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Mr. Goodman: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the full Bill should be introduced in this Session to ensure that it does become law before the next general election?
 
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Tom Levitt: I can say that it was part of the manifesto for this Session. Unless the business managers of the Opposition are going to seek huge periods of time in Committee, which they have been known to do, I see absolutely no reason why the Bill should not be passed before the next general election.

I was saying that the extension of the provisions to councillors—as it is to other office holders and public appointees—is welcome. It is also important that landlords—private, public and social—will be deprived of the right unreasonably to refuse the request of a tenant to have a property adapted for purposes of making it more accessible for their disability.

I hope that the Minister will also adopt the recommendations on volunteers. I acknowledge that it probably would not be practicable to have a blanket rule saying that every volunteer for every voluntary organisation should be covered by the legislation that applies to employees. Equally, however, there are circumstances in which a voluntary organisation may not use voluntary employees because of fears about liability if anything were to happen to them. Those are unreasonable fears, which should be addressed by a code of practice for the use of volunteers, who should be allowed in comparable employment circumstances to take their cases to some form of tribunal if they are discriminated against.

An issue that has not been mentioned is access to examinations. If schools and education more widely should be accessible, there is absolutely no reason why examination boards should be able to put a barrier at the end of people's educational careers. Change in that respect is welcome, and so are the measures on mental health. The Committee suggested that the time for mental health conditions to be assessed as qualifying under the 1995 Act be reduced from 12 to six months.

The Government were right to say that people suffering from MS, cancer and HIV should be protected against discrimination even before the symptoms are shown—namely, from the point of diagnosis. I hope that they will go one stage further and say that protection against discrimination should apply from the point of diagnosis to any condition covered by the 1995 Act. The reason for that is clear. Someone with MS, for example, could be deprived of promotion or employment because of the fact that certain symptoms might develop in the future, which is not a reasonable purpose for discriminating against a person. I hope that the Committee's report will be taken into account.

I turn now to the social model, which gave rise to many hours of enjoyable debate in Committee. The 1995 Act's concept of a reasonable adjustment was a move towards the social model. It acknowledges that often it is the environment that has to be adjusted so that disabled people can have access to employment or services.

The problem with the medical model is that it casts the disabled person as the problem. It regards disabled people as disabled first and people second. The solution to the problem of how people relate to their social, physical and attitudinal environments is often achieved by addressing the relevant environment, regardless of whether the diagnosis is a social or medical one.

I gave an example of that to the Committee, which I want to put on record now. The social model of disability holds that impairment becomes a disability
 
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only when the environment makes it so. My example in support of that involves a one-legged person in the environment of an automatic car. If the person lacks a left leg, he or she is not considered disabled, as one needs only a right leg to drive an automatic car. However, if the person lacks a right leg, he or she is disabled, as the pedals of an automatic car are designed for right-foot use. Therefore, an equivalent impairment can be a disability, depending on the environment.

I hope that the Bill goes forward speedily. I see no reason why it should not.

Progress has been made in other areas, as other speakers have described, but one or two other matters remain to be addressed. At present, legislation only touches on the question of mental health. In constituencies such as my own, where unemployment levels are very low, the proportion of unemployed people who are unemployed because of—or for reasons associated with—a mental health problem is accordingly that much higher.

Another problem, to which the Minister referred earlier, has to do with building design. The part M regulations of 2003 are a help, as are the lifetime home regulations. In addition, local authorities administer the disability facilities grants. I hope that the Minister will assure me that all the different definitions involved will be governed by common criteria in the future. There must be no conflict in the intended purpose of the various regulatory schemes.

There is a problem with the toilet doors in Portcullis House to which I want to draw attention. Any hon. Member with arthritis will know that they are dreadfully difficult to open. I hope that, by 1 October, disabled-accessible doors will be attached to all the toilets in that building. Such doors will not need a person to be able to apply a strong grip to a handle that resembles a drinks can, but will be much more easy to use.

As other hon. Members have said, many disabled people would like to work but still lack the opportunity to do so. One way to address that is to tackle the problem of people who are forced to leave work through disability at a later stage in life. Clearly, more money is going into ensuring access to work, but such people must also be able to step down—that is, to move out of the work force gradually at the end of a career. Problems to do with pension and benefit rights would have to be worked out, but people who face early retirement through disability would be able to leave work with more dignity if they were able to phase their withdrawal.

The hon. Member for Wycombe mentioned the recent Scope "Absolutely Equal" campaign and the reception held last week. He expressed some concerns about the social model, but the Scope report said:

"The attitudes of non-disabled people to disabled people are often irrational. Attitudes can be based on feelings of embarrassment, pity, guilt, being patronising, and even revulsion that are difficult to get to the bottom of. "

Such attitudes are inherently irrational; legislation must be inherently rational. There cannot be a one-to-one fit between those things, so I hope that the Government will consider the Joint Committee's recommendation to give public bodies an obligation to promote the rights of disabled people and awareness of disabled issues in exactly the way that they have acted on racial issues.
 
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One last issue falls more within the field of the Department for International Development than that of the Department for Work and Pensions. Twice recently I have met disabled people in Africa—a group of children in Zambia and a group of families of disabled children in Tanzania. It is bad enough seeing what extreme and absolute poverty does to people, but disability further excludes people in those societies completely from any form of support—there are no benefits or social care and no support mechanisms whatever—and isolates them, condemning them to live in the worst of absolute poverty in an environment of absolute poverty. That really tears one's heart-strings.

Some good things are going on, however. I give a quick plug to the Leonard Cheshire organisation, which, in Tanzania, has set up a micro-finance bureau that gives grants of about £50 a time to families of disabled children so that they can set up in business. Such a business might sell eggs or firewood. People repay over a period, but those small amounts of money are sufficient to break down the barriers. If the business is eggs, the disabled child can sit in the compound with the chickens and alert someone if an animal comes along for the chickens or someone tries to steal them. That can produce systems that involve the families, getting them back into the economy. That gives them dignity, allowing them to have some pride in societies in which there is no support for them.

Let us not forget the plight of disabled people in developing countries. As a civilised society, we acknowledge the needs of others. Today's debate and the Bill to come relate to the needs of disabled people in this country, but we will be judged as a nation and community in the wider world by what we do for those least able to help themselves. We are giving people opportunities to help themselves, and they deserve that as a right.

4.58 pm

Mr. John Randall (Uxbridge) (Con): It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for High Peak (Tom Levitt). Perhaps I should apologise in advance of my remarks because I am sure, having heard the earlier exchanges about language and vocabulary, that I am bound to put my foot in it somewhere or other. I would not do so out of any desire to, but just out of sheer inadequacy.

As I listened to the Minister, I realised that, as someone sitting on the Conservative Benches, I am the spawn of Beelzebub. I thought that she was about to mention the "Slaughter of the First Born" Bill that some previous Conservative Government had brought in. But disability is far too important for party politics. We have had a good debate full of good speeches, and I always find when I attend these debates that I learn from them. As others wish to speak, I shall try to make my comments as brief as possible.

We have seen from the different speeches from different angles that the subject encompasses a broad area. First, I want to talk about people with disabilities taking part in sport. The Olympic bid by London is already having a good effect because part of that bid is to hold the Paralympics here. Anything that can raise the profile of the good that sport brings to people with disabilities is to be welcomed. The hon. Member for High Peak reminisced and I should like briefly to
 
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remember a time when I was a rather slim, fresh-faced young boy. I remember at school listening to a former rugby international who had been involved in a crunching tackle, I think with an All Black, and had broken his neck. Suddenly from being at the height of his sporting prowess, he had ended up in a wheelchair. He told us boys about a charity called Physically Handicapped and Able Bodied. It made me realise how suddenly something could happen and that from being at the height of one's physical ability, one could be cut down. From then on my school had summer courses and I am pleased to say that many years later they still do.

As I was sitting here listening, another memory came to me. At school there was an option to join the cadet force, namely community service. To show the House how things have moved on—I recognise that this language is inappropriate—it was called the pansy brigade. In the course of that I visited an old mental asylum called Leavesden, which thankfully is gone. One of the saddest things that stays with me to this day was visiting the cemetery there and asking whose graves they were. I was told by the matron, as I think she was designated, that they were the graves of children with Down's syndrome who had been abandoned there, without family visiting. I thought that that was no way for any civilised country to exist and I sincerely hope that those days have long gone.

On the subject of sport, I should like to put in a plug for two organisations of which I have become aware. I do not play much part in them, but I pay my subs. One is the Wooden Spoon, a rugby charity that helps disabled and disadvantaged children. It tries to have a positive effect on disability in all its forms, whether caused by cancer, cystic fibrosis or autism. We are in the cricket season and a test match started today. Anybody who has the opportunity in the next few days to listen to that quintessential part of the English summer—"Test Match Special"—will undoubtedly hear talk of the Primary Club. It is a fundraising organisation that is open to all who have been out first ball in any form of cricket, ranging from in the garden and on the beach through to a test match. It is a particularly odd, rather English institution that happened by accident. In 1955 four slightly inebriated young bachelors, depressed by their performance with a bat, vowed to support a fund for blind cricketers. That same "Test Match Special", and particularly the late lamented Brian Johnston, gave it wide publicity, so that now it is a well-known, well-supported charity raising a great deal of money, particularly for blind sports children and young people. Those are just a few examples of the many charities that do so much good work in all our constituencies, and it is appropriate to pay tribute to them for that.

Hobbies are important to people, and my own passion has always been bird-watching. It is remarkable how many opportunities are now open to people with disabilities of all kinds to indulge in that hobby.

Members of Parliament are fortunate in having opportunities to find out about disability. We are lobbied by many different organisations and we also have the chance to hear good speakers in this place. In Uxbridge tomorrow, the three Hillingdon MPs will have one of our regular meetings with Hillingdon DASH, an organisation that promotes disability issues in the area.
 
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As usual, Simon Harris and Angela Wegener will forcefully ensure that all three of us are aware of the exact concerns of people with disabilities in the area.

Sometimes such meetings reveal problems. I remember attending a meeting of wheelchair users in the Hillingdon civic centre when the fire alarm went. It was discovered that the only way out for wheelchair users was the lift, and of course the lifts are not supposed to be used if there is a fire. Fortunately, it was a false alarm on that occasion. As the hon. Gentleman said, we often do not realise the implications of certain situations for people with disabilities.

I can give another example. One of my constituents, Katrina Bijowski, has been very forceful in pointing out that the local authority does not seem to make much provision for children with disabilities—not only those in wheelchairs, but those with a range of disabilities—when providing new play areas. A few months ago, I attended the opening of a new play area for which the local residents had raised the funding. They suddenly realised that they had not considered it properly, through a lack of awareness, and we must all work to make people more aware. To the credit of the Violet avenue residents association, it went back to the council to ensure that the appropriate facilities would be provided.

I have also discovered problems that people with disabilities can have with banking. Older people with disabilities cannot get out much and, because of the new legislation to combat money laundering, they find it more and more difficult to get a cheque cashed. That causes many problems. Barclays bank, to its credit, has looked into the problem and come up with a remedy. I am sure that all the other banks will want to look at that because—as has already been mentioned—it is not only ethically right but good business sense to cater for people with all sorts of disabilities. On Saturday, I was talking to someone from Barclays and was impressed by the efforts that it is putting into the issue—I am sure that it is the same with other banks. The bigger companies have taken those issues on board. It is more difficult for small and medium enterprises, but that does not mean that they should not take those issues just as seriously.

I had intended to talk about transport, as a member of the Transport Committee, and about our report, which has been tagged on to this debate. However, I am keen to listen to the other hon. Members who wish to contribute, if they catch your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker. We have already heard mention of Ryanair, so that is one company we have upset. Another is Brittany Ferries, which will not allow guide dogs on its boats. We raised that in the meeting with the Minister, but I have not heard what happened. If those issues have not been dealt with and those companies are listening, let me say to them, "For goodness sake, get your act together or the Government will have to take action."

When a member of one's family or oneself has a disability, one becomes aware of the problems. In my case, I have faced difficulties in taking my mother around. Actually, we have done very well. Two years ago I managed to take her around Istanbul in a wheelchair. I have to confess that I was not expecting great facilities for the disabled in Turkey, but it had got its act together in lots of ways, and the amount of help that we received was phenomenal.
 
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One of the problems is that the airlines cannot tell disabled passengers what the facilities will be like at the other end of the flight. It is fine at Heathrow, where there tend to be walkways for passengers to get on the aeroplane, but one has no idea what will be at the other end. The idea of possibly having to wait for a fork-lift truck at the other end begins to take the edge off the journey.

Again from personal experience, I know that disabled parking can be a problem. There is a lot of provision, and that is wonderful, but how can we get it through to people that they should not abuse it? There is nothing more annoying than to see an able-bodied person coming out of a supermarket, admittedly heavily laden, and going to a car in a disabled person's spot. However, I sound a cautionary note from my days in retail. A sales representative called on us and parked his car outside on a single yellow line. I saw a traffic warden so I said, "You had better watch out, there's a traffic warden coming." He said, "It's all right, I have got a disabled badge." I looked at him and said, "Are you sure? You do not look disabled." I was showing my ignorance. He lifted up his trouser leg and showed me where he had had half his leg shot away during the war. That is where I learned that disability is not always visible and we should not jump to conclusions.

When I first came into the House I promised myself that I would try to keep to the diktat that it is much better to listen than lecture, so I will conclude my remarks.

5.12 pm

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