Many of us have just celebrated the twentieth anniversary of the Disability Discrimination Act. Not because it was a great piece of legislation – it wasn’t. But it was a major achievement for disabled people in the long campaign for equal rights.
The disability charity Scope has been celebrating the disabled civil rights campaigners without whom this change would never have been possible.
It was a landmark piece of legislation. For the first time, this country now had an act of parliament that addressed, however inadequately, discrimination against disabled people.
It was also an act, we must not forget, that the Tories really did not want.
Previous attempts to introduce anti-discrimination legislation had been rejected with an all-too-familiar mantra. We were told that all that was needed was ‘more education and persuasion’, that legislation ‘would not work’ and that it ‘did not sit comfortably’ with the Tory government’s deregulation programme. The last point was, of course, true, demonstrating, if this were needed, that free market fundamentalism has no more to do with equity than it does with sound economic policy.
The reason the Tories introduced the Disability Discrimination Act, having previously rubbished the very idea of such legislation, was because the disability movement’s campaign had been so effective. Massive demonstrations by disabled people in central London – some wearing ‘Piss on Pity’ t-shirts, others handcuffing themselves to buses – convinced John Major’s Government that the Disability Discrimination Act had to be hastily drafted to calm matters down.
Deals were struck between ministers whereby the principle of anti-discrimination legislation was accepted, so long as the actual measures were weak and other areas of importance to disabled people – such as cccess to work – were reviewed to identify budget cuts.
The provisions in the Disability Discrimination Act were weak: for example, disability was defined too narrowly; transport vehicles were excluded; the employment provisions did not apply to firms employing fewer than 20 people; no significant action was required to tackle discrimination in education; and there was a lack of an effective means of enforcement.
The subsequent Labour government deserves enormous credit for plugging the major gaps in the Disability Discrimination Act, including setting up the Disability Rights Commission, introducing a more comprehensive Disability Discrimination Act and finally bringing all equalities legislation together in the Equality Act.
But there is still a long way to go and Labour needs to address some fundamental issues. Here are just three.
First, we should recognise that an adequate standard of living is a human right, as reaffirmed by Article 28 of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Yet, at present, disabled people are being hardest hit by government cuts. Labour therefore needs to be seen to oppose much more than the bedroom tax and cuts in tax credits. Breaking the link between disability and poverty requires an effective anti-poverty strategy. Labour must spell this out.
Second, Labour must also recognise that disabled people face higher costs of living than non-disabled people and, on grounds of equity, should be compensated for this. The current social security system lamentably fails to do this.
Third, Labour should make it clear why ‘investing to save’ is far more important than an irrational obsession with the budget deficit in any particular year. Inadequate levels of public spending, for example on social care, proper employment support and the NHS will only result in kicking the bills down the road. Proper employment support now is cheaper than the consequences of unemployment. A grab rail now, is cheaper than hospitalisation later.
Labour must develop the policies that would make a real difference to the lives of over 11 million disabled people and their families. We failed to do this at the last election, we must not fail to do it for the next.
The Disability Discrimination Act was not the end of the struggle for disability equality. It was, as they say, just the end of the beginning.
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Roger Berry was member of parliament for Kingswood from 1992 to 2010. He introduced the civil rights (disabled persons) bill in 1993, as a private members’ bill.
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Roger features in this short film by Scope which tells the story of the civil rights fight.
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