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3.53 pm
Rev. Martin Smyth (Belfast, South): The hon. Member for Warrington, South (Ms Southworth) referred to personal experience and the human aspects as well as to the whole concept of the environment. We have not developed that sufficiently over the years, as our legislation for the built environment has often not been complied with when new buildings have been put up. There is no excuse for that, although I can understand some delays in modernising old buildings, some of which may not be as amenable as others to the work.
I welcome the Bill as a further advance. I know that there have been criticisms of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995. At the time, some hon. Members wanted to vote against it because it did not give us everything that we wanted. Even today, it has been acknowledged that this Bill is merely one more step. We must go step by step and make progress towards further legislation.
The right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague) has come in for some criticism, but I must at least pay tribute to him for introducing the Bill that became the Disability Discrimination Act 1995. He had not won the battle either with the Treasury or--dare I say it?--with the Northern Ireland Office. Northern Ireland was again excluded. In fairness, when we pressed the issue, he ensured that there was legislation for Northern Ireland.
Fascinatingly, the only reference to Northern Ireland in the Bill concerns eligibility for membership of the House or of the Northern Ireland Assembly. It says that membership of the Disability Rights Commission is a bar to membership of either of those bodies. I am aware of the Northern Ireland Act 1998, to which the Minister and the hon. Member for Kingswood (Mr. Berry), my friend of long standing in this campaign, referred. I am not convinced that the same thrust of legislation is contained in that Act, bearing in mind that there is already a debate about whether one commission can deal with all the various aspects that are dealt with here by several commissions.
When will Northern Ireland have a commission with the same powers as the commission in Great Britain? The right hon. Member for Coatbridge and Chryston (Mr. Clarke) will remember that in 1986 he promoted a private Member's Bill, of which I was one of the sponsors, but the legislation was not allowed to be extended to Northern Ireland. In 1989 I was fortunate enough to draw the 11th place in the ballot and we managed to pilot through legislation for Northern Ireland on that occasion.
I remind the House that part of the declaration of human rights is that every citizen should have the same rights, so those in Northern Ireland should have all the rights that the citizens of England, Scotland and Wales have. People involved in disability needs in Northern Ireland have been consistent in campaigning for the Bill and in working to improve the lot of people with either overt or covert disabilities and seeking to give everyone the same standing.
I trust that, if the legislation has to be effected by the Northern Ireland Assembly, which, unlike the Welsh and Scottish Assemblies, does not start until the middle of 2000 at the earliest, we will not again be disadvantaging people in Northern Ireland.
I welcome the Bill as a further step towards freedom for people with disabilities. From boyhood, I have been aware of disability. My mother's cousin--we called her Aunt Nancy--was blind. She worked in a workshop for the blind. She never liked living in the hostel for the blind. She was a beautiful musician, a singer and a pianist. My brother and I would meet her every Friday night to take her to our home. With the mischievous approach of boys, we could not understand how a person who could not see could get around. We regularly tried tricks on her. Sometimes we stopped short and sometimes we went past the house. Never once did she miss a beat. She was able to correct us and say, "A little bit further," or "You've gone past it."
I have been aware of disability at other levels. Sometimes people do not realise that none of us is perfect and that we all have some measure of disability. It may not be noticeable now, but it might be before we get much older. That is the sense in which we must continue getting across to people the concept of disability. Original sin was mentioned earlier. It was not invented in the House, but it is sometimes still evident in the House, in the way in which we treat people who are different from us.
We have spoken about the effect on employment and businesses of disability discrimination legislation. We in Northern Ireland do not consider it right that small businesses are excluded. When the matter was discussed previously, the employers forum was adamant that the
legislation should apply across the entire sector, especially because in Northern Ireland, unlike other parts of the Kingdom, small businesses employ a much greater percentage of labour than large businesses. I hope, therefore, that if legislation is needed to cover those who should be employed in small businesses, it will be forthcoming.
We recognise that there are certain jobs that certain people cannot do. Whether or not we have physical or mental abilities, some of us are not equipped to do certain jobs. We are not arguing that people should get a job because of a specific disability. We have acknowledged that we want the chair and the vice-chair of the commission to be appointed on merit. Some people with particular disabilities might outshine some of us who think that we are not disabled.
I wonder to what extent the Bill will apply to Government Departments. I was glad to hear that Ministers had at last won the battle with the Treasury. That has been the problem all along. Step by step, money is to be released from various Departments. However, it is not right that we should wait another four years to deal with the supply of goods and services. That is where discrimination is often most severe, and I shall give two simple examples to illustrate the point.
I recognise that the public purse, like all our purses, is not bottomless. Judgments must be made. I am thinking of a home that I visited last Saturday, for which we have been trying to get alternative heating for at least two years. One of the residents is 93 years of age and blind. The other, her sister, is 84 and suffers from severe osteoporosis.
We finally won the argument that there should be alternative heating. The best would have been oil. We were told that that was not possible, but we have not discovered why. Only last week, the women were told that an application had been made for gas, but as there was no connection at the front of the house, they could not have gas. The women had never asked for gas, because the nearest gas supply point is more than two miles away. Those in the Housing Executive and the occupational therapy department are using such reasons for not supplying the alternative fuel that is needed to care for two folk who, in my judgment, deserve it.
I think of another case in which an application had been made for the provision of downstairs accommodation, including a toilet, for a woman who had been healthy until about 10 years ago. For the past 10 years, owing to debilitation and loss of limbs, she has been confined to an upstairs room. I was utterly amazed to discover that the occupational therapist who was sent to examine the room tried to find ways of avoiding the provision of such accommodation--that is the kindest way that I can put it. It was only when my constituents argued the case that officials began to speak of criteria, which had not been mentioned previously.
It seems to me that in both cases, the criteria were financial. If we continue to discriminate against our citizens because we claim that we cannot afford to meet their needs, the ablest in society will be allowing the weakest to bear the greatest pain. I am glad to welcome the establishment of the Disability Rights Commission, so that it might get on with its work.
Miss Anne Begg (Aberdeen, South):
It was in 1988, at my first Labour party conference in Blackpool, that I first spoke to a large audience about the need for civil rights for disabled people. I believed then, as I do now, that disabled people would never be able to play their full part in society, never be fully accepted and never have equality of opportunity until we had equal rights with everyone else in society.
In those days I had no idea that I would ever reach these heady heights. I had no ambition to seek election to this place. That was for other people, not for people like me. I saw my role in persuading others of the strong case for civil rights legislation, but it would be up to others to enact that legislation.
Hon. Members can therefore imagine my pride in being in the Chamber today, speaking on the Second Reading of the Disability Rights Commission Bill, which will lay the foundation that will underpin the changes necessary to stop disabled people being treated as second-class citizens.
I have left it to others this afternoon to discuss theneed for such legislation--the flaws in the Disability Discrimination Act 1995, the powerlessness of the National Disability Council set up by the DDA, the need for a body that can take through the courts cases of discrimination against disabled people, and the need for good information for service providers and employers. Those are the academic arguments. There is an injustice in this country, and the Bill is the beginning of our efforts to right that injustice.
What I can add to the debate is not based on intellectual argument or high-flown ideals. I can describe my experiences in day-to-day life that illustrate the extent of discrimination faced by disabled people, day in and day out. Let me give hon. Members some examples of how it feels to be at the receiving end of the ignorance and prejudice that exist. It is all very well to talk about things in the abstract, as we have been doing this afternoon. I hope that I can evoke for hon. Members some of our feelings.
People who use a wheelchair become obsessed with toilets. On a number of occasions it has been difficult to find one, so I choose where I go carefully. Although I am blessed with a fairly strong bladder, thank goodness, on occasion it is important that there is a toilet. I remember some years ago when I went to a Chinese restaurant in my constituency. It was chosen because it had a disabled person's toilet. After a nice meal we went to the toilet, as one does after a few drinks or so. Imagine my surprise when I opened the door of the disabled toilet to find it full of furniture. Feeling a bit puzzled, I went off to
complain. I found the manager whose reply was, "We're very busy. It's a Saturday night and you didn't tell us you were coming." Next time hon. Members book a table in a restaurant, imagine not only booking a table but having to say, "By the way, I might want to use your toilet." The farcical nature of that helps to illustrate the difficulty. I have found all sorts of things in disabled toilets. I think it was at the BBC Aberdeen that we had to shift out a barbecue and wellingtons a few minutes before I was to go on air so that I could go to the toilet. That is what can happen with accessible toilets, but imagine what it is like not to be able to get to the toilet at all.
Then there was the time when I was standing for election to the council. I was standing in one ward in Brechin, where I lived at the time, and I had to vote in another ward. I arrived at the appropriate polling station wearing my big red rosette for the Labour party to find no other people wearing big red rosettes. All I could see were people wearing blue rosettes. There were three steps into the polling station. I was on my own. Consternation ensued. I realised that I had to swallow my pride and ask the Tories to carry me in. Luckily, they did this with a degree of good will. Brechin is a small town and I knew them well. Just to be on the safe side, I thought to ask the SNP to carry me out again. If hon. Members can imagine the indignity that disabled people have to face in being carried in and out of a polling station, they will get some sense of how awkward life can be.
I have many such stories of what has happened to me. I wish also to show that such things happen constantly, so I shall give just two examples from this week. At the beginning of the week I arrived on the plane from Aberdeen and waited at Heathrow for the taxi driver to pick me up and bring me here. He had my name and knew that I was in a wheelchair. I was sitting waiting when a driver from the company that I use walked past me. Hon. Members can imagine the consternation of the complete stranger standing beside me when she was asked if I was Anne Begg. She was completely puzzled until I put the driver right. That happens all the time. For disabled people outside, it may be worth remembering that no matter how famous or well-known one thinks one is, all disabled people suffer from the "Does she take sugar?" syndrome. Constantly, complete strangers who just happen to be near me are asked by other complete strangers whether I can manage or not. These are small examples of how ridiculous the attitudes are that lead to discrimination against disabled people.
My second illustration from this week concerns the census form that I received as part of the pilot census. I assume that all hon. Members know that there is to be a full-scale census in the year 2001. In some parts, a number of households have been chosen to receive the pilot census form. One duly arrived through my door and, being a good citizen, I filled it out. I came across a question that is obviously geared to judging how many people in Britain have a disability. The question is:
My disability does not interfere with my job. I hope that I am as successful a Member of Parliament as anyone else in this House. I hope that I was as successful a teacher as any other. I am fairly sure that my right hon. Friend
the Secretary of State for Education and Employment would also tick the no box indicating that he did not have a disability that limits his daily activities or the work that he can do. He is a successful Secretary of State and member of this Government, enacting worthwhile legislation. Who on earth, then, is meant to tick the yes box? Perhaps my mum should. She does not actually have an illness, a health problem or a disability, but she has never learned to drive. She relies on my father to drive her around. That limits her daily activities considerably. Perhaps she might tick the yes box, but she would not class herself as being disabled, ill or having a health problem.
Several hon. Members in the House this afternoon, including me, wear specs. If we had a burning ambition to be a pilot or to do some other job that required A1 sight, I am sure that we would all be discriminated against because we wear specs. In other words, that would be classed as a disability. Yet I do not suppose that hon. Members believe that they have a disability. Someone with specs might possibly tick the yes box.
It is not the disability that is the problem. It is not my disability that stops me playing an equal part in society. It is the fact that some people have put steps in buildings, so that I cannot get into them. If there are two buildings side by side, one with steps and the other fully accessible, there are no limitations to what I can do in the fully accessible one, but I am disadvantaged and discriminated against if I want to get into the building with steps.
We should never blame disabled people for problems that society has created. It is society that has created physical barriers and it is attitudes within society that cause the problem, not the disability. I hope that when the Home Office gets my letter of complaint, it will consider changing that particular question on the census. I am not sure how, but I hope that it will, in time for the census in 2001.
The discrimination faced by many disabled people can have a far more serious impact on their life than the minor daily irritations that I have just described. While I face inconvenience, annoyance and frustration, I have been lucky to be able to overcome the barriers that could have seriously impeded my life. Eventually I became a teacher, although there was a doctor at the college of education who seemed hellbent on preventing me. I hope that I was a successful teacher, despite having a disability far more profound than it was when I first went to see the doctor as a 17-year-old.
I have managed to lead an independent life. I have a car with a great machine that stores the wheelchair on the roof. In that way the barrier of a lack of transport and of motability has been overcome for me. Ultimately, I have been lucky to have been elected to this House, and that the attitudinal problems that exist in political parties and society as a whole did not count against me when I stood to be selected for Aberdeen, South. For the majority of people with disabilities, the barriers, both physical and attitudinal, are far too high to overcome. They are not in work although they could quite easily work. They do not lead a fulfilling life although there should be nothing to stop them doing so. We can only guess what talent goes to waste because of discrimination against, and lack of opportunity for, people with disabilities. Society would be richer if all citizens could play their full part in our society.
We are never going to be happy; we will always look for more. I look forward to the time when I can visit all my constituents because all private dwellings are wheelchair accessible. That is a long way off, but we have made a start in changing part M of the building regulations in England and Wales--part T in Scotland. I look forward to being able to travel by train on my own without having to book ahead and a guarantee that the toilets will work--toilets again. I look forward to the time when I can take it for granted that if I go to a restaurant or pub, there will be a disabled toilet that I can enter without falling over furniture. I look forward to the time when every shop in Union street in Aberdeen is wheelchair accessible so that I get in and do my shopping like everyone else.
"Do you have any long term illness, health problem or disability which limits your daily activities or the work you can do?".
There is a yes and a no box. I did not think much about it, but got on and ticked the no box.
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