Welsh government’s disability rights plan ‘is a smokescreen’ to hide lack of teeth and targets

The Welsh government has been accused of putting up a “smokescreen” after publishing a draft disability rights plan that lacks “teeth” and is full instead of pledges to carry out reviews and produce guidance while offering no new money.

The 10-year Draft Disabled People’s Rights Plan aims to improve the rights of disabled people in Wales, but there are no significant promises on key areas such as social care, accessible housing and transport, and disability poverty.

The Labour plan is also short of concrete targets, which means it would be almost impossible for disabled people to hold the Welsh government to account on progress.

Instead, the 61-page document, which is now out for a 12-week consultation, mostly offers descriptions of the barriers disabled people already face in housing, transport, access to justice, social care, education and employment.

Alongside the plan is a separate document listing 48 short-term actions.

They include a promise to work with local authorities to improve accessible housing; a pledge to collaborate with disabled people’s organisations to “design and deliver a new funding stream that addresses social care needs”; and plans for a public campaign to “challenge ableism” and focus on the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

Despite the lack of concrete targets, the draft plan says the Welsh government’s Disability Disparity Evidence Unit will “set out a model which explains how change is expected to follow the actions set out and the evidence needed to measure change”.

Jane Hutt, the Welsh government’s social justice secretary, said the draft plan was based on the work of the Disability Rights Taskforce and its 10 working groups.

The taskforce was set up by the Welsh government following the 2021 publication of the groundbreaking Locked Out report on the discrimination experienced by disabled people in Wales, particularly during the pandemic.

But there was half-hearted support for the draft plan this week, and even outright criticism from some of the disabled people who chaired the working groups.

Damian Joseph Bridgeman, a disabled adviser and campaigner, who chaired the taskforce’s housing and community working group but also worked on other areas of the plan, said the document was “a smokescreen” rather than a plan.

He said it was a “collection of vague intentions dressed up as progress”, and he added: “No targets. No teeth. No real-world accountability.”

He also pointed to the absence of new money and no mechanism to track delivery of the action plan.

He said: “So what are we actually committing to? Awareness-raising? Reviews? Guidance updates?

“Disabled people have been reviewed to death. What we need is action – and there’s none of that here.”

He said he feared the plan had “already been quietly kicked into the long grass”.

Bridgeman said some of the most practical, necessary recommendations that came out of the co-production phase of the process “never even made it into the final plan” because the government “doesn’t know how to deliver them”.

He said: “In the current political landscape – with the DWP ramping up sanctions, Access to Work collapsing under its own weight, and social care in crisis – this strategy feels like yet another reminder that disabled people don’t matter.”

He called for a new Welsh Disability Office to “embed disability inclusion across all policy portfolios”, and a disability rights commissioner for Wales, as well as “real funding, hard timelines, legislative reform, and meaningful power”.

Joe Powell, chief executive of All Wales People First – which receives funding from the Welsh government – who chaired the taskforce’s access to justice working group, was also unenthusiastic about the draft plan.

He said in a statement that the plan was “a positive step forward in the sense that disabled people across Wales have worked in co-production to envisage a better future for disabled people in Wales.

“However, in order for this plan to succeed we need the appropriate investment into the infrastructure and services to make this aspiration a reality.

“We need clear targets about how we are going to achieve this.

“Without these, it is very difficult to see how the plan will make a difference to disabled people in Wales.”

Dr Natasha Hirst, a disabled activist who chaired the taskforce’s access to services working group, said a “key concern” was the lack of a mechanism for scrutinising and holding the Welsh government to account, as well as the lack of “clear and robust targets” and no new funding for implementing the actions.

Although the taskforce had involved “a groundbreaking process of coproduction”, she said the action plan itself was not co-produced and many of the recommendations from the working groups were not included in the consultation document.

She said: “It’s vital that disabled people and their organisations respond to the consultation to highlight areas that are missing or not meeting expectations.”

And she called on political parties in Wales to make clear manifesto commitments to “supporting, implementing and extending the action plan over the long term”.

She said the Welsh government has “shown better leadership on the issue of disability rights and inclusion” than the UK government, and there was now an “important opportunity to embed this approach in the longer-term political infrastructure of Wales”.

But she added: “Everything that the plan aspires to do will be undermined and impossible to implement if the UK government’s proposed PIP cuts go through.

“Wales has higher levels of poverty and a larger proportion of disabled people and not enough resources to mitigate the cuts and attacks on disabled people’s rights coming from Westminster.”

Asked why there was no funding announced alongside the plan, why there was no significant action to tackle key issues such as social care, accessible housing and transport, and disability poverty, and why the plan was short of concrete targets, a Welsh government spokesperson released the following statement.

“We are committed to ensuring disabled people can fully participate in Welsh society, and our draft 10-year plan – shaped by lived experience through the Disability Rights Taskforce – demonstrates our long-term commitment to meaningful change.

“We are holding a 12-week consultation on the draft plan, which seeks views from individuals and organisations, with a particular emphasis on hearing directly from disabled people about their priorities.

“Disability rights will become part of every department’s core budget, creating a lasting commitment, with disabled people helping shape priorities through our new External Advisory Board.

“Alongside the actions we will take now, our progress report demonstrates the many positive actions already being taken to advance positive outcomes for disabled people in Wales.

“We have focused on creating the right governance structure, placing disabled people at its centre, and the External Advisory Board will work with us to ensure we are delivering change to improve disabled people’s lives.”

Picture: Joe Powell (above, left) and Natasha Hirst

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