| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
5.6 pm
Mr. Tom Levitt (High Peak): In the run-up to the 1997 general election, I was asked which of Labour's policies I was most looking forward to seeing implemented. I took a few minutes to think about my answer; the first matter to come to mind was capital for the replacement of Chapel-on-le-Frith infants school. However, that has been provided and it is in the bag. I am delighted to say that the new school will be open in September.
Secondly, as a councillor who had served at all levels of local government, I wanted to see an end to the garrotting of local government. However, I took it for granted that we would do that as well. Accordingly, I thought again.
Thirdly, as a parent, I wanted to see investment in health and a strong economy to see my family--my daughter--through the next generation. Was that to be my answer?
I thought of all these things and weighed them. Having done so, I said, "No, the real touchstone of a decent, civilised Government would be putting into place comprehensive and enforceable civil rights for disabled people." That was what being in government and our purpose in being in this place meant to me.
For several years before the election, I worked as a consultant to the Local Government Management Board, advising it on various matters. First, I advised it on how to make its services, information and local government premises accessible to people with sensory disabilities. Secondly, I trained its staff and others in deafness awareness in particular, and disability awareness in general. Thirdly, I was invited to address national conferences and seminars on the impact of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995. I must take some responsibility for slightly misleading councils because I had the idea that if I led them to believe that they would have to do more than what was required by the Act, I would be performing a much better service to disabled people in the long run. If councils have inadvertently done more than they have to under the Act, I make no apology for that.
Over those years, I and others were fighting outside the House on these issues, as colleagues now present were doing in the House, along with Members of the other place. It was a wide and broad-based campaign. The history of the past few years has been dealt with fully. However, there were one or two milestones in my commitment to the cause which I want to relate to the House.
First, it was 12 or 13 years ago when I first had a one-and-a-half-hour conversation with a person whose first language was sign language. I learned so much during that conversation. I discovered a new world--a new culture--that I did not know existed. In years to come, I learned not only sign language, but to work in the world of deaf people, which brought me great enrichment, and great knowledge and experience that I have wanted to use ever since.
I particularly want to tell the House about a meeting in Manchester, at which 200 people came together as an American lawyer described the Americans with Disabilities Act and how it worked. That may appear to have been a normal occasion, but I was one of only six hearing people at the meeting. The American lawyer was profoundly deaf, as were almost all the people in the room.
The lawyer gave his presentation in American sign language. An interpreter interpreted from Americansign language into British sign language, and another interpreter interpreted from British sign language into spoken English, for the benefit of the small minority of us who could not cope with the demands of the language of that particular culture.
That man--who was without hearing and without speech, and whose name I have unfortunately forgotten--was a highly successful advocate. He appeared in top courts and, every day of the week, represented hearing people before hearing judges and hearing juries. His deafness had been no barrier to his education, his profession or his success. Why, oh why, oh why--it has taken me two years to come up with that expression in the House--is not that same experience available for deaf people in this country? It would enable them to become top lawyers operating in the same environment as hearing and non-disabled people.
On another occasion, I spent probably not more than half an hour mastering the finger-spelling alphabet used by deaf-blind people. A code, representing the letters of the alphabet, is spelled out on someone's hand and I learned it because I had been invited to dinner with a friend of a friend--a deaf-blind woman who, 10 years previously, had added profound deafness to the total blindness with which she was born. She had communicated in that way to barely a dozen people over the previous 10 years.
That woman was strong, engaging, humorous, mentally agile and very able--even her dog was an expert on real ale--but, because she has neither hearing nor sight, some people would regard her as a freak. People such as her attract ignorance, disregard and disdain from the able-bodied majority in this country, who do not have the experience of disability to enable them to have the proper understanding that is required.
Those are profound examples, but there are many less profound--perhaps more trivial--examples as well. The hearing aid of a deaf person who turned up at the theatre only to find that the induction loop was not working--although there was no sign outside to tell him that--would be effectively useless. He would miss out on the benefit of the performance and would not try again--he would stop going to the theatre on the basis of one experience.
Someone who turned up to a council meeting, having said three weeks in advance that he required notes in Braille, only to be told on the day, "We have not got
round to it yet. That facility is not available," would have his confidence taken away. "Why should I bother?" he would think to himself.
I met a young man called Thomas last year, when he came to the House to speak to a Royal National Institute for Deaf People event. He had committed himself to education and to bettering himself through achieving qualifications. Thomas went to catering college and excelled, qualifying as a junior chef. He worked as a chef in a cafe, but people called him names, rejected him and did not include him in what was going on. This qualified chef moved to a burger joint to sweep the toilets. He had spent years getting qualifications, but ended up sweeping toilets because that was his only way into the catering industry--in a capacity in which people would accept him.
All the examples I have given are real, but the situation is made worse, in some cases, when people try to help but get it wrong. I know of a council chamber in which, when the induction loop system was switched on, deaf people who used the T-switch on their hearing aids heard not only what was going on in the chamber, but what was going on in every committee room in the building. It was like Babel, and they had to turn their hearing aids off. The same council chamber featured not only fixed microphones for the induction loop system, which were very welcome, but low-energy light bulbs, because the council was committed to the environment. Unfortunately, the two systems were immediately next to each other on the ceiling, and when the induction loop system was switched on, all the hearing aids in the room would scream, making them completely unusable. The council decided not to change the light bulbs, because it was green to have them, so it had to abandon the induction loop system, on which it had spent thousands of pounds.
There are people who cannot obtain jobs for no other reason than that they have a facial disfigurement. Others are not considered for promotion because they have difficulty speaking, although they may be the best qualified for the job involved. Some employers refuse to provide "reasonable accommodation": they refuse to lower a desk, or to provide a powerful magnifying glass or a flashing fire alarm. Such simple, inexpensive changes are not made because of ignorance.
Ignorance of that kind was demonstrated a few months ago, when--as hon. Members probably read in the newspapers--a group of deaf people were evicted from a holiday camp because they were making too much noise. Deaf people experience that time after time. They are evicted from pubs because, apparently, people are frightened by the noises that they make, their gestures and the attitudes that they strike. But that simply is not true, as the managers of such places would know if they sat down and thought about it.
We can understand why, in such circumstances, disabled people want to give up. They have been banging their heads against a brick wall; it is so much easier to curl up in a corner, and just wish that all the examples of discrimination that so many disabled people take for granted--because they experience them every day--would go away. The 6 million people who have disabilities are tempted to put aside any ambition, and to reject any opportunity that might arise to seek a well-paid job or, in some cases, any job at all. The same applies to
the 8 million with hearing impairments, the 2 million with visual impairments and the hundreds of thousands with learning difficulties.
Last year, Leonard Cheshire produced a book entitled "Access Denied: Disabled People's Experience of Social Exclusion". In the light of the figures that I just gave, is it not astonishing that, according to an NOP poll conducted for the book, 53 per cent. of people--including 61 per cent. of those under 35--say that they have no regular contact with disabled people? They do not work with them, live with them or meet them on a daily basis. A quarter of the population say that they feel awkward in the presence of someone with a disability.
I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen, South (Miss Begg) will control her temper when I reveal that one person in three believes that someone in a wheelchair is likely to be less intelligent than other people. Four out of 10 say that it is accepted that it must be pretty difficult, or even impossible, for someone with a disability to obtain a job, and three quarters say that, if they became disabled, they would expect their living standards to fall. The good side is that 55 per cent. agree that society does not allow disabled people to be useful members of the community, and only one person in five thinks that disabled people are already adequately protected against discrimination.
Only this week, I read a report published by the Down's Syndrome Association entitled "You'll Never Join The Army". It provides the frightening revelation that one in four families with a Down's syndrome member has expressed great dissatisfaction about the attitude of medical staff. That publication contains some horrific stories. The report says that too many doctors regard people with Down's syndrome as sub-human and worthless. If one in four doctors give families that impression, what hope is there for the rest of us? How do we tackle that prejudice? How do we communicate the view that disabled people are people first and disabled second?
Hon. Members may be aware that the Government recently employed a young man with Down's syndrome for an advertising campaign with the theme, "See the person, not the disability". In the advertisement, the young boy is called on as a substitute in a school football match, much to the consternation of his team's supporters. He scores the winning goal and becomes their hero.
The Sun took that young boy to join Kevin Keegan and the England soccer team for a training session, and it devoted a double-page spread to the story. What I am about to tell the House will come as no surprise to those who know people with Down's syndrome. That story told of the happiness that the young man generated within himself and within others. It referred to the heights of his aspirations and his potential, and to the fact that there is no limit to what people like him can achieve.
It is just as well that this is a Second Reading debate, because I have come this far through my speech without mentioning the Disability Rights Commission, but I shall now put that right. The commission is the teeth that were missing from the 1995 legislation. It was born in the Labour party manifesto, and it was then handed over to the disability rights task force, which produced a unanimous report last summer about what it thought
should be in the White Paper. The White Paper was published in July and accepted everything in the report, and that is reflected in the Bill. That is a classic example of consultation working.
I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, East (Mr. Heppell), who is not present at the moment. He said that the Bill is a good Bill, and that we should study it by all means, but that we should not clutter it with provisions that take away the freedom of the Disability Rights Commission to establish good practice, to decide for itself how it wants to change and to open itself up for review at a later date, so that we can see whether we are getting it right and make changes accordingly.
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |