We need to be bold and push for transformative change for our society
Decades of activism by ordinary disabled men and women has helped to pave the way for many of us.
The breaking down of barriers has bought about change through the passing of the important – but woefully inadequate – Disability Discrimination Act 2005 and later the Equality Act 2010 into law.
Despite progress, there is still so much more to be done to bring an end to the multiple societal barriers that prevent us from being equal participants in society.
The last 13 years of a hostile environment against disabled people including the assault on our civil and human rights has shown how little the Government values us. The damaging cuts to the NHS, social care, and social security support have disproportionately impacted us. There is now an ever-growing link between poverty and disability.
During the pandemic, disabled people accounted for six in ten covid deaths between January and November 2020 whilst there were reports of hospitals applying Do Not Resuscitate orders on some disabled people.
More recently, the Home Office failed to implement a key recommendation from the Grenfell Inquiry when it decided that Personal Emergency Evacuation Plans (PEEPs) for disabled people or people who can’t self-evacuate aren’t proportionate or practical, citing problems such as the costs to landlords.
It’s not just Government, our workplaces and communities are also not inclusive or accessible. We still see barriers in the labour market with the disability pay gap hovering close to 30%, inaccessible transport and infrastructure, and inadequate representation of disabled people in positions of power including in politics and media.
We must now focus on removing physical, economic and cultural barriers that prevent us from flourishing and being full, active citizens.
A first step must be to rethink how society sees us, not through our impairment, but through the prism of the social model of disability – people being disabled by the barriers in society such as peoples’ attitudes to physical barriers such as buildings and the public realm.
That is why I was proud that the Labour Party during my time as Shadow Minister for Disabled People (2017-2020) committed to the full implementation of the United Nations Convention on Disabled People (UNCRPD) which the last Labour government signed in 2009. The Convention protects and promotes the human rights of disabled people through eliminating discrimination, enabling us to live independently and ensuring we are protected from all forms of exploitation, violence and abuse.
Unsurprisingly, the current Government is going in a different direction: It has not implemented the UNCRPD in full and its recently launched National Disability Strategy isn’t credible or transformative because it failed to properly consult us.
We can only deliver real transformative change when our voices are central in all of this, in keeping with the principle of “nothing about us, without us.”
READ THE ARTICLE ON THE MIRROR ONLINE HERE