John Pring's Disability News Round Up - 07/12/2012



  • The panel set up to review a vital piece of equality legislation has been packed with Conservative and Liberal Democrat politicians, adding to fears of a new government assault on disabled people’s protection from discrimination.
  • Hundreds of thousands of disabled people without work are to be hit hard by further cuts to their support, despite the chancellor’s claims in his autumn statement that he was protecting disability benefits.
  • Disabled people’s organisations have questioned the government’s willingness to listen to disabled people, following the first meeting of a new “alliance” set up to advise the government on disability issues.
  • Plans to remove all government funding from Remploy’s sheltered factories could leave just three of them operating in the private sector or as social enterprises, with the loss of hundreds more jobs.
  • Disabled people could now be forced to work indefinitely for their out-of-work benefits, as a result of new government rules introduced this week.
  • A disabled consultant who played a key role in ensuring the accessibility of London 2012’s purpose-built venues has spoken of her frustration that the events themselves did not match some of those high access standards.
  • From churches designed for Deaf congregations to the first schools for blind children and one of the earliest disabled people’s organisations, a new website project charts the history of disabled people through the buildings they have used.
  • Disabled people took part in protests, campaigns, awards, marches, conferences and celebrations as they found different ways to mark the UN’s international day of disabled people.
  • Disabled people need to take the initiative and demand more accessible local sports facilities, a conference has heard.

News provided by John Pring at www.disabilitynewsservice.com

John Pring's Disability News Round Up - 30/11/2012



  • Newspapers should be forced to apologise, print corrections, or even face heavy fines if they print misleading or offensive articles about disabled people and other minority groups, according to Lord Justice Leveson’s report into press standards.
  • Major questions have been raised over the government’s plans to support disabled people into work, after two long-awaited reports showed only about 1,000 claimants of disability benefits found work through the scheme in its first year.
  • A coroner has been unable to say for certain how a member of Nepal’s Paralympic delegation came to be found hanging from a tree in the middle of the London 2012 athletes’ village.
  • The government is set to appoint a former Conservative party boss and MP to chair the social care and health watchdog.
  • A new mobile phone app could be set to revolutionise the provision of assistance for disabled people across the transport, travel, leisure and retail industries.
  • A disabled air passenger has won permission to take an airline to the supreme court, to fight a legal ruling that leaves disabled travellers with no protection from in-flight discrimination.
  • Three members of ParalympicsGB’s high-performing London 2012 team have been nominated for the prestigious BBC Sports Personality of the Year (SPOTY) award.

News provided by John Pring at www.disabilitynewsservice.com

When Did We Forget? International Day Of Persons With Disabilities

Once upon a time Britain led the way in promoting rights and independence for disabled people. That was the country I grew up in; I remember the horror when conditions for disabled children in foreign orphanages were exposed, pitiful little bundles of bones often tied to their cots, staring vacantly at their bars and walls, wizened like ancient beings who'd seen nothing but cruelty their entire lives.

I remember ramps being built, institutions shut down, rights being created, laws being made.

I remember my pride that Britain was different, that we believed in opportunity for all.

I remember becoming disabled. Learning to cope with a different life than I'd expected. A more difficult life but all the richer for the struggles.

I remember the security of knowing that whatever happened to my health, that however much worse it got I was one of the most fortunate to be born in a country that believed in supporting those who could not support themselves.

Today on International Day for People With Disabilities I remember all those things and I wonder what has happened to them.

I wonder when disabled people became scroungers to be vilified instead of people to be proud of.

I wonder what will happen to all our futures, those already disabled and those yet to understand what disability brings to their life.

I wonder where the outrage has gone? What has happened to my country, a people so collectively moved by those big eyed babies on our TV screens that we rapidly rallied to send lorry loads of equipment and people to provide love? The country that swore such scenes would never happen here.

I wonder where Simone is? How she is? Is she safe from harm? Will someone wake her this morning with love and kindness or the torture she has grown to know paid for by the taxpayer?

I wonder if you know it costs £3500 every week to imprison Simone hundreds of miles from home? I wonder if you understand we all pay that bill? I wonder if you know how different Simone's life might be if that money were used to properly support her, in her own home, close to her family?

I wonder if you know that Simone could be your daughter, sister, aunt?

I wonder if you know Simone could one day be you? That an accident, an illness, a split second moment could change your world forever?

I wonder if you even care?

I wonder when sick and disabled people became scroungers, a sacrifice worth making on the altar of austerity.

I wonder when we all lost sight of our priorities, when it became accepted that spending millions on endlessly reassessing sick and disabled people to declare us fit for a workplace not willing to accept us was somehow better than spending that money on supporting us?

I remember the first disabled person to tell me that stockpiling their medication seemed like a sensible, rational option. I remember not being able to tell them they were wrong.

I remember when contribution was valued, when voluntary work respected, when that was our social contract.

I wonder how forcing people deemed too sick or disabled to work by their own doctors and the company paid millions to assess us into a workplace that doesn't want us could ever have been considered a good plan?

I wonder why a government led by a man with intimate understanding of disability, a man who was both a son and father to disabled people, a man who swore those experiences meant his passion about disability was genuine would turn back the clock four decades?

I wonder why a government would decide that mandating those same sick and disabled people into unpaid, unlimited work placements would be seen as a popular idea.

I wonder when the public decided that sick people were indistinguishable from scrounging scum.

I wonder about all this and more. I wonder what will happen to me once the cuts truly begin to bite and I cannot afford to stay in my own home.

I wonder why, when I so desperately want to work within the limits imposed upon me by my disability, working is denied to me by a welfare system claiming to become more flexibile but actually becoming more rigid and unsupportive.

I wonder about all of these things and more. But most of all I remember that once upon a time Ivan's Daddy made us all a promise that he understood, that he valued us and that he swore always to protect us.

I remember that, but I wonder all the time when he forgot. 

On Disability Rights, The UK Was The Future Once

On disability rights, the UK was the future once - by Neil Crowther

Today, 3 December, is the United Nations International Day of Persons with Disabilities.  Observed since 1992, the day aims to promote an understanding of disability issues and build respect for the dignity, rights and well-being of disabled people around the world.  It also seeks to increase awareness of gains to be derived from the integration of disabled people in every aspect of political, social, economic and cultural life.   Marking this year’s international day, the UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon said:

 ‘Persons with disabilities have a significant positive impact on society, and their contributions can be even greater if we remove barriers to their participation.’

Britain can be rightly proud of the message it sent to the world this summer regarding disabled people’s role in society.  The Paralympic games did indeed dazzle (sometimes for reasons unconnected to the actual sports as the ‘#paralympicperving’ Twitter hash-tag revealed).    A report in last week’s Times Newspaper revealed how our Paralympians have not only become household names, they are now sought after by major corporations, with earnings for speaking engagements matching those of their Olympic colleagues.  Something does seem to have changed, though only time will tell precisely what.

Our success in hosting the games was perhaps the culmination of the major progress we have undoubtedly made in many areas to transform our society, removing barriers and ending discrimination.   The decade between 1995 and 2005 was bookended by two Disability Discrimination Acts, expanding the law to cover almost all areas of life, and was punctuated by a series of positive developments in relation to independent living, transport, access to goods and services, mental capacity law and the rights and opportunities of disabled children.   These developments have changed lives.  For example, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation last week reported that the numbers of disabled people age 19 without a level 3 qualification went down by 21% between 2000 and 2010, at a far faster rate than for non-disabled people of the same age.  

Internationally, the major instrument for achieving these goals is the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD).   The UK’s leading position in the world on disability rights allowed it to play an active role in drafting the Convention and in 2009, the UK felt sufficiently confident to commit itself to implementing the duties and obligations in the Convention.  Doing so received cross-Party support, with Mark Harper MP, then Shadow Conservative Spokesperson for Disabled People even describing the delay in ratifying the Convention as "staggering".

And yet in March this year, the Joint Parliamentary Committee on Human Rights concluded its inquiry into disabled people’s right to independent living by saying that ‘the UNCRPD did not appear to have played a significant role in the development of policy and legislation, as is required by the Convention’ and that as a consequence:

·         ‘Reforms to benefits and services risk leaving disabled people without the support they need to live independently
·         restrictions in local authority eligibility criteria for social care support, the replacement of the Disability Living Allowance with Personal Independence Payment, the closure of the Independent Living Fund and changes to housing benefit risk interacting in a particularly harmful way for disabled people
·         some people fear that the cumulative impact of these changes will force them out of their homes and local communities and into residential care’

The Committee went on to say that ‘there seems to be a significant risk of retrogression of independent living and a breach of the UK’s obligations.’   The risks the Committee foresaw are now becoming a stark reality and look set only to get worse.   

It is perhaps unsurprising then that today, Conservative politicians appear to have lost their enthusiasm for characterising issues such as independent living, access to information or an adequate standard of living as  ‘human rights issues’ yet they are all obligations which the UK agreed to when it ratified the CRPD.  Perhaps this is because doing so would make it somewhat more difficult to justify the present welfare reforms and spending cuts?  Or perhaps it is because it might undermine its goal of repealing the Human Rights Act, a political project which relies on the public believing that human rights only benefit ‘bad people’?  
Or perhaps it is because the government is generally not keen on being held to account, as reforms to judicial review, the Equality and Human Rights Commission, legal aid cuts and weakening or potentially repealing altogether the public sector equality duty suggest.   
With respect to the equality duty, not only did the Prime Minister recently advise Whitehall Departments that he was ‘calling time’ on equality impact assessments, the government has now set up a review of the duty, with a steering group made up entirely of government or public sector representatives.   It is unclear how, without the duty, the UK government will remain compliant with the CRPD given that it demands that the government takes ‘into account the protection and promotion of the human rights of persons with disabilities in all policies and programmes’, that it refrains ‘from engaging in any act or practice that is inconsistent with the present Convention’ and that it ensures that ‘public authorities and institutions act in conformity with the present Convention’.
In fact, since the UK ratified the Convention, the government seems to have focused most of its energies on dismantling the very architecture of disability rights at home that allowed us to so confidently ratify the Convention in the first place.  It is somewhat surprising then to read, in the UK Government’s pitch for election to the UN Human Rights Council that it is ‘committed to making a living reality of the rights enshrined in the UNCRPD, through our policies and practices that are supported by a substantial body of legislation, including the Equality Act 2010.’  Reigning back on disabled people’s rights is perverse and illogical, not just for disabled people, but for society as a whole.   When evaluation of the Work Programme suggests that it has achieved less than had it not existed at all, re-building the barriers which stand in the way of disabled people’s participation is not only unjust, it is pure economic folly.   

We began to see genuine progress because we set about removing the barriers that held disabled people back and because we put in place the supports which help to equalise opportunity, just as Ban Ki Moon is encouraging countries around the world to do today. 

With respect to disability rights, the UK was the future once.  Let’s not turn the clock back any further.

On International Day of Disabled People we should be looking forward, not back

Marking the International Day of Disabled People 2012, Kaliya Franklin and Neil Crowther reflect on the UK's proud history of protecting, promoting and fulfilling disabled people's rights and call for a sense of renewed purpose in the face of efforts by government to dismantle many of our most significant achievements.
On Disability Rights, The UK Was The Future Once

When Did We Forget?
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