I’m not surprised [Malthouse] does not want to hear from Canada because the stories there are so appalling.”
Dr Simon Opher, a Labour supporter of the bill, claimed that the split of 38 witnesses to 20 (66 per cent to 34 per cent) was “an appropriate split and actually reflects the vote in the Commons”, even though the Commons vote was 330 MPs in favour to 275 against the bill (55 per cent to 45 per cent) at its second reading.
Kruger told him: “He doesn’t want to hear from Canada. I don’t blame him. People who are in favour of this bill are desperate to keep Canada out of it.”
Leadbeater said she had been given more than 100 names of potential witnesses.
She claimed she had tried to be “extremely balanced” in drawing up the list so there were “people with a range of views and opinions but most importantly, there are people we will hear from who have got expertise”.
She said: “I’m very happy that we will hear from so many witnesses over a period of several days, and I’m, again, very happy that I have added more time to that so we can hear from more witnesses.”
Even before the committee’s hearing, there were concerns that, although a strong majority of disabled MPs voted against the bill at its second reading, none of them are members of the bill committee, while one of the two disabled MPs who voted in favour – Dr Marie Tidball – is on the committee.
Oral evidence will begin on Tuesday (28 January).
23 January 2025
DWP blocked researchers from discussing ‘shocking’ data on ESA suicide attempts in ‘unique’ report
Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) civil servants who commissioned a key piece of research on claimants of out-of-work disability benefits blocked researchers from discussing “shocking” data showing how many of them had attempted suicide.
The research, commissioned in 2018, examined the “health, social and economic profile” of disabled people who receive employment and support allowance (ESA).
It was viewed as “a unique opportunity to gain valuable insights into the mental health and life circumstances of this group of people, and compare their experiences to those in the rest of the working age population”.
This was because it used data from the national Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Survey (APMS), England’s highest quality survey of the population’s mental health, whose results had been published in September 2016.
Disability News Service reported in November 2017 how the “shocking” APMS figures showed that more than two-fifths (43.2 per cent) of ESA claimants said they had attempted suicide at some point in their lives, while two-thirds (66 per cent) had had suicidal thoughts.
The following year, DWP commissioned social research agency NatCen to examine the “particular challenges and barriers faced” by ESA claimants to “inform thinking on how best to develop a health and disability benefit system that supports people into work, where possible, and to live independent lives”.
But it told NatCen not to include any discussion of the figures showing how many ESA claimants had tried to take their own lives, or how many of them had had thoughts of suicide.
And when NatCen passed its completed report to DWP, there was no mention of those figures.
Instead, the report showed that ESA claimants were “a population reporting high levels of stress”, while “many faced serious debt arrears” and were “more likely to live by themselves, have a small network, and feel isolated and lonely”.
There was no mention of attempted suicide, self-harm or suicidal ideation.
Last week, DNS reported how Conservative ministers prevented the report from being published and ensured it was not included in a “health and disability” green paper.
The NatCen report was only finally published last autumn by the new Labour government, as part of a batch of 31 research papers the last government had “sat on” for up to six years.
This week, a NatCen spokesperson refused to confirm that DWP asked for the figures to be excluded from the report.
Instead, she said: “Self-harm and suicidality were not part of the agreed scope of this particular report as the topics were covered in 2014 in the main APMS report.
“This is all we are aware of as commissioned researchers on the project.”
She later added: “As the DWP were the commissioners of this research, you will need to talk to them for more information.
“All we can say is that self-harm and suicidality were not part of the agreed scope of this particular report.”
DWP was asked on Monday how it justified telling NatCen to omit discussion of the figures from its report, and whether it now regretted that decision.
Despite confirming receipt of the questions on Monday, and later apologising for the delay in responding, it had failed to produce a response by noon today (Thursday).
The years after the NatCen report was commissioned were marked by Conservative governments continuing to push for measures that would make it harder for disabled people to receive ESA and other out-of-work disability benefits.
This led eventually to a consultation on proposals, published in September 2023, for tighter restrictions on the work capability assessment, which would cut spending by about £3 billion over four years.
Last week, disabled activist Ellen Clifford succeeded in persuading the high court that the consultation was “misleading”, “unfair” and “unlawful” (see separate story).
The years since the NatCen report was commissioned were also marked by the suicides of many claimants of ESA and its universal credit equivalent, including Roy Curtis in 2018 and Kevin Gale in March 2022, and the death following self-harm of Nazerine Anderson in June 2023.
23 January 2025
High court victory over Tory DWP cuts will provide impetus to fight any Labour plans, say activists
A “groundbreaking” legal victory at the high court has provided fuel for disabled activists to fight the new government’s expected cuts to spending on disability benefits, and to call on ministers to meet their legal obligations to co-produce policy.
Disabled activist Ellen Clifford, who brought the high court case, said she was “overjoyed” after Mr Justice Calver ruled the last Conservative government had issued a “rushed”, “unfair” and “misleading” consultation on proposals to make “substantial” cuts to out-of-work disability benefits.
Clifford and other activists and disabled people’s organisations (DPOs) told Disability News Service (DNS) this week that the new Labour government must now commit to work in co-production with disabled people and DPOs to build a new, fairer social security system.
Clifford said she hoped the victory had given disabled people “momentum” and inspired them to believe that “we can make a difference”.
She said the case was a “real collective effort” and came out of the work of the UK coalition of DPOs that monitors the implementation of the UN disability convention, and the work of disabled activists and allies who have visited Geneva to give evidence to the UN about that lack of progress.
She said outside court that the judgment had “respected the expertise of Deaf and disabled people’s organisations” and was “a win for disabled people”, although “we know that this isn’t the end of the fight” and that “the government is hell bent on attacking disabled people”.
Disability Wales, which raised concerns with DWP about its consultation, said Clifford’s victory over the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) and its former secretary of state Mel Stride was “groundbreaking”.
Rhian Davies, chief executive of Disability Wales, called on the new UK government to be “open and transparent about its current proposals and to engage co-productively with disabled people’s organisations on reforms that reflect the higher costs of daily living faced by disabled people as well as addressing the wide-ranging ableist barriers in workplaces and everyday life”.
Svetlana Kotova, director of campaigns and justice for Inclusion London, which provided a witness statement for the legal case, and worked with Clifford and her lawyers, said: “We are delighted that the court has seen beyond the DWP’s deceptive tactics and upheld the rule of law.
“The legal judgment handed down last week is a damning indictment against the previous government’s attempts to obscure their plans for huge cuts to essential benefits, for nearly half a million disabled people.”
She added: “We would urge the Labour government to start working with disabled people and to use this ruling as an opportunity to rethink their approach to social security.
“They must not simply announce the same devastating cuts in a different way – they must stop pursuing Tory policies that do not work and will cause disabled people so much harm.”
John McArdle, co-founder of Black Triangle Campaign, who provided a witness statement for Clifford’s case stating that he felt “personally misled” by the consultation, said it was a “magnificent victory”.
He said it would “absolutely” provide impetus for disabled activists to fight back against attacks by the new government on disabled people’s support and rights.
He warned the government that if it “does decide to make a bonfire of disability rights, we will fight them all the way through the courts” and that every disabled person should write to their MP and say “these proposals must not pass” if they are re-introduced by Labour.
He said: “We have won a case in the high court hands down.
“The machinations of DWP policy-making have been exposed for all to see.
“We want evidence-based policy; what has been exposed in this court case, and it has all come into the glaring daylight, is that their first consideration was to slash the budget and then to find evidence to justify it.
“Now Labour are planning to do the same, but it’s not going to happen.”
Emma Cotton, a social security adviser and co-ordinator of the trade union group of Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC), said the fightback against the consultation had been “incredible” and “a great lesson in the power of solidarity”.
She said: “The judgement itself is damning – agreeing with nearly all of Ellen’s arguments and by doing so establishing helpful case law principles for social security cases to come.
“It means the government will have to be very cautious in the way it approaches another consultation on the work capability assessment.
“I hope this gives disabled people some hope and would urge them to reach out to their local DPAC and get involved in the continuing fight for disability rights.”
Disability Rights UK, which had criticised the consultation and was another DPO mentioned in the judgment, congratulated Clifford on her “important legal victory”, and said: “Without her steadfast, principled and brave campaigning, the DWP would not have suffered the conclusive loss it has.
“Instead of pursuing the further impoverishment of disabled people, it needs to co-produce reforms that will protect our rights to an adequate standard of living.”
Disability North, another DPO that had been critical of the consultation and was mentioned by Mr Justice Calver, said the judgment was “a victory for fairness and transparency”.
Vici Richardson, chief executive of Disability North, said: “We hope this will send a strong message that any future consultations must be grounded in clear communication, respect and with enough time and appropriate means to feed back.
“Moving forward, in any conversations around welfare reform, we want to see disabled people supported, not vilified, ensuring the right support for those who need it most.”
Aoife O’Reilly, from Public Law Project, the solicitor who acted for Clifford, said: “This judgment has vindicated our criticism of the DWP’s unlawful consultation and we now urge the government to scrap these planned reforms, which were disingenuously presented to the Deaf and disabled people who would be affected.”
Finding DWP’s actions unlawful, Mr Justice Calver said in his 42-page judgment that the eight-week consultation – issued by Stride in September 2023 – had failed to explain that planned reforms to the work capability assessment (WCA) would cut the benefits of 424,000 disabled people, with many worse off by at least £416 a month.
If the reforms became law, those 424,000 disabled people would also have to comply with work-related requirements and face the possibility of sanctions, while another 33,000 disabled claimants who were already in the limited capability for work group would now have to comply with even tougher work-related requirements and potential sanctions.
Stride had failed to make it clear that one of the key motives for his reforms was to cut spending by about £3 billion over four years.
He and his ministers had claimed that the reforms were intended to support more disabled people into work, yet only 15,000 of the 457,000 affected were expected by DWP to enter employment.
Internal DWP documents, revealed during the legal case, showed that nearly 100,000 more disabled people could be forced into poverty.
Despite issuing a statement to other media last week – in which it pledged to repeat the consultation* – DWP had failed to respond to questions from DNS by noon today (Thursday).
DNS had asked the department, now led by Labour’s Liz Kendall, for its next steps on the proposed reforms, and whether it would apologise to disabled people for misleading them in the 2023 consultation document.
Fears of further cuts to disability benefits were heightened this week when prime minister Sir Keir Starmer – in an interview with The Sun newspaper published the day after the judgment – boasted that he would be “ruthless with cuts” if necessary and would “fight” to convince his own MPs of the need for cuts to benefits.
Details of Labour’s plans will be included in a green paper in the spring and then – following a 12-week consultation – a white paper later this year, but the government has already pledged to make the same £3 billion in cuts as those proposed by the Conservatives, although it has not yet said whether it will implement the same reforms proposed by Stride.
*The Guardian reported a DWP spokesperson saying: “The judge has found the previous government failed to adequately explain their proposals. As part of wider reforms that help people into work and ensure fiscal sustainability, the government will re-consult on the WCA descriptor changes, addressing the shortcomings in the previous consultation, in light of the judgment. The government intends to deliver the full level of savings in the public finances forecasts.”
23 January 2025
Lords committee led by Tory banker calls for stricter assessments and conditions for disabled benefit claimants
Disabled activists have questioned the “draconian” conclusions of a Lords committee that has told the government to impose stricter conditions, more assessments, and a more “rigorous” work capability assessment on claimants of out-of-work disability benefits.
The calls by the economic affairs committee echo many of those made by politicians over the last 30 years, including the much-repeated demand for an assessment that examines what “an individual can do rather than… what they cannot do”, a phrase first used by Labour social security secretary Alistair Darling in 1999.
There were also concerns that the committee dismissed reports that increasing claimant numbers are at least partly due to rising levels of ill-health and NHS waiting-lists since the start of the pandemic.
The committee called for sick and disabled people who are signed off work for more than a month by their GP to “undergo additional or ongoing assessments”.
And it called for all those on “incapacity benefit” – which probably means the “limited capability” universal credit groups – to have a work coach for the first two years of their period on out-of-work benefits.
It said reform was needed “both to curb the increasing fiscal burden and to address the ever-growing social cost of hundreds of thousands of people dependent on benefits”.
But there was no call for the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to research why claimant numbers have been rising in recent years.
And as with other recent reports, speeches and policy proposals, there was no mention in the committee’s findings of the years of deaths and other harm caused by successive reforms of the assessment process and cuts to benefits*, the harshness of the assessment systems, DWP’s chronic safeguarding failures, or the continuing risk of harm to disabled claimants.
The cross-party economic affairs committee based its report on just six oral evidence sessions, held last October, November and December, and it took no written evidence.
It took no evidence from any disabled people’s organisation, or from anyone who claims out-of-work disability benefits.
Instead, the committee heard from thinktanks, ministers, civil servants, academics and the Office for Budget Responsibility.
In a letter to work and pensions secretary Liz Kendall, the committee’s chair, the Tory peer Lord [George] Bridges, said the health-related benefits system was financially unsustainable.
Lord Bridges is a former chair of the Conservative research department, and the party’s former campaign director, a former leader writer for The Times, and now a senior adviser to the Spanish bank Santander.
His letter was widely reported in the mainstream media, and adds to pressure on the government to announce cuts to spending in its forthcoming disability benefits green paper.
Linda Burnip, co-founder of Disabled People Against Cuts, said there was “no economic sense in these draconian proposals” but “yet again, disabled people will bear the brunt of cuts if they are adopted”.
She said the committee appeared to “know nothing about how the social security systems work and most of their suggestions would involve large additional expenditure to achieve the goals the committee are proposing”.
She said: “DWP staff are already massively overworked, with lengthy backlogs for many claims, so to have a jobcentre coach involved after someone was off work for over a month and to have a jobcentre coach pursuing people to get into work for the first two years of any claim would involve recruiting many extra staff, which would cost more than any savings made.
“Changes to assessments, making them more stringent, would also necessitate additional funding for the corporations carrying these out.
“Added to that, pushing even more disabled people into further poverty would increase demands on the NHS, which we know is already under enormous pressure and that too would cost more in the longer term.”
Asked why there was no evidence from disabled people’s organisations, a spokesperson for the economic affairs committee said: “The inquiry was a short follow-up to the committee’s previous inquiry into economic inactivity so there was no formal call for evidence.
“As an economic affairs committee, the focus of the inquiry was on the economic and fiscal aspects of inactivity and so witnesses were invited who could specifically address those aspects of the issues explored.”
He said the committee “did not hear corroborating evidence that the rise in health-related claimants was primarily caused by a decline in the nation’s health”.
The spokesperson did not explain why there was no call for DWP to research the reason for increasing numbers of claimants, but he said that, because there was “insufficient evidence that the sharp rise in the number of claimants reflects a deterioration in people’s health”, its conclusions focused on “the extent to which the rise in caseloads might be explained by the structure and process of the welfare system”.
*The Department: How a Violent Government Bureaucracy Killed Hundreds and Hid the Evidence, DNS editor John Pring’s book on the years of deaths linked to DWP, is published by Pluto Press
23 January 2025
Minister told it is ‘not too late’ to change direction and stop favouring big charities
The new disability minister has been told it is “not too late to change course”, after government figures showed he has prioritised meetings with the big disability charities over engagement with disabled people’s organisations (DPOs).
The figures, obtained by Disability News Service under the Freedom of Information Act, show that Labour’s Sir Stephen Timms had just 10 meetings with organisations run and controlled by disabled people in the first five months after he was appointed.
This compares with 17 meetings with charities that are not run and controlled by disabled people, including big disability charities such as Mind, Sense, MS Society, Scope, Mencap and RNID*.
There are likely to have been further meetings with charity representatives at Labour’s annual party conference in Liverpool in late September**.
The figures came just weeks after it emerged that DPO Forum England and Disability Rights UK had accused non-disabled-led charities of seizing their language on empowerment but failing to share their access to ministers and other decision-makers.
In a response to the government’s consultation on developing a new relationship with civil society, they said the government should prioritise the “authentic” views of DPOs and ensure that “those directly impacted by these issues have real authority in the decision-making process”, while those organisations not led by disabled people were “actively harmful to DPOs and the Disabled people’s movement”.
While Labour was in opposition – particularly under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn and chancellor John McDonnell – there were frequent pledges that the party would put disabled people’s voices at the heart of government if it was elected.
There were hopes among DPOs that the election of a new Labour government would mark this kind of transformation in engagement, following years in which they were sidelined by successive Conservative-led governments.
In July 2023, the Conservative minister for disabled people, Tom Pursglove, was criticised by Tory MP and former minister Jackie Doyle-Price for failing to consult properly with DPOs over his forthcoming disability action plan.
One of his predecessors, Justin Tomlinson, was repeatedly criticised for his lack of engagement with DPOs during the early months of the pandemic.
And in January 2021, DPOs across the country said they were “shocked and dismayed” at the government’s failure to engage with them as it prepared its long-awaited disability strategy.
When Sir Stephen was appointed in mid-July 2024 as Labour’s new minister for social security and disability, he promised to “ensure disabled people’s views and voices are at the heart of all we do”.
He then said he looked forward “to meeting with disability organisations this week”.
But the freedom of information response from the Department for Work and Pensions shows that that week’s meetings were all with charities that were not led by disabled people, although a representative of one DPO was present at a virtual meeting with representatives of the Disability Benefits Consortium.
By this time, Sir Stephen had already had an in-person meeting with representatives of two disability charities – Scope and Mind – on 11 July, just three days after his appointment.
He did not have his first meeting with DPOs until more than two months after his appointment, when he had a virtual meeting on 10 September with the DPO Forum England, whose members are all DPOs.
Mark Harrison, a member of the Reclaiming Our Futures Alliance (ROFA) steering group, said this week: “All we are asking of the Labour government is to implement the UN convention on the rights of disabled people.
“This very clearly states that engagement needs to be with disabled people and their representative organisations.
“When the [last Labour government] signed and ratified the [convention] they committed to progressive realisation – this means making things better for disabled people and progressing against all the articles.
“Unfortunately, the evidence from the first six months in office suggests policy is regressing – going in the opposite direction.
“As yet there has been no strategic engagement or dialogue with DPOs on how to repair 14 years of Tory austerity cuts and culture wars.
“We haven’t been invited to coproduce a policy like Improving the Life Chances of Disabled People or Equality 2025 – which the Conservatives and Lib Dems derailed.
“It is not too late to change course.
“Alarmingly, from the current government discourse around disabled people and the adoption of Tory cuts to disability benefits, Timms and colleagues in government are on a collision course with DPOs and the UN disability committee.”
*These figures exclude meetings of the government’s own disability networks and advisers. They also exclude meetings with representatives of Disability Benefits Consortium, where DPOs are vastly outnumbered by non-user-led charities
**DPOs are rarely well-funded enough to send representatives to party conferences, and any meetings at conference would not have been included in the DWP figures as they will have been viewed as political meetings
23 January 2025
Disability minister is ‘drawing up a list’ of potential actions to address barriers
Labour’s disability minister has said for the first time that he is drawing up a list of priorities for action to address the barriers faced by disabled people.
It is believed to be the first time that Sir Stephen Timms has spoken publicly of any plans to replace the last government’s much-criticised and deeply-flawed disability strategy and disability action plan.
During a webinar organised by the Communication Workers Union on Tuesday evening, Sir Stephen said that, over the next few months, in connection with the government’s Disability Unit, he would be “drawing up a list of priorities of areas that I think we can make some real progress on in the course of this parliament”.
He said: “I know we’re not going to be able to do everything that everyone would like, but we will I believe be able to make some really substantial progress on key things.”
He had been asked by Joyce Stevenson, the union’s regional disability lead for Scotland, whether he had plans to replace the Enable fund, which supported disabled people who want to stand for elected office with their extra costs.
Sir Stephen told her that “we need to do more” in that area.
He said: “I am going to be looking at the possibility of funding to help those who want to seek elected office.
“I’m not in a position to say we are going to do it, but I think it is an interesting idea and as you say it has been tried out in the past, although it wrapped up a few years ago.”
He said the question of increasing political representation among disabled people was “a strong candidate for inclusion in that priority list”.
A short-lived fund – the Access to Elected Office Fund (AEOF) – was originally set up in 2012 following Liberal Democrat pressure on its Conservative coalition partner.
It funded disability-related costs for candidates in parliamentary and other elections, before it was closed by the Conservatives after the 2015 general election.
It was eventually replaced three years later with the temporary EnAble fund in response to a legal action taken by a trio of disabled politicians who warned that the failure to reopen AEOF breached the Equality Act.
The fund initially only covered the 2019 English local elections, but it was later extended to cover the May 2020 local and police and crime commissioner elections, although these were postponed to the following year because of the pandemic.
It also provided retrospective funding for applicants who stood in the 2019 elections to the European Parliament.
The last government had been promising to set up a replacement for EnAble for three years until it lost power at the general election last July.
Sir Stephen also told the CWU webinar that the government would carry out a 12-week consultation on the disability benefits green paper it plans to publish this spring.
He said this would be followed by a white paper, which he hoped would be published by the end of the year “with firm proposals based on the original proposals and the responses we’ve received in consultation”.
He was speaking just days after disabled activist Ellen Clifford won a “groundbreaking” legal victory at the high court over the last government’s plans to cut spending on out-of-work disability benefits, proposals which the Labour government has yet to rule out (see separate story).
Mark Anthony Bastiani, CWU’s disability lead on its national executive committee, asked Sir Stephen when the government would fully implement the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) into UK law.
Before the general election, the party – through shadow disability minister Vicky Foxcroft – had made repeated pledges that a Labour government would implement the treaty into UK law.
That pledge was weakened in the subsequent National Policy Forum report to a promise to “honour our commitments to the United Nations’ Convention for the Rights of Disabled People and ensure its principles are reflected across government”.
But the general election manifesto did not even offer that weakened promise.
This week, Sir Stephen offered a new explanation – which is likely to leave many disabled activists bemused – for why Labour has backed away from its previous promises to implement the convention.
He told Bastiani: “We haven’t incorporated any of the UN human rights treaties into law in the UK.
“We have ratified them all, we are committed to them all.
“I think that is because they are not really in the form of laws… particularly not in the form of UK law.
“There are other countries that have laws that are more aspirational… and then you kind of leave it sometimes to judges to work out in detail what that means.
“That isn’t how we do law in the UK. Our laws are set out in quite a lot of detail and none of the UN conventions are in that form.
“I think that’s the reason we haven’t adopted any of the UN conventions into law.”
That explanation is in sharp contrast to the years of pledges by the party in opposition to implement the UN convention into UK law, which included its commitment to do so ahead of the 2019 general election.
Only two months ago, disabled Labour MP Marsha de Cordova – herself a former shadow disability minister – pledged in a lecture to push her government to implement the UN convention into UK law.
Despite his excuse for his party reneging on its repeated promises to implement the UN convention, Sir Stephen said he was “very keen” to improve the UK’s standing with the UN committee on the rights of persons with disabilities, which delivered a series of stinging reports on violations of the treaty by successive Conservative-led governments.
Sir Stephen said: “I am going to New York in June when the UN committee meets and I will want to tell them what we have been doing since the general election to put right the problems that have been identified and to remove, we hope, more and more of the barriers that society has put in the way of disabled people.”
He said he hoped to “reassure the committee this new government is committed properly to delivering for disabled people and putting right the problems the previous government was responsible for”.
23 January 2025
Abuse of disabled supporters at live sports events is growing problem, survey finds
The proportion of disabled supporters who say that “disability abuse” is a barrier to them attending live sport has risen sharply in the last three years, according to a new survey.
The annual survey (PDF) of disabled supporters by the disabled-led charity Level Playing Field (LPF) also found that the proportion of those fans reporting inaccessible public transport as a barrier has risen significantly over the last three years.
In 2021, 5.5 per cent of those taking part in the survey pointed to disability-related abuse as a barrier to attending live sport, but this rose to 6.5 per cent in 2022 and seven per cent in 2023, and it has now risen to 8.5 per cent.
LPF said it was working with other organisations, including the Football Policing Unit and Kick it Out, to combat the trend of rising abuse.
The “attitudes of others” also remained a significant barrier – the second most-reported – with 26 per cent reporting this, a slight increase since last year.
Those reporting inaccessible public transport as a barrier rose from 16 per cent in 2021, to 17.5 per cent the following year, to 20 per cent in last year’s survey, and now to 22 per cent.
LPF said the trends on public transport and abuse were “concerning”.
As with last year, the most reported barrier was physical access at sports stadiums, which saw a significant increase from 29.5 per cent to 33 per cent in those reporting this as a barrier, although it had fallen significantly last year.
LPF said addressing problems with physical access was a “huge priority”, and that it was working with the Sports Ground Safety Authority and others on a new version of the Accessible Stadia guidance.
The largest increase in any of the barriers reported by disabled supporters was in the cost of attending live sport, with the proportion of those saying this was a barrier increasing from 17 per cent last year to 22.5 per cent in 2024, an increase of 5.5 percentage points or nearly a third.
LPF believes these concerns are partly due to the removal, reduction and alteration of some disability- and age-related concession rates for match tickets and parking.
The survey results also show that more than a fifth (22 per cent) of disabled supporters said there were sports or sporting venues that they felt unable to attend because they were inaccessible, although this was far lower than the 36.5 per cent who said yes to this question in 2022.
LPF’s chair Tony Taylor said that, despite the fall since 2022, it was “completely unacceptable” that more than a fifth of disabled sports fans were still unable to attend some events due to access concerns.
More than 2,000 disabled supporters responded to the 2024 survey – the highest ever number of responses – with half of them (49 per cent) supporting a Premier League football club, and a quarter (26 per cent) following a club in the Championship, the second tier of the football pyramid in England and Wales, but there were also some responses from those following women’s football (1.2 per cent), cricket (0.3 per cent) and rugby (0.2 per cent).
Among its recommendations, LPF said clubs should have a “clear process” for fans to report any disability discrimination they experience, and that fans should know what that process is; all such reports should be taken seriously, investigated, and responded to; and stewards should receive training to recognise and act on any abuse.
LPF also called on clubs to raise issues about inaccessible public transport with local providers.
23 January 2025
Other disability-related stories covered by mainstream media this week
Convicted benefit cheats who fail to pay back what they owe could be stripped of their driving licences, under government plans to crack down on fraud. Those who repeatedly cheat the system and have debts of £1,000 or more could be punished with a driving ban of up to two years. The plans also include new powers to force banks to hand over account information about benefit claimants to help target investigations, echoing a scheme announced by the previous Conservative government: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/jan/22/dwp-crackdown-could-see-people-banned-from-driving-if-welfare-debts-go-unpaid
CCTV and cameras are not uncommon on mental health wards, used with the intention of keeping patients safe. But some say that new Oxevision technology, where cameras also monitor their pulse and breathing in their bedrooms, is adding to their sense of paranoia and in some cases making them more unwell. The Royal College of Psychiatrists and the mental health charity Rethink have now said they want to see the rollout of the technology paused: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cq8kqzgel2no
Blind and partially-sighted people are being left “humiliated” and unsure they have voted correctly because of a lack of support at polling stations, according to an MP. Carlisle’s Julie Minns said many with visual impairments were unable to vote without someone else knowing their choice. The Labour MP has put forward a proposed new law to ensure there are tactile and audio aids for blind voters in polling stations: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4gwel89x20o
23 January 2025
News provided by John Pring at www.disabilitynewsservice.com
