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6.19 pm
Mr. Gordon Marsden (Blackpool, South): I am delighted to be able to speak in support of Third Reading. The Disability Discrimination Act 1995 made an important start in providing disabled people with rights of access to employment, goods, services and premises. Yesterday, the Under-Secretary of State for Education and Employment, my hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Ms Hodge), acknowledged to the Select Committee on Education and Employment, of which I am a member, that the first two or three years of that Act's operation had provoked cases and a momentum similar to those created by the Sex Discrimination Act 1975 and the setting up of the Equal Opportunities Commission. Bearing in mind the positive contribution that they made to transforming our society, the Disability Discrimination Act was a good start.
However, the 1995 Act did not provide a platform from which individuals could make a progression. It was a blunt instrument. I believe that the Disability Rights Commission, which I hope that the House is about to bring into being, will give an edge and a temper to everything for which disability campaigners have fought for so long.
I share the delight of my hon. Friend the Member for Kingswood (Mr. Berry) that a Labour Government are introducing the Bill, but it is only fair to say that it builds on the efforts of members of all parties. I add my tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Kingswood, but I also pay tribute to the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Mrs. Browning)--and to the hon. Member for Daventry (Mr. Boswell), who presented the Opposition's position very constructively this afternoon.
The Bill ties in with the overall thrust of Government policy to aid and empower disabled people--the new deal for disabled people, the special educational needs Green Paper, the new role for personal advisers in the single gateway, and other measures that the Government are bringing forward, which are giving teeth to the Tomlinson report proposals.
I am delighted that the Bill is being taken through the House by my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary who, as others have said, has displayed great energy and commitment in doing so. In one of her first engagements in her position, she visited my constituency to meet the Blackpool Bears, a disabled sports group that has done admirable work in the Blackpool area.
As an example of joined-up government, I also pay tribute to the work of the Under-Secretary of State for Social Security, my hon. Friend the Member for City of York (Mr. Bayley), for the thought-provoking way in which he has dealt sensitively with the issues surrounding disability that hon. Members have brought to his attention.
The Disability Rights Commission embodies four essential ingredients. It is a spur to cultural change; it is a source of central advice and information; it is a practical source of redress; and it is an empowering device. I believe that it will have a key role to play in a range of areas.
I believe that the extension of the 1995 Act in October of this year for service providers will give a major new impetus and an added edge to the type of work that the commission takes on board. I believe and hope that it will provide a major boost and support system to the many voluntary sector organisations that, together with the pressure groups, have been a lifeline to disabled people. Despite the new and welcome emphasis by the Government on working with them, we tend too often to take for granted the contribution of the voluntary sector in this respect. However, the voluntary sector, its volunteers and its organisations are often the backbone of civil society.
I have just returned from a visit to Russia, where the health of that nascent democracy is much debated locally. One of the most impellent gaps in Russian society today is the lack of that voluntarist tradition and that voluntary principle. We should never take them for granted. We should always be extremely pleased and proud of the voluntary work that is done in our country.
In my constituency, the Disability Services Organisation for Blackpool, Wyre and Fylde, of which I have the honour to be president, will welcome the umbrella opportunity that the Disability Rights Commission offers. It has several different initiatives, offering free independent advice and a volunteer service for disabled people with sensory and physical disabilities, jointly financed by Blackpool council, Blackpool social services and North West Lancashire health authority. It has achieved a great deal in buying and leasing scooters and wheelchairs, shop mobility, a dial-a-ride scheme and a disability information service. It has now obtained a £30,000 grant from the Millennium Commission to make and produce a disability awareness video for people in the north-west. All such organisations will benefit from the support and encouragement and the umbrella function of the Disability Rights Commission.
All those aspects tie in with the need to strengthen disabled people's rights, not by condescension or toleration, but by giving them their proper rights
in society. If I may be forgiven a historical reference, that has so often been the route that minorities have had to tread in our society--beginning with condescension, moving on to toleration and finally achieving full civil rights.
The new commission will need to be aware of, and especially sensitive to, the increasing involvement of disabled people in voluntary and statutory bodies--in school boards of governors, in health trust boards and in tribunals. However, along with that goes a responsibility on those bodies that welcome disabled people to give them the proper support and encouragement, and to anticipate the need for time off and the need for appliances with which to do their job properly. Disabled people should not have to go to them cap in hand. I hope that the new Disability Rights Commission will strengthen their voice in that respect. I believe that, with increased participation by disabled people in public bodies, in ministerial Departments and in local councils, the DRC will have a very important role to play in using its powers to be proactive.
I add my voice to those who have spoken about the excellent new publicity campaign--the "See the Person" campaign--because that is all about inclusion. I too, welcome the fact that businesses--especially small businesses, of which there are many in my constituency--will be involved in that process. It is important that businesses recognise that disabled people are about "what I can do, not what I can't do".
Often, unwitting and unthinking discrimination is a major element in the barriers to disabled people. It is the so-called "Does he"--or, for that matter, does she--"take sugar?" syndrome, of which I have some personal experience in my family through my mother, who is disabled.
The Disability Rights Commission has a very important role to play in encouraging and developing codes of practice. It has a particular opportunity at this time to encourage new administrative organisations--the regional development agencies, the new unitary authorities, the Scottish Parliament and the National Assembly for Wales, all of which start with a clean slate.
The DRC has a very important encouraging role. Tonight, I especially want to highlight the issue of tourism. I am very pleased that the Department for Culture, Media and Sport document "Tomorrow's Tourism", published earlier in the year, acknowledged the needs and concerns of disabled people. It recognised that an estimated 4 million disabled people in the United Kingdom want to take a holiday break but do not do so. Holidays and leisure breaks, to an extent which people who have no experience of disabled people and their carers often underestimate, can be a lifeline to those people, but often it is very difficult for them to take holidays.
I believe that the Disability Rights Commission will provide a welcoming context for initiatives that are already under way, such as the Holiday Care Service and Tourism for All. I hope that the commission will be able to encourage the industry and the providers to take on more disabled people in the tourism business and to welcome more holidaymakers into their establishments. I am delighted to say that many hoteliers in Blackpool--incidentally, in some of the smallest establishments--have already made good progress in that respect.
In the final analysis, the commission's power to help individuals with complaints under the 1995 Act is terribly important. There is an old Quaker adage that he who would do good must begin with doing it in minute particulars. In that respect, we must always remember that, although disabled people are individuals, whose struggle and sense of self-worth is very important to them as individuals, they also act as beacons--as champions--for others in that area.
Mr. Edward Leigh (Gainsborough):
In his introduction to the White Paper concerning the Bill--"Promoting disabled people's rights--Creating A Disability Rights Commission fit for the 21st Century"--the then responsible Minister, who is now the Minister for the Arts said:
I was thinking about the Minister for the Arts only yesterday when I was clearing out an old wardrobe that I had inherited. In it was a newspaper of 28 May 1979, from the early, heady days of the previous Conservative Government. There was a long article in it about the new head of the Conservative research department, one Mr. Alan Howarth. Let us hope that what is created today does not end up in the same way as a fading newspaper article in a dusty old wardrobe. I do not think that it will.
What we are about to pass into law is important. I do not want to be churlish. I accept that the Bill is a great victory for those who campaigned for it over many years. I took part in those debates in the middle part of the previous Parliament when the disability legislation of the Conservative Government was before us. I have no worries with what my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition said on 24 November 1994, when he was the Minister for Social Security and Disabled People. He said that the then Conservative Government believed that it should be possible to enforce legislation without setting up an expensive bureaucracy to police it. That is my view.
We should be able to live in a society where disabled people feel that they have rights and that those rights can be enforced. Equally, I hope that we understand that creating an expensive bureaucracy and, in the words of my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition, enforcing it can be extremely dangerous.
I thought that MENCAP put the matter very well in its contribution to the all-party disablement group's Second Reading briefing, when it said:
We have only to read clause 4 to realise that we are talking about a commission that potentially will be very powerful. The clause reads:
I realise that those who speak in the debate have fought for many years for rights for the disabled. Why should they be primarily concerned about burdens on business? My only plea is that we ensure that we have a balanced debate, and that what the CBI has said about the potentially huge powers contained in the Bill is taken to heart by the Government. I hope that they are prepared, willing and undertaking to act in the benign way that the hon. Member for Newport, East (Mr. Howarth) was talking about when he introduced the White Paper.
I agree that we must move from an era where disabled people had no rights. Indeed, they were heavily discriminated against. We must move from an era in which there is perhaps an element of condescension. We must then move on to an era where we do not talk constantly, as we often do in the social security world, of benefits for disabled people. Instead, we must move them into the world of work.
"We do not believe there should be any tension between the interests of disabled people and the interests of employers or of providers of goods and services; rather the contrary."
He added:
A Disability Rights Commission . . . will be an agency of benign change."
Let us hope that the hon. Gentleman is right. I sincerely hope that the Bill will be an instrument of benign change. In the right hands, it can be. In the wrong ones, it could be an instrument of intrusive over-regulation that could work against the interests of disabled people.
"There are men, women and children who have hitherto been awarded protection from discrimination in theory but who have been left without a supporting mechanism for redress of grievances in practice."
I agree with that statement. It is perhaps wrong for society to try to make itself feel comfortable by introducing legislation that it is impossible to enforce in practice. However, following the long debates that we have had over many years, I think that there is always a right time for doing things. Perhaps this is the right time for the Bill. However, as we pass it into law, I believe that we should consider carefully the representations that have been made to us by employer organisations, particularly by the CBI and particularly in relation to what it has to say about non-discrimination notices, as referred to in clause 4.
"If in the course of a formal investigation the Commission is satisfied that a person has committed or is committing an unlawful act, it may serve on him a notice (referred to in this Act as a non-discrimination notice) which . . . gives details of the unlawful act . . . and . . . requires him not to commit any further unlawful acts".
That is a great power.
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