Regard’s Response to the
Interim Report of the Equalities Review
The first thing that we wish to make clear is that we consider the consultation process up until now to have been wholly inadequate. The first that we knew of the Review was when we were invited by the Greater London Authority to contribute to their response to the Review. We are the only organisation representing the specific interests of disabled lesbians, gay men, bisexuals and transgendered people, and we consider our exclusion from the consultation until now to be unacceptable and discriminatory.
Similarly, the Interim Report shows that according to Annex A, disabled people’s organisations in general have not been consulted. For example, missing are major organisations like the British Council of Disabled People, the umbrella organisation for disability groups controlled by disabled people ourselves; the National Centre for Independent Living; Parents for Inclusion; Disability Equality in Education; the regional umbrella organisations like Greater London Action on Disability or the Birmingham Coalition of Disabled People; borough organisations of disabled people; People First, the leading organisation of people with learning difficulties; as well as organisations with experience of how multiple discrimination operates, such as Regard, and disability organisations from boroughs like Brent and Newham.
Overall, the report shows that the review panel only consulted charities that are run by non-disabled people and based on the medical model of disability. This means that the fundamental basis of the report is based on grossly inadequate and incorrect information. Regard can only comment on the report as it stands. For the Review to have any value, the Panel needs to return to the beginning and consult disabled people and our representative organisations. As disabled people’s organisations we also need to discuss the issues together, so that we can consider every possible perspective before coming to joint conclusions. Regard’s current response can only be read in this context.
We also consider the format and presentation of the report to be fundamentally flawed. The language is entirely inaccessible — how many people understand the concepts of ‘traditional group proportionality’, ‘individual life chances’ and ‘momentum measures’? Meanwhile the explanation given in Annex C of the equations used to make the calculations is ludicrously complicated — as well as being entirely irrelevant to any genuine understanding of inequality. The Panel cannot hope to communicate with anyone when it uses language that no one can understand, let alone to communicate with people who have been denied decent educational opportunities, as most disabled people have been, or who have English as a second language. We note that the Disability Employment Advisory Committee manages to produce an accessible annual report, for example, so we see no reason why the Panel have not been able to do so.
Meanwhile there is also no information available within the report about how to obtain copies in different formats, such as large print, tape, Braille and easy-words-and-pictures. We are unsure from the information given to us whether the report has even been prepared in these formats, although the Panel is legally obliged to do this under the Disability Discrimination Act 1995. Overall, disabled people have been excluded both from contributing to the report and from reading it. Again, this is wholly unacceptable.
It is unsurprising in the circumstances that the Panel does not appear to have understood the social model of disability, despite the references to the social model within the report. For example, the report talks about the need to carry out analysis of inequality by ‘type and severity of impairment’. Social and environmental barriers differ by type of access need, not by type of impairment. There is nothing to learn from dividing up people by their type of hearing impairment, for example, rather than looking at the specific issues faced by British Sign Language users or by people who use induction loops. Similarly it is irrelevant why someone uses a wheelchair: the important thing to look at is whether we are still being denied access to social participation as a result of barriers to wheelchair use. The report also discusses the difficulties the Panel faced because they couldn’t ‘distinguish between disabled people and those with a long-term illness’. Yet any distinction would be entirely false, and also completely contradictory to a Disability Discrimination Act definition of disability. None of these comments make any sense outside of a medical model of disability.
Perhaps it is unsurprising that the report also seeks to blame equality campaigners for social inequality, claiming that by campaigning specifically on Black and Ethnic Minority or Disability rights, we lead ‘even those most well-disposed towards, say, ethnic minorities or disabled people to consider all Asians or wheelchair users as somehow deficient and one-dimensional, defined entirely by the one aspect of their lives’. Yet the whole point of the social model of disability is to counteract the medical model, one-dimensional view of disabled people as being defined by our impairments rather than being people like everyone else. Moreover, it’s easy to trace the history and development of the medical model of disability back over 150 years, long before the disability rights movement was founded. There is no basis in fact for this claim.
In fact, we completely reject the attacks on equality campaigners and ‘single strand’ equality politics within the report. Yet again, these betray a fundamental lack of understanding of the issues involved. For example, the report warns that ‘single strand’ equality politics encourage us to battle each other for resources, and that the best-organised and well-funded cause then wins the day. But this is not borne out by the facts. Rather, we can think of countless examples where different interest groups have come together to share experiences and expertise. Likewise the biggest problem that disability rights organisations have always faced is lack of funding, and this is equally true of other equality campaigns.
In contrast to the Panel, we believe that we can only make progress towards equality by focussing separately on different causes of disadvantage, before integrating proposals for change. Of course we need to recognise that most people will have more than one social identity and cause of disadvantage, and to integrate our thinking and our action plans. The majority of disabled people are women; a much higher proportion of LGBT people are disabled than within the community as a whole, because of the physical and mental effects of homophobia, as well as HIV; and we would argue that the same is true for Black and Minority Ethnic communities. And in the same way that age discrimination affects us all because we will all become old, most of us will also become disabled in the process.
As yet, there has been little research into the impact of multiple discrimination, or any real understanding of how this operates in practice. We do know, though, that disabled people are particularly vulnerable to discrimination, harassment, violence and abuse arising from racism, sexism and homophobia as well as and in combination with disabilism. The issue of multiple discrimination needs to be addressed urgently, and the new Commission for Equality and Human Rights has the potential to do this. However, we will never make progress towards equality if we abandon the expertise and experience of self-organised groups along the way. In particular, the new Commission needs to have separate committees to focus on race, sexuality, women’s and older people’s issues, along with the proposed disability committee which is the only separate committee currently allowed for. Otherwise the Commission will have no hope of success in tackling inequalities, both in isolation and in combination. This is an issue that the Panel needs to address as a matter of urgency.
In rejecting approaches that have been developed over decades, and involving hundreds of thousands of individuals coming together to tackle inequality, the Panel’s alternative model is fundamentally flawed. Downplaying the operation and impact of discrimination, particularly direct discrimination, in favour of the operation of possibly random life events and ‘personal choice, cultural factors and other issues which would not be affected by public policy’ (e.g. p62) flies in the face of all the evidence, as well as common sense. A ‘capability’ approach, if adopted, would do nothing to tackle social inequality, and a great deal to increase it.
Unsurprisingly, Regard has other fundamental disagreements with the report’s conclusions. For example, the Panel has reached the conclusion, made on page 6 and repeated throughout, that the law has only had limited success in achieving equality. What is missing is any acknowledgement that the law is inaccessible to the vast majority of people who are discriminated against. Legal aid is not available for discrimination cases, and as Tribunals can’t award costs, ‘no win, no fee’ arrangements are very rare. Meanwhile the average compensation award in a discrimination case falls far short of the legal costs of the case. These costs reflect the fact that discrimination cases are far more complex than other cases heard by Tribunals, lasting on average more than a week rather than half a day as with other cases.
Disabled people, and people with English as a second language, in particular cannot possibly have any real access to the law without legal support. We actually have no idea of how successful the law might be in tackling inequality, because we have never been given the chance to find out. This is underlined by the fact that, in the first year of the sexual orientation employment laws, just one case came to Tribunal. That had nothing to do with the limitations of the legal system, and everything to do with the limitations of funding for legal support. All the Employment Tribunal system does currently is to perpetuate inequality and discrimination. It would be far cheaper to enable people to challenge discrimination in the workplace, including during recruitment, than to support people on benefits, often for the rest of their lives.
The Panel needs to call for full legal aid to be reinstated for discrimination cases as a matter of urgency, and this should include cases being held within the County Court system. The Panel also needs to call for full legal aid to be granted for Human Rights cases relating to discrimination. Human rights legislation has been recognised as having huge potential for improving disability equality, but has been excluded altogether from the Disability Rights Commission’s brief. All that the new single Commission will be able to do, at best, will be to take test cases, and therefore legal aid will play a crucial role here too.
We also need to ensure that the money spent on disabled people is going to disabled people, rather than funding non-disabled people to administer our services for us and tell us what to do. Disabled people are sick and tired of offering unpaid and expert advice to non-disabled professionals with power and control over our lives, the Review being a case in point. Likewise billions of pounds are spent on employing people to deliver disability services, yet very few of these people are disabled themselves. There should be an expectation that the majority of people delivering services to disabled people will be disabled themselves, in the same way that services being delivered specifically to women, Black and Ethnic Minority and LGBT groups are staffed largely by the groups concerned. If disabled people continue to be excluded from jobs that specifically affect us, there is no possibility of achieving equality elsewhere in the workplace.
Likewise the trade union movement has been consistently excluded from playing any role in the Government’s strategy for tackling inequality and discrimination in the workplace, whether in relation to disability, women, race, age or sexual orientation. Yet trade unions are key to the success of any strategy, particularly as MPs recently identified discrimination by employers as being the biggest barrier to the employment of disabled people. We believe that it is more than time that the Government made trade unions central to its strategies for tackling workplace inequality, and funded them to do so. The Review needs to highlight this at every possible opportunity.
The underlying assumption of the report seems to be that much of the inequality experienced by disabled people is inevitable. The statistics are truly shocking – 16 year olds being twice as likely to be out of employment or education than their non-disabled peers, and being far less likely ever to enter higher education; disabled people being at least twice as likely to be unqualified as non-disabled people; a 50% unemployment rate; and, unsurprisingly, about one in three households containing a disabled adult or child living in poverty. Yet the only so-called ‘major challenge’ that the report lists in relation to disability is ‘the job prospects of some disabled people’. Disabled children and adults are missed out again and again from the report’s specific targets. Either the Panel believes that it is going to be easy to achieve disability equality, or it is not worth trying. Neither belief could be further from the truth.
There are also a worrying number of references that appear to be blaming the victim. Quote – ‘it would be wrong to assume that all inequalities are always unjust’ or ‘it is difficult in theory and in practice to distinguish between differences which are due to circumstances beyond individual control and those which are due to free choice by the individual, or the extent of the effort put in by the individual’. This echoes classic racist and disabilist stereotypes of Black and disabled people as being lazy and living off hand-outs, and of disabled people lacking the backbone and determination to ‘overcome’ our impairments. Yet the House of Commons Work and Pensions Committee recently concluded that discrimination by employers was crucial in affecting disabled people’s ability to work, when it released the results of its enquiry into Incapacity Benefit and Pathways to Work. The other key factor that MPs identified was the lack of awareness of the Access to Work scheme, and the inadequacy of its budget. Comments such as those quoted above are entirely inappropriate from a Panel charged with tackling inequality.
In fact, the report is missing any reference whatsoever to the factors that contribute to inequality for disabled people. There is no reference to the role of social care services in combating poverty among families with a disabled child, or the part that access to social care plays in disabled people’s ability to work. Thanks to the disability rights movement, we now have a good understanding of how care should be provided and delivered in order to support independent living, but the funds available to do so are entirely inadequate. This is contributing to disabled people’s unemployment, as well as vastly reducing the quality of millions of people’s lives.
Similarly, we are desperately short of housing that is appropriate for disabled people. Our Government’s insistence that disability is something that happens to other people means that the majority of new homes are still being built without any thought that the occupier might have sensory or mobility impairments. This in turn is a major barrier to disabled people’s participation in society, as well as reducing the quality of life for everyone within their household.
Likewise there is no reference to the widespread denial of disabled people’s human rights, whether this is the right to family life or the right to life itself. There is no reference to independent living. There is no reference to the failures of segregated education, nor to the lack of the resources required to enable truly inclusive education. Yet these are all long-term and underlying causes of disadvantage for disabled people.
Similarly, we need increased awareness of, and funding for, the Access to Work scheme, and for proposals to withdraw the scheme from the public sector to be scrapped. We need all public services for disabled people, including the NHS, to be delivered in a way that genuinely makes our lives easier, rather than requiring our lives to revolve around them. We need to fund benefits at a level that takes people out of poverty, rather than forcing them into it. We need to challenge disabilist stereotypes of disabled people as being lazy, unworthy, untrustworthy beggars, and increase understanding of disabled people’s real lives. We need to stop blaming the victim, and take responsibility for enabling change.
In conclusion, we appreciate that this is simply an interim report, but we cannot see anything in it that is going to enable the Panel to fulfil its brief by the autumn. This is unsurprising given the widespread exclusion of discriminated-against groups from the consultation process. We believe that the Panel should start again. At that point, Regard will welcome the opportunity to contribute fully to the Review, and we would like to finish by pointing out again that this response can only be read in the context of our having been excluded until now.
Dr Ju Gosling, 2 June 2006