10th Annual Disability Lecture 2013: "Two steps forward, one step back: challenges to disabled people in 2013"

>> Good afternoon everyone. My name is Ray Jobling, I’m a Fellow of St John’s, and it's my privilege to welcome you to the College and to the tenth Annual Disability Lecture.
Now, you haven't come to hear me, but with the permission of our distinguished speaker I just want to say a few brief words before we start. And yes, this is the tenth lecture. Amazing for those of us who have been around that long to realise that it is the tenth. And we think it’s an important series. I think you may have seen a recent major feature article in the Guardian newspaper which was devoted to welfare benefits and services, and in particular the challenges faced by people with disabilities; and the sub heading was “Disability movement at a crossroads”. Prominent experts had been asked to comment, and it struck me then that three of them had each delivered a lecture in this series. Tom Shakespeare, distinguished academic, in 2004; Bert Massie, who was then Chair of the Disability Rights Commission; and Lady Jane Campbell, the prominent cross-bench peer, who lectured in 2008. And of course, the lectures have always been at St. John's, and therefore we thank the Master and Fellows for their hospitality; and year after year the College’s staff have been exceptionally helpful to us, and we’re grateful to them. I'd like to mention Jackie Clark in particular who’s a very good friend to us all.
So partly it's a St. John's event, then, but it is also very much a University lecture. And the University’s Equality and Diversity section, and the public engagement team, have supported us 100%. Without their backing, disability issues wouldn't be centre stage this way on an annual basis. But of course it's the Disability Resource Centre that drives all of this forward. They find the time to do the organisational work in addition to their central duties of supporting students with a disability. And I'm going to mention John Harding, the Director, for his leadership, but it's Kirsty Wayland who for all, all of these ten lectures, who has dealt with the detail, survived all of the scares and problems, and come up with the goods every time. Indeed she comes up smiling. At least in the end she comes up smiling! Now, Kirsty carries it. Without her there would be no series at all; and she's ably supported on the administrative side by Sarah, Sarah Norman. So, unusual though it may be to have a pause at the front of things, I'd like you to join with me in thanking them for their help.
So then to the main business. It's my enormous privilege to announce in the 2013 Tenth Annual Lecture Dame Anne Begg MP. Now Anne I think was born in Brechin, went to university in Aberdeen, worked in Arbroath, and then went back to Aberdeen. So she got out of the car today, and we said “Isn't it cold and windy?” and she looked at us for the Southern softies that we actually are.
Anne took a degree in History and Politics at Aberdeen University, and then having qualified professionally, she taught, and had a distinguished career in Scottish high schools for nearly twenty years. In 1988 she was awarded the title Disabled Scot of the Year. Having been involved in politics for a long time, she was elected to Parliament in 1997 as the Labour MP for Aberdeen South, becoming then and I think still now the first permanent wheelchair user to actually be elected to the House of Commons. She has been and she continues to be a passionately effective disability spokesperson, and more generally she’s a champion for equality across the board, chairing the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Equality. Beyond all, she's currently of course chair of the House of Commons Select Committee on Work and Pensions: so there's no one better to speak on the
challenges facing disabled people in 2013: “Two Steps Forward, One Step Back”. Please welcome Dame Anne Begg MP.

>> Thank you very much for that very kind introduction and I'm delighted to be here today. It's second time lucky. I don't know if you all know but I was meant to be doing this lecture last year, but unfortunately I went flying out the front of my wheelchair, broke a couple of bones, and so ended up in hospital and had to call off at very short notice. So my apologies to Kirsty for all the work that she did in preparing that and then having to find someone else at very short notice.
And we agreed to do it on Thursday because Thursday generally in Parliament is one of the days we don't have any votes. So two weeks ago I slightly panicked when I discovered there were important votes on the Finance Bill today. So I'm here because I was very nice to the Whips, and I said “I can't let them down a second time! I have to be here.” So I missed the vote on the 50p tax rate. If any of my constituents complain to me, I’m putting them in touch with you.
But in common with most disabled people, I don't wake up every morning and say, “oh dear I'm disabled. How am I going to get on with my life?” You know, we just do. We carry on and we live our lives. But every so often there's something that happens, which reminds me that I've got a disability. Like a few weeks ago when I thought I would never get out of Brent. I don’t know if you know Brent. I’ve no idea where it is, it's somewhere in London. My select committee was over visiting the Willsden job centre. Now other select committees – Culture, Media and Sport – off to see casinos in Australia; my select committee, job centre in Brent. The Brent -- the actual job centre was quite close to a tube station on the Jubilee Line – I thought “Great, Jubilee Line – one of the ones that’s got accessible”, but of course it wasn’t one of the accessible stations. So the rest of the committee got there by tube and back by tube but I had to get a cab. And the problem started in trying to get a cab to come back, because it's not the kind of street that you have cabs going backwards and forwards. Anyway, to cut a long story short, 45 minutes after the end of the meeting we still can't manage to find, to get a black cab to take us back to Westminster, and the security guards by this time are taking pity on me, and saying, you know, “Can we help? We'll phone the local minicab company”. And I said “Now, remember it has to be either a saloon car, or one that will take me in a wheelchair,” and they said “Yes, we’ll get that,” and they said “Yes, coming. Definitely accessible for you.” And of course you can guess what happened. What turned up was one of these big people carriers that neither I can get into by transferring or get into by -- because there was no ramp. And the driver continued to insist that yes, his car was wheelchair accessible. Now what he intended doing was, he opened the boot, and he was going to manually lift me in to the boot of the car; and we said no. It wasn't such a good idea. It took about an hour and a half before we finally got a black cab. The poor driver wondered why we were so effusive in our thanks to him, and we eventually got back to Westminster and luckily I didn't miss any votes.
The same week I had to turn down an invite to dinner with Hugh Grant. Why? Because, of course, the restaurant wasn't wheelchair accessible. Now if you're having a running battle with – Cinnamon Club, remember it, not wheelchair accessible, Cinnamon Club in Westminster – and to tell them that even though they've got a lift inside, even though they’ve got a disabled toilet inside, the six steps at the front really rules them out, and the offer of burly men to carry me in really isn’t good enough, and I’d be turning up in a big electric wheelchair anyway, which is what I use around Westminster.
And they still – they still don’t, really – the excuse they used was it was a Grade II listed building and so they can't do anything. Now I think we're in a college that's a wee bit older than that and they’ve still managed to get wheelchair access.
But anyway, I got an a lovely e-mail from Hugh offering to meet me somewhere else; but I haven't got back to him because I want to go down in history, to say that I’m the woman who turned down dinner with Hugh Grant.
Now, I tell these two stories not because they're particularly unusual experiences for people who use wheelchairs. They're not. And I'm sure that most disabled people have far more frustrating stories to tell. I tell these particular stories because they happened to me in the last month, and they're just the most recent occasions that I have been reminded that I actually do have a disability and I get discriminated against in some form or other on a regular basis. And, anyway, it's often allowed me to tell me that I got to turn down dinner with Hugh Grant. Did I mention that?
However, these examples are mild in comparison to the difficulties that I faced when I became permanently – when I began permanently using a wheelchair back in 1984. That's only thirty years ago. That doesn't seem that long ago to me. But then virtually no restaurants had disabled toilets, and very few had flat access. None of the London Underground was wheelchair accessible and very, very, very few London cabs were. An accessible taxi, if you could get one at all, had to be ordered at least 24 hours in advance, and there was no way I was going to get on any kind of bus. So when I find myself up against the petty inconveniences I still experience, and get annoyed and frustrated about, it's often worth me reminding myself just how bad things were a mere 30 years ago. That's the only way I realize just how far we have come in delivering equal opportunities for people with disabilities.
Nowadays I rarely check access in advance if I'm going out to a restaurant, a pub, a theatre, because I have an expectation that they will cater for people in wheelchairs. Whereas thirty years ago the assumption would be they didn't, and in fact there would have to be some kind of special arrangement that would have to be put in place, usually being carried up flights of stairs. Because I don't always check these days, I do turn up places I'm not familiar with and I can't get in. But it comes as a shock. And probably causes more irritation these days than it did when access was so much more limited 30 years ago. Expectations have risen so tolerance of discrimination is quite rightly a lot less. Even when I got elected in 1997, only about half the black cabs in London would take a wheelchair. Now they all do. The only time I have problems with a black cab in London is if the driver spots me and doesn't stop. Now I haven't done this yet, but the next time this happens I'm taking his number, and I’m going to tweet it. Cause I’ve now got 6,000 followers. Quite a few have got disabilities and would actually understand it. So I just wonder how quickly it would get back to the driver that actually his behaviour is unacceptable.
But these are the reasons that I’ve called my talk today “Two steps forward and one step back”. We have taken enormous strides forward in social integration; in making public spaces what my friends – and despite your prejudices against politicians, I do have some friends, honest – my friends call them “Anne-friendly”; and we've made huge strides in all areas of our lives. But that – sometimes, that progress either shudders to a halt or seems to be going backwards. There is the danger of becoming complacent, believing that, to quote a familiar phrase for those of us who were elected as Labour MPs in 1997, things can only get better. And you’re really lucky I'm not singing that to you. There is a tendency to believe that the advance towards equality and full integration can only move in a positive direction. While it's unlikely that we'll see reversals in the accessibility of the built environment, I believe we are seeing reverses in some of the civil liberties disabled people were beginning to enjoy. In 97 Labour was elected on a promise to introduce comprehensive and enforceable civil rights for disabled people. In order to deliver this the Labour Government established the Disability Rights Commission in 1999, and as first chairman, Bert Massie, now here, has delivered this lecture.
The DRC was established firstly to advise government on the legislation necessary to deliver these rights, and then to take on the role of enforcement and providing advice to disabled people, and I think it was very effective – under Bert’s chairmanship very, very effective. It oversaw the strengthening of part three of the 1995 Disability Discrimination Act, which came in in October 2004; and that’s the one that probably did most improve access to the built environment. Then there was the Disability Discrimination Act in 2005, and in the same year the timetables for making sure different forms of transport would be accessible were set. The DRC was particularly effective in taking different types of cases through the courts on behalf of disabled people; and as a result a large volume of case law was established, and as a result requirements became an accepted part – access requirements became an accepted part of providing a service.
Because of all of this attitudes changed, and it became unthinkable that anyone would think it was acceptable for someone to have to travel in a guard’s van on a train rather than the compartment with all the other passengers. And I was reminded of that today coming down here, that I didn't even book my assistance and yet, a ramp appeared both at King's Cross and at Cambridge which is pretty important in getting off the train without any of that extra planning that used to be necessary. And because of these change in attitudes, that -- it's no longer acceptable to refuse a wheelchair user access to a cinema because they were regarded as a fire risk, which used to constantly happen to me. And again, because of the change in our attitudes it's no longer acceptable to refuse entry to a teacher training course to someone just because they have a disability. People with disabilities didn't get into teaching -- didn't become teachers in 1978. I only did because I had a short window of remission in my progressive condition. Had I been as disabled as I am now in 1976 I would never have become a teacher.
So, all of these advances are so far so good. I reckon those are two steps forward. When it was first mooted that the three equality commissions on gender, race, and disability should be amalgamated into a single equality body, which would include other strands such as sexuality and belief, I did express my concerns that if this was to happen the disability strand would get lost. I was worried that the DRC hadn't had enough time to do its work. After all, the Commission for Racial Equality and the Equal Opportunities Commission had both been in existence for over 30 years, the DRC for less than 10. I clearly didn't make my voice loud enough, and I was persuaded it was sensible to have a single equality body, because the discrimination people faced didn't always fit neatly into the different strands, and besides the 2010 Equality Act was going to have all sorts of other important measures in it including the equality duties.
When the Equality and Human Rights Commission was set up, it had a budget of 70 million, and a lot of work was done in broadening its coverage. But it did mean, as I had feared, that had fewer cases were brought under the disability strand and these cases were often chosen for their strategic importance rather than the numbers that might be held. However the EHRC has become an easy target for the coalition government looking for major cuts in government expenditure. And as a result the budget has been slashed and by 2014-15 its budget will be 64% less, at about 26.8 million, and there are threats of further cuts to come. I reckon that's one step back. But young disabled people now have choices which weren't available thirty years ago and I've been hearing them about them here at the University, that I couldn't have dreamt of when I was going through university in the 1970s. So many of them go to mainstream schools. They get the support they need to help them undertake further or higher education, and young disabled people now have aspirations that they would hopefully have some kind of work when they leave education. And even people with really profound disabilities, nowadays hold down really quite challenging jobs.
There is a recognition that it's perfectly reasonable for support to be provided which helps a disabled person hold down a job. With the introduction and expansion of benefits such as Access to Work and Disability Living Allowance, disabled people were given the help they needed to lead a more independent life. And often that support came in the form of money which the disabled person could spend as they chose. Not given the services that someone else deemed appropriate. That was an important change in attitudes. We could be trusted to spend any money we were given wisely to help improve the quality of our lives and not depend on others making those decisions for us. Two steps forward. The Independent Living Fund was a huge help, and gave people with the most severe disabilities a freedom previous generations couldn’t have dreamt of. Two steps forward. But it's now closed and new applications -- now closed to new applications and will close to everyone else in 2015. Two steps back. And Access to Work has expanded beyond all recognition and is much more flexible than it was when it was introduced. It's still regarded as one of the Department of Work and Pensions’ best kept secrets, but the budget has risen to over 100 million; and to be fair to this government they intend increasing the budget and extending its reach. Two steps forward.
There's also been a recognition from employers, particularly big employers such as public authorities, the civil service, and multinational companies, that they should be prepared to make the necessary adjustments and provide appropriate support for employees who have a disability themselves. And some are even positive in their recruitment practices and seek out potential disabled employees. There is the two tick scheme for employers who are positive about disability, guaranteeing an interview for anyone who has the relevant qualifications. Two steps forward. This is all backed up with e quality legislation which protects disabled people from being discriminated against, either in getting a job and once they are in work -- sorry -- once they get a job and once they're in work. Two steps forward.
But we do know that it may be one thing to have equality legislation on the statute books and an equality duty placed on all public authorities, but it's quite another to make sure that that legislation is enforced and works in practice. It's very difficult to prove that the reason the disabled person didn't get the -- an interview was because of their disability when the employer can point to a large number of applicants all equally well qualified. Even when they do get an interview but don't get the job it is very difficult to prove it was because of their disability, and not because the person who did get the job was actually better at interview. We do know that employers are still very prejudiced when it comes to employing people with disabilities. Various studies and polls have shown that the majority of employers will admit that they wouldn't employ someone with a mental health problem, and that's just the ones who will admit it. Some will know that to admit such a thing is wrong and won't, but actually when faced with the reality will always choose the candidate who doesn’t have the health problem over the one who does. Leonard Cheshire carried out the experiment of sending out two identical CVs to employers. The only difference was that in one a disability was admitted to, and in the other it wasn't. The non-disabled applicant was twice as likely as the disabled one to even get a response. And twice as likely to get an interview. Which presents disabled people with a dilemma. Admit to your disability at an early stage of the application process and risk not getting any further, or keep quiet until forced to admit you have a disability and then risk being discriminated against because you've been deceitful. It's a catch-22. And this is a real and constant dilemma for those with mental health problems or hidden disabilities, where ironically, there can be more prejudice in employers’ minds than there might be for someone with an obvious physical disability. Now I'm not sure why this is, but it might be that the obvious disabilities are easier for employers to understand, for them to grasp, to quantify, to be able to understand how someone might be able to lead their life. And -- as a result -- there's also a lot more positive role models around, so that that possibly makes them fear a person with a straightforward physical disability much less. Although it's the case that around 70% of people who are registered blind and are of working age are unemployed, the presence of number of high profile blind people, particularly in the media, along with the amazing advances in technology and voice recognition software has shown what is possible. Even so, Leonard Cheshire showed that the applicant with cerebral palsy was three times more likely to get an interview than the applicant who was registered blind. I think that's one step back. The positive image of disability presented by the Paralympics has certainly helped attitudes and showed what can be possible with the right help. Now, it’s taken a whole – I was just looking at my watch there – twenty minutes into my speech before I mentioned the Paralympics but they certainly qualify for two steps forward in my measurement.
However for those looking for work, the difficulty is always getting that first job. To get a foot in the door, to show potential employers what a person is capable of despite of or even because of their disability. But there's still a great deal of fear and stigma about mental health and it is still too common for an employer to ease an employee out of their job rather than working with the individual to make the necessary adjustments which would allow them to remain in work. And once someone loses the job they have because of an acquired disability the harder it is to get another job and in many cases it's not just hard, it’s impossible. While the statistics of the number of people with disabilities in work have been gradually improving over the years, my fear that much of the specialist help and the employability schemes which were bringing on that improvement have fallen victim to the cuts in public expenditure. The government's work programme, which is charged with getting people who have been unemployed for over a year into work, is meant to deliver extra help to people who have been out of work through disability or ill health. This is because in theory the work programme has a differential payment structure, giving the employment contractor more money for getting a person with a disability into a job than they would have for someone who doesn't have such a barrier. However, early indications suggest that the incentives aren't high enough and the dreaded “packing” is going on. This is when the employment contractor decides that it would cost more than they would get in payment to work with a particular individual to get them into a job and then into sustained work. So the decision is taken not to give them any help at all: and that's definitely one step back.
There is still a separate employment scheme for people with disabilities, called Work Choice, which sits outside the Work Programme. And indications are that it's generally doing better in helping many with learning disabilities, although not exclusively, find and be supported in work. However the numbers in Work Choice at any one time is capped and doesn't come anywhere near providing support for the numbers of people who would benefit from such help. There's also some controversy amongst disabled people themselves, and that's about the place of sheltered workshops. The move away from what some regard as ghettoised workplaces which has resulted in the closure of many Remploy factories and blind workshops is seen by many in the disability movement as two steps forward. However, for those who have worked in these places, who are now unemployed with no prospect of getting another job, this -- their closure represents two steps back.
I think the reason there's a disconnect between what disabled people appear to be asking for and what many actually want is that the spokespeople on behalf of disabled people tend to be high functioning people with physical disabilities. Those of us with degrees, and an outlook on life that demands that we lead an independent life which is as close to our non-disabled friends and colleagues as possible. We expect the same opportunities as them. The same social life. The same work life. In fact the same everything. I can't think of anything worse than spending my working life in a factory with other disabled people doing a repetitive job. I suspect neither can any of you. But that's not necessarily the case for everyone with a disability or health condition. These are people who, the rest of us would appreciate, perhaps have a different disability -- or more severe disability. When the choice, as it often is these days, is between some work or no work, most would plump for the work and the sense of belonging it gives, and so many have been heartbroken that they have lost their job. And I have to say that before I was elected, I would have been in the group of the disability rights activists who said that we should be getting rid of sheltered workshops, until you meet the people who have depended on them for their livelihood for a long number of years.
Anyway, don't get me wrong, I think it's brilliant that we disabled people make -- are more active in shaping and determining our lives. We don't need non-disabled people to speak on our behalf anymore, and it's great that we don't have to have other people who decide what's good for us. It's no longer acceptable that the large disability charities don't employ any disabled people or that they don't have any disabled people on their boards. They all now do. And almost gone are the days where things are done for disabled people not done by them. But they’re not gone yet. And I think all of the changes and the empowerment of disabled people certainly represents two steps forward. But at the same time those of us who do speak up and out as disabled people have to be conscious that we are not a homogenous group and we may have different views on what represents opportunity and equality. I have always been conscious that, as an MP who has a disability and as someone who has a particular insight into what life can be like, and the barriers and difficulties that face us day in day out, I'm also not typical. While I have insights as a wheelchair user, I really don't know how those who are sight or hearing impaired solve the problems they face living their life. I can't imagine what it's like to be a paranoid schizophrenic. There can be danger that as a disabled person we view the world from the perspective of our own disability, looking for solutions which would help our lives, but their implementation would be discriminatory for someone with a different disability. If you want to know what I'm talking about just think of tactile paving. I don't know how many people who either use wheelchairs or have got limited walking ability have complained to me about the knobbly pavements the council have put in just where they want to cross the road. I should do something about it, they say to me. It's terrible. I should get them removed. And I have to bite my tongue and be as patient as I can as I explain that without the knobbly pavement at a dropped kerb which has been put in specially for them, the blind person could walk straight into the road and get knocked down.
I remember a number of years ago chatting to a blind woman and swapping stories about some of the stupid things which people had said to us that showed they really didn't understand the consequences of our disability at all. And she was saying that when she phoned up about a job she actually stopped telling them she was blind because she would get this stupid reply that says “Oh no, you won’t be able to work in this place because we're up a flight of stairs”. Think about it. It was when she said, that it must be more difficult for you being in a wheelchair, that I realized that it depends on what you're used to because I had to admit that I'd been busy thinking thank God I'm not blind. So we both decided it must be worse being deaf. In other words, we all individually adapt to our own disability and get used to living the life as we are. That's not to say that there are no barriers. It's just that we have often minimized them in our day-to-day lives. Be it the adapted bathroom, the seat in the shower, the adapted car, the ramps to our kitchen – see what I've done, all the things I just mentioned there are the things that I need to be put in place so I can lead an independent life. For those of us with physical disabilities, it is the built environment which handicaps us. Some of these problems are -- solve these problems, I should say, and we are less disabled, and that's the social model of disability. And that's why I'm also not keen on these events which try to give people who are not disabled an experience of disability in the hope that it will make them more sensitive to the problems faced by disabled people, so they get to roll around in a wheelchair for an afternoon. But putting a blindfold onto me doesn't give me an experience of what it’s like to be long term sight impaired. It gives me the experience of someone who’s gone suddenly blind without any of the aids and adaptations which blind people use. It therefore amplifies the disability making it seem much worse. I think these exercises are much more likely to frighten the hell out of somebody taking part. Making them think that having a disability must be the worst thing in the world and I think that fostering that kind of negative impression of disability can lead to being one step back in my measurement.
Which brings me to another dilemma I face as a politician speaking out about disability issues. Do I speak about all the problems we face and risk engendering nothing but pity and sympathy or do I talk about how I believe there can be worse things in life than being disabled? Giving a positive spin on the lives disabled people lead and as a result risk getting the reaction, “So what are they all complaining about? Why do they need all these special arrangements? Why are they demanding all this extra help? They can perfectly manage all right themselves.” And this contrast between the victim to be pitied or even despised and the hero to be feted was never more clearly illustrated last summer during the Paralympics. Since the present government came to power, the language used about people who are in receipt of benefits has hit a new low. With constant stories in the media, and not just the tabloid press, about scroungers and shirkers, and leeches on the hard working taxpayer. About people who are just lazy and don't want to work. Stories about families that lead lives of sheer luxury and get off on their foreign holidays, all on benefits. Disabled people are often at the receiving end of the reaction to these stories because they're visible and they're there. And accounts of disability hate crime have risen in recent years. The government claims that their policies are not an attack on disabled people, they are just trying to catch the liars and the cheats and the genuine claimant has nothing to fear. But the genuine claimant is still being exposed to the dehumanizing assessments, which are to be repeated at regular intervals to check that your disability is still there and your amputated leg hasn't grown back.
I've always explained that achieving equality does not mean treating everyone the same. If you treat me the same as someone who can walk and then hold an interview up a flight of stairs, then that's not equal opportunity, because I can’t get to the interview. In such a case there has to be some kind of positive action to help me. Hold the interview in a downstairs room or in a building that's got a lift. That's the only way I will have the same opportunity to compete on a level footing. And generally, actually we're quite lucky that that is happening more and more these days. That’s two steps forward. But I have a fear that as disabled people appear to be achieving great things it begins to be forgotten that that success has only come about because of positive action. Extra help is in place and if all that help was to be taken away we come back as being as disabled as we always were. When the government at first announced that they were going to abolish the Disability Living Allowance and replace it with a new payment called “PIP”, or Personal Independence Payment, ministers kept using the example of the wheelchair using Olympic athlete, who can get around much more easily and lead a much more independent life than someone who wasn’t even able to push themselves in a wheelchair. The implication from what they said was that if you were a -- excuse the phrase – “fit crip”, you wouldn’t need the extra money because for some reason you didn't have the extra expenses. Thankfully they’ve stopped using this example, and I don't know if it was because every time they did I kept telling them that it doesn't matter how fit you are, you still need an adapted car, you still need ramps and lifts to get into buildings, and you still need a large enough bathroom and a lower kitchen. You still need -- well -- even the fittest wheelchair user in the world still can't use the vast majority of the London underground.
>> Can I just point out that Tammy Gray Thompson had to pull herself up eight, ten flights of stairs because the lift wasn’t working?
>> In her home as well. Yes, absolutely. So that's why we know we still need that help. It doesn't matter how fit you are. You still -- your wheelchair doesn't disappear and all the things that need to be in place to allow the wheelchair to function has to still be in place. So the extra expense doesn't go away because you lead an independent life. It actually perhaps increases because you are leading an independent life and you need the money to buy all the extra things that allows you to lead an independent life. With this basic misunderstanding it's little wonder that many disabled people are very worried about the future of the benefits they get which helps them. The benefits which help them pay for transport that gets them to work. The benefits they get that pays for the help they need around the house. The benefits that pay for the activities which gets them out of the house and gives them some quality to their lives. So I fear that many of these reforms could represent one step back.
But it's not just disability benefits that are set to change but almost every other benefit for people of working age too. And because disabled people are disproportionately more likely to be unemployed, or if they are in work to be in low paid work, they are also disproportionately affected by any changes to other welfare payments. I often say while not all disabled people are vulnerable, it is probably true to say that the most vulnerable people in our society have some kind of disability or long term health problem. So the other changes in benefits will affect disabled people too. We know that two thirds of the households affected by the bedroom tax contain someone with a disability and a third of the households affected by the benefits cap contain someone with a disability too, despite the government saying that disability benefits are not subject to the cap. And when the universal credit is introduced, some of the premiums disabled people currently get to enhance their income, such as the Severe Disability Premium, are set to be axed. Another step back.
The government continually insists that they're merely trying to refocus help the state gives to the most disabled. They say they're just trying to stop those who are swinging the lead and those who are amplifying their disability to maximize their income. To stop the people who are milking the system, and instead give the help to those who need it most. But if this is the case, why are they closing down the Independent Living Fund which was the one fund -- the one thing that makes it possible for people with very profound disabilities to lead an independent life. Two steps back. I'm beginning to depress myself now. But I didn't call this talk one step forward and two steps back. It was two steps forward and one step back. Because I do believe that despite some of the setbacks and despite there being some change in attitudes, with less sympathy shown to disabled people, taken as a whole things are generally getting better for us and will, I hope continue to improve our expectations -- as our expectations rise; and hopefully sometime soon they'll actually manage to get the design of the disabled toilets right so that the plug isn't at the far side of the cistern. I don't know how they can never get it right but they don't. And as for the sympathy – well, we didn't want it in any case, so perhaps if they want to withdraw it from us, that might be a step forward.
There is a new resentment from some sections of society towards disabled people, fuelled by some of the worst tabloid stories, and I find that incredibly unpleasant, but perhaps not unexpected when you see what's written. It is typical of the worst kind of divide and rule politics, setting those who have little against those who have less. From a personal point of view though, having a disability hasn't really held me back and I suspect in some ways it has given me advantages in life. In the House of Commons that is still dominated by men in grey suits I stick out. The battles against institutional discrimination I had to fight to become a teacher, give me a determination and tenacity which is pretty useful qualities in a politician. And because life has been difficult at times I hope it has given me an empathy that has helped shape my political beliefs. And the one thing the Paralympic media coverage did, particularly that on Channel Four was to make us more relaxed about the language we use around disabled people. Educating a population not to become all self-conscious and embarrassed if they say to a blind person “Did you see that?”, or say to someone who has lost both their arms, “Can you give me a hand here?” Or indeed for someone who uses a wheelchair to get around talking about taking two steps forward and one step back. We have come a long way in the past thirty years. But that hasn't happened by accident. It's up to the next generation of disabled people to take up the fight, to make the demands, to change attitudes, to raise their expectations and the expectations of everyone else. Let's hope we take -- that we keep taking these steps forward together. Thank you.
(APPLAUSE).

>> OK, I'm being asked to remind you that the proceedings are being recorded, so bear that in mind when we go to the next stage. And I think the reception you’ve just had from the audience shows just how much we appreciate what you've had to say. I believe you're willing to take some questions?
>> I’m very happy indeed.
>> So if you want to engage in discussion, so we’ve got about 15 minutes. Over here on the left?
>> I’ll put my specs on so I can see people. I don’t have to read anything.

>> Thanks very much for your talk, I really enjoyed it. I'm quite interested in how some of the issues that you talked about, particularly prejudice, how it plays out in schools. I think it's where a lot of this stuff sort of starts and manifests and if you leave school with a sort of prejudiced attitudes it's unlikely to change as you grow up, potentially, and I don't feel like there's enough happening, there's enough kind of movement around, there’s enough campaigns around how to get particularly younger children thinking much more critically about their views and their opinions. And I'm particularly worried at the moment considering levels of bullying of children who have a disability. It's double the number of children who don't. Especially also now that teachers have tests to become teachers which potentially really discriminate people. I'm dyslexic and I have absolutely no mathematical ability at all. I want to be an English teacher, and I won’t be able to be, because I’m not going to pass my maths test. So I wonder what that effect might be and how, you know, we might be able to generate more thinking in schools, with teachers, around how to address some of this.

>> Right. That's a big question -- I'll try. Actually I find children are the most open and uncritical of people with disabilities and they will ask the questions adults won't. You get adults pulling them away -- they say “What’s the matter with you, why are you in a wheelchair?” Perfectly reasonable question to ask. And the mum says “Don't ask that question.” That's where the problem is. Not from the child asking that particular question. I find as a disabled teacher that actually the best thing you can do is have disabled people in mainstream education. Once you’ve got a disabled friend you realise that disability isn’t that that strange a thing, and I think there's a lot more prejudice against disabled people when we were generally segregated and most people didn't know a disabled person. You'll find very often that, the folk who are most prejudicial, it’s because they don't know anybody with a disability, and they’ve got what they think about disabled people from magazines or newspapers, or indeed the tabloid press – and they’ll get from the tabloid press that we're all a bunch of shirkers and moaners and all those kinds of things. I think in terms of education, I think part of the -- the way that teachers deal with pupils about mutual respect, that should be happening anyway without the aspect of disability, and bullying should be properly tackled as well. But I have to say as a disabled individual, that's also part of the experiences you have. It's awful, but disabled people have to learn to cope with that because they're going to face it in life as well. So it's about empowering the disabled person to make sure they're not the one that’s bullied, or to make sure they know how – that they have appropriate responses if they are. And -- you'll find that actually -- again a lot of the disabled children -- quite profoundly disabled children I know end up with a very close knit group of friends around them who are absolutely -- will protect them to the death. And because they're friends and stuff. And that can only happen because we got integration, and -- I know there's a lot more I could say about it but I realize other people want to speak.

>> Down here at the front.
>> You mentioned the tabloid press, and the rise of hate crime. Do you think that the two are connected? I've recently been a direct victim of disability hate crime, and wonder what you think we can do about it.

>> There's no doubt in my mind that they're connected and the problem is that -- a lot of the coverage that – “We don't mean real disabled people. We don’t mean the genuine disabled. We mean the shirker.” But actually the person who’s that prejudiced, that would be nasty to someone with a disability, doesn't know who the shirker is. Cause they’re the one walking down the street – you don't know what benefit someone is on. Of course you don’t. You don’t know. So they're not -- those ones -- they're not the victim. The victim are the people who are clearly identifiable as disabled and – “Oh, you get all this money, and you get a free car” - and all of those things could only have come from the newspapers. They can’t have come from anywhere else. And it's the kind of story that suggests that almost everybody -- if you are -- if you ask -- well -- no it was actually, the most recent one was the government saying, it was Grant Shapps, said 900,000 people had dropped out of the disability assessment because they didn't want to face going through the new assessment. The actual figure is 19,000. 19,000. The headline in the Sunday Telegraph was 900,000. The figure 900,000 referred to everybody who was a new claimant, who over the last five years since ESA’s been introduced had ever opened a claim that hadn't gone through the assessment; and that happened under the old incapacity benefit, because people get better. That's just the way the system works, and that kind of twisting gives an impression that there are huge numbers of people who are swinging the system, and of course they're not. So when you see folk in the streets who’ve got a disability, they take it out on us and it's appalling. It’s just appalling.

>> In the centre?
>> Anne, it's great to have you here. Thank you for your contribution. I thought one of the best pieces of legislation of the last Labour Government was the 2010 Equalities Act. It came in fairly late, and obviously some of it was implemented and some hasn’t been. Some parts I think finally bit the dust this week, in the Employment and Regulatory Reform Bill – things like dual discrimination. I’d just like some sense from you, what do you think should be the main priorities in terms of future legislation that our party should be looking for?

>> Well, I think in a lot of cases, actually, it's making the legislation we’ve got work properly and actually be effective, and that's why I regret the passing of the DRC because they were very effective, in taking cases to court, and that’s a group of people who didn’t have the money to do it themselves, and that's not happening, and that's why the cut in the funding for the EHRC is so disappointing, because I think that is going to go backwards, and I suspect that -- as the years go on -- then the enforcement of a lot of the legislation will either - will not happen at all, or will lapse or -- and so -- as things -- as discrimination happens and is not challenged, then the people who are doing the discriminating forget that the legislation is there at all and is applied. And I would like to see -- it's quite interesting, I was speaking to some German disabled – German politician, quite recently and I was being very critical of our equality legislation, and “Oh, we’ve all this equalities legislation”, I said “We’ve got the same legislation, but I bet yours doesn't work any betters than ours does.” And so, in many cases, as I say, the legislation is there but it's the enforcement and the application of it that would make a huge difference and that's why I was saying all the things I said about, how do you prove someone's been discriminated against in a job interview or the fact that they haven't got the interview at all. Incredibly difficult and that's where we need some work done.

>> Yes, right at the back?
>> Very interesting lecture. I have a question and it is about the whole core and periphery. Speaking as an autistic person we had a very similar situation and I'm sure it applies – as you said, it applies for people with other disabilities. How do those in the core apart from the things you described improve our reach to the periphery?

>> I think it's a real challenge. I have two pages in the speech I had to ditch because I had too much, which actually looked at adults with learning disabilities and their expectations and aspirations and I don't think we are necessarily getting it right for people with learning disabilities. The numbers in work for them hasn't really shifted very much at all, over the time where it's gotten so much better for people with physical disabilities, and people with mental health problems, who have had mental health episodes in the past, again will not speak out, and it's very difficult for them to speak out because of the stigma and the prejudice that still exists. So that's -- perhaps is something for those of
us with physical disabilities, we've been too busy in our corner up to now that maybe we need to have a fellow feeling towards people with other disabilities and be aware and that's partly why we're saying about the danger we have about seeing everything through a prism of our own disability. We need to start understanding how other disabled people lead their lives and what's important to them, because what’s important to them might be totally different from what's important to us. And we mustn't make the same assumptions that able-bodied used to make about us, about them. And I think sometimes we do, because we think, “well, we would hate that, therefore they would”. Part of the bit I chopped out - I’ve got a cousin who is two years older than me who has a quite severe learning disability and lives in supported accommodation but goes to supported work and earns twenty pound a week, the old therapeutic earnings permitted work. If he was to lose his job, his three day a week job, he would be devastated. But actually there could be potential danger of that because of cuts in local government funding, because of cuts in chargeable funding then the social enterprise he works for may not be able to continue, and if people start insisting that all disabled people regardless of your ability must have, there must be a minimum wage element there - and I'm very much in favour of minimum wage, and disabled people of course should claim the minimum wage - but there will be groups like my cousin who doesn’t have the productivity -- I think he cleans up the kitchen and stuff. But he's incredibly happy doing that. Who are we to say, actually you can't do that job because you only get paid twenty pound a week. I think that would be a mistake. So, you know, they’re real challenges, that in insisting on things for one group of disabled people, we might actually be disadvantaging other groups of disabled people.

>> Dame Anne, earlier in your talk you mentioned visiting a job centre in Brent, which doesn't sound like a barrel of laughs, but as someone who is recently unemployed I do know what job centres are like. I’ve got a double interest in this. I'm a careers advisor by profession, though not currently working, and I am also a person with a stammer. I’m a director of the British Stammering Association. And it is recognized as a disability. I think a lot of us would prefer it wasn't, but there you go. One of the issues that we've had a lot of problems with lately, if that’s the right word, are people contacting us saying that the way in which job centres now operate is actually working against people with a speech or communication defect, because so much of it is done by telephone. The last time I signed on and I made a telephone -- I'm not too bothered with the phone, I’ve got used to it. But the last time I made a claim they warned me that it would take an hour. Double that for a stammerer. And also I've detected the occasional lapse of good manners on the part of the person on the other end of the phone, who can't cope with this person stammering and wants to hurry you on. I wonder -- through the committee that you're chair of, you can take this one up -- I'm actually, when I get home, I’m going to draft a letter on behalf of the British Stammering Association to the Secretary of State, because although I think we’re all in favour of new technology, there's always going to be a need for people to have a face to face interview with their personal adviser at the job centre, and I would not give careers advice over the phone unless I had to, professionally speaking. But there is an issue here for people who are terrified of using the telephone. And not everybody has a computer. It’s all very well DWP saying “Well, it’s all online”, but – is it 25% of the population will never be online? The ratios here which need to be dealt with, and we are getting a number of calls to the British Stammering Association Helpline, about this very thing - “I'm unemployed, my son is unemployed, he can't cope with the phone, I can't cope with the phone. What am I going to do?” And briefly, I was interested in your comment about, that you would not have been able to get into teacher training if your medical condition was as bad then as it is now: we recently, and I mean recently, within the last few months, we had an issue of a young lady who wanted to apply for a PGC - not at this University I have to say - who was told with a stammer she would not be accepted because she could not teach. I was told forty years ago I could not be a careers advisor – I’ll leave my colleagues to judge whether I’ve been any good at it or not, but it didn't stop me. But I think there is an issue here, which I would like you and your Parliamentary colleagues to take up for us. Because the job centre is a minefield for a stammerer.

>> Well I know that the answer you're going to get from the Secretary of State is that they're going to “digital by default”, which means that everything’s going to be done by computer. And the new universal credit, all the applications will be done by computer, and if you can’t do it by computer then it’ll be phone. There will not be a paper application form. There's obviously problems around JobCentre Plus, and indeed through the Work Programme as well, so, you know, once you've been out of work for a year you’ll find yourself in the Work Programme and exactly the same things can happen. In that stage it's the luck of which employment provider you're with; and some of them are good, and some of them are terrible, and so some of it is definitely luck of the draw. And the face to face stuff is being cut down because it's time consuming. It's easier to do things through call centres, it’s easier to divert it through call centres. But I think your point is extremely well made, and I'm horrified that somebody couldn't get into teaching because of their stammer: and actually, very often having a stammer can be an incredible barrier to work. I know a young man who’s very active in politics; he has cerebral palsy, gets himself round everywhere in his wheelchair. He’s got severe cerebral palsy, but I think - can't get a job because, multiple interviews, and I think it's his stammer that’s actually acting as the barrier, not the fact he’s in a wheelchair. I think he would get it otherwise. So -- it's -- it's a real issue.
>> Yes. The lady in the third row?

>> Thank you for your really interesting talk ,and the response you gave to the question before that I'm particularly interested in, because what it means to be disabled, I mean obviously it's quite wide. But -- I think when you talk about learning difficulties and you were mentioning Remploy and how it closed down, and affects severely disabled people. I'm not disabled myself but my brother is so I find it quite difficult to get really how decisions can be made by just disabled people because severely disabled people aren't being heard in the decision making process. But sometimes they can't be because of their disability, and the people closest to them know what's best for them. So it's just assumed that somebody in a wheelchair would know what's best for someone who’s got mental difficulties and developmental delay, which may not be the case. You said you don't need non-disabled people to speak on behalf of disabled people, but I think that's quite a massive generalization because sometimes non-disabled people might know what's in the best interest of somebody that can’t speak, or can’t move, and that might be better than somebody who is disabled.

>> I've fallen into exactly the trap that I was telling you we shouldn’t be falling into, which is generalization. And that’s exactly -- again, but that's -- what I've done is I've seen things through the prism of my disability, and, you know, a lot of the people with ordinary physical disabilities, where we are absolutely adamant we don't want other people speaking for us, but you're absolutely right there are some groups that depend on family and friends to be the ones that do speak up because they don't have a voice. But we should, as disabled people, also be remembering them too and should be -- and should be speaking up. And as challenges, as we go on and as we win more and more battles, the expectation should rise for everyone, then hopefully more and more disabled people will actually benefit from that, improving on the advances that allows them to participate more and find ways to allow them to actually express their views and their wills as well.
>> The gentleman with the spectacles.
>> Thank you very much for your talk. I just wondered if it's a bit disingenuous to focus on the tabloids and the coalition and the negative things they’ve done, and on the positive things Labour have done, when to my mind Labour spent over a decade stigmatising, demonising, marginalising people in receipt of benefits and you know -- consistently allowing the value of the minimum wage -- while sorry -- yeah -- having a minimum wage which people can't live on and having a dole which has halved in value since 1970 and which Ed Miliband is content to say in public that he couldn't live on. It’s disgraceful. So I just wondered if you could say a bit firstly both about what Labour could have done more in office and what Labour could be doing in the future, going forward, promoting for the 2015 election. Thanks.

>> OK. Well I actually think that Labour did a lot. That's partly why I did the backward reflection because my time of the fifteen, thirteen years of the Labour government -- that journey from what was this case at the beginning in 97 to what was the case -- or is the case now, is enormous. Absolutely enormous. A lot of the civil rights, a lot of the access to the built environment, all of that thing, that's been revolutionized. And that suffers from the danger that we look today and think, well, that could be better, and that could be better, and that -- and we could improve there. We forget just how far we have come. And looking around the room today there's people here that fifteen, twenty years ago would not have had a chance of being anywhere near a university. So there have been enormous changes. I don't accept that we stigmatize disabled people. I think we did a lot more in making disabled people accepted in the general population. We did a huge amount in terms of integrating disabled people into mainstream education, that's revolutionized. Again, it was the norm to go to a special school. I escaped it because I lived in a town where there only was one school, and my disability didn’t kick in till I was a teenager. But otherwise, if I'd been in a large city, I'd have been in a special school. So all those things have changed. It's incredible how -- the change. And I suppose my speech wasn't meant to be a critique necessarily of the present government. It was the fact that we’ve got so far. That once you get to this level then you start to build up resentments by the groups in society who actually also have very little. And that's -- it's that pitting those who have little against those who have less is my objection. I can't remember the tabloid stories in the way – or indeed mainstream, the Sunday Telegraph stories - with the headlines that we've got in the last two years, during the years of the Labour government. I can’t. There will have been the odd journalist, but this is -- seems and feels to me as a concerted effort to stigmatise and demonise people who get extra money through the state, through welfare. It’s to make welfare a dirty word. To the extent that I just have to mention the state pensions and the benefits that pensioners get is part of the welfare system. To be inundated with pensioners saying “How dare you call the state pension a benefit? I’ve worked all my life for it.” And a couple of bits on Wikipedia that explains that we’ve always had a contributory benefits system, and the state pension is indeed a benefit. But why are they saying that? It’s because the word benefits has become a dirty word, that anybody who’s on a benefit must by very nature be a scrounger. Forgetting completely that two thirds of people who are in receipt of benefits are actually in work, just low paid work. And I have to say that you know -- it's Labour -- you ask what Labour’s going to do. We're the ones that are actually saying -- not just the minimum wage -- and it was a hell of a job to get the minimum wage through the House of Commons in 97-98. We were up, the committee was up through the night four times, I think, the whole House was up through the night at least once, because of the resistance to get the minimum wage then. But we're talking about the living wage, and it's quite important that lots of local authorities are now developing the minimum wage. Because if we’re going to make work pay, then you have to make work pay, not keep reducing benefits, but that’s what the present government are doing. They’re actually looking to cut and to freeze the in work benefits so that work pays less, but in order to make it pay they have to pay the benefits, they have to cut the benefits. Now I will accept perhaps that the benefit levels, in particular for the out of work benefits such as Job Seeker’s Allowance, didn't rise in line with wages during the Labour years, and that was you know -- perhaps it should have been and I thought we’d actually got to a stage where we were – because we made work pay through things like tax credits, that perhaps we were at the stage where we could start raising benefits, and benefit levels. We never quite got there. Partly because there were still some disincentives in the scheme, particularly in London where housing is very high, that the tax credits didn't make work pay. But we still - the first thing you had to do was make work pay to make sure you that you were always going to be better off in work and you weren’t caught in a poverty trap. And that's what Labour tried very hard to do, and in most parts of the country because of the tax credits actually it did work.

>> Your arm must be getting stiff so –

>> I was just going to make a point that actually -- I was going to make the point that over half of the welfare benefits are being paid to pensioners.

>> Well half of welfare benefits. When the government uses the -- statistic that one out of every three taxpayer pound goes in welfare: 50% of that figure goes on the state pension. That’s what got me in into trouble on the Today programme, by saying this. And 70% of the money that's spent in welfare, the total welfare budget, goes to people who are over retirement age. Pension age. 70% goes to people -- so all of the cuts are falling on the 30% who are people of working age. And because in that 30% disabled people are disproportionately represented, the cuts are falling on disabled people. So despite what the government says, “we're not targeting disabled people”, that's what's happening because that's where the big money -- the big money to be saved is not on JSA at £70 a week. JSA, Job Seeker’s Allowance, accounts for 3% of the benefits total. Ask the population how much goes on unemployment, they say 50%. It's 3%. But there's fairly big chunks go on disability stuff, so that's why we're nervous. Because actually, if you're looking for big savings, that's the easy target. And one of the ways that the government has done that is the time limit, contributory Employment Support Allowance, if you’re in something called the WRAG group, the Work Related Activity Group, you can only get it for a year. You used to get incapacity benefit for as long as you needed it. And originally, the ESA, you’d get it if you were on the contributory, you’d get it as long as -- but you only get it for a year and then they take the money. They’re saving huge amounts of money through that. And that’s from people with either ill health, with long term health problem or a disability.

>> Could I also just make the point that out of that 3% that's being paid to Job Seekers Allowance, the government’s statistics is less than 1% of those people are fraudulently claiming Job Seekers Allowance and of the disability benefits less than half of a per cent are being found to be claiming disability benefits fraudulently.

>> And just last week we had the government saying that there has been a rush to claim Disability Living Allowance, and that's what the figures show, and the figures don’t show that at all. And anyway there’s no advantage rushing to claim Disability Living Allowance, because everyone has got to be reassessed for PIP anyway. So these are some of the -- the things that have been spun in the media that I find really very annoying and that's what makes me angry.

>> I'm getting three signals – one from the back, in despair, saying that we're overrunning quite massively, and two people who are trying to talk. I’m going to pick one of them just to take a quick question here. And I think – I know you’ve had your hand up, but if you want to approach us immediately afterwards, then we’ll try and deal with it there. This gentleman here in the middle I think will take the last question.

>> Thank you. Cambridge is an exception but it's a sad, sad fact that for the majority of universities in this country a visually impaired student is not really getting properly supported.
>> What kind of student?
>> Visually impaired. I know -- my own daughter is severely visually impaired, and in the case of the vast majority of universities in the United Kingdom the universities are – as I said, Cambridge is an exception -- but in most cases the universities are not geared up to support visually impaired students, and then -- when asked what's happening with the Equality Act -- and unfortunately the question is how well -- to what extent is enforcement of the Act taking place in these cases.

>> I'm not very aware -- I know individual students who have been visually impaired who have had a good experience at university. A young lad who came to work in my office and in the course of seven months went from being fully sighted to fully blind and -- but then didn't – hadn’t been born blind at all – but he was singing the praises of his university, about how much equipment he was given and everything, and he was finishing off a PHD in philosophy at the time he went blind. So his was a very, very positive experience. I'm not sure if it's necessarily the same across the country or whether there might be certain institutions and certain individuals who are not getting the help. And in that case then it's worth perhaps approaching their own MP if there is a particular problem. Certainly students used to come to me. I haven't had a complaint for a long time. Students would come to me where they couldn't get their grants through to get their equipment and they used to have to fight. But as I say, I haven't had many of them in recent years at all. So I was assuming things were getting better but there might be, as I say, some institutions where it's not, and it might actually depend on the actual disability help that's there set by the university but they should -- they should have – they’ve got their duty and everything that they should be fulfilling. I'm sorry I can't give you any more detail than that.

>> Okay, I'm going to leave it there. Comedians say leave them asking for more, wanting more, and I think that is the case. If you haven't read it, Google up the text of the incisive speech that Dame Anne gave last September on the Employment Support Allowance and work capability assessments, which was in the relevant Commons debate. I'll say incisive. It upset quite a lot of people so she knew when she was ahead, I think, in that debate. Dame Anne also said to me before we came in, “you ask a politician and you get a politician”: but she was drawing attention to the fact that in the House of Lords there are a number of disability spokespersons and advocates who sit on the cross benches and are really important in the collective expression and articulation of the needs of people with a disability. All that we're asking for here is -- and I'm borrowing of the phrase of the day – fairness and the opportunity to make your way in the world. That doesn’t just mean to say simply, in a simple-minded way, equality: but Dame Anne answered that point very well. I'm grateful to you for your questions. It's the tenth lecture, it’s lived up to the standard, and I’d ask you to thank with me collectively for Dame Anne’s speech. It was a very, very encouraging one.
(APPLAUSE).