Government rejects new law that would force it to set up fund to support disabled politicians

The government has rejected a proposed new law that would have forced it to fund some of the disability-related costs faced by disabled people who want to stand for elected office.

Ministers continue to insist that they will set up a replacement for the former Access to Elected Office Fund, but they are refusing to allow that pledge to be put into legislation.

It is nearly a year since the Labour government promised to set up a replacement for the fund, which was first set up and then later scrapped under Conservative-led governments.

The Labour government set up a steering group last year to advise on how to boost opportunities for disabled people in seeking to enter elected office and ensure the new fund was “effective in increasing disability representation in future elections”.

But it refused at the time to explain why more than a third of the members of the steering group had close links to the Conservative party.

Now the government has resisted attempts by Liberal Democrat MP Zoe Franklin to introduce a legal duty to set up a fund through an amendment to its representation of the people bill, which is being carried over to the next session of parliament.

Despite support for the amendment from several disability organisations and allies, including Asian People’s Disability Alliance, Surrey Coalition of Disabled People, and Disability Politics UK, democracy minister Samantha Dixon said there was no need for legislation.

In the final sitting of the Commons committee stage of the bill earlier this month, Dixon said the government was “currently developing” a new fund and had “engaged with a wide range of stakeholders, including MPs and disabled local councillors”.

She said the government was “able to provide that type of support without this amendment”.

But without the fund being included in legislation, there are concerns that Labour could continue to delay its introduction.

Zeenat Jeewa, chief executive of Asian People’s Disability Alliance, said her organisation was “very concerned” that the UK government had not taken the issue more seriously.

She said this failure had “compromised” democracy for people who were already marginalised in society.

And she said the refusal to accept the amendment “further disables many people in our society who could better represent the needs of their constituents through their lived experiences” and “shows a complete lack of regard and respect for the many people it is there to serve in the UK”.

She said: “The bill should include measures that provide the financial support and ensure access is made more readily available for those already disabled by society to stand and take part in the democratic process that the UK proclaims to hold.”

Vikki Walton-Cole, chair of Surrey Coalition of Disabled People, welcomed Franklin’s efforts and said the removal of the fund had been “a huge devaluation of disabled people’s participation in democracy” while the continuing refusal to reinstate it came across as “a purposeful exclusion of disabled people from representing their localities and fellow residents”.

She said the continued under-representation of disabled people had enabled politicians to “vilify and scapegoat disabled people”.

The extra costs disabled people face “are echoed in political campaigning and standing for election”, she said, while many disabled people need extra support because they face barriers with some of the tasks required of electioneering politicians, for example because of energy limitation or limited care hours.

She said it was “unacceptable” that disabled people were “still trying to get basic equality of opportunities”.

Dixon also resisted an attempt by Franklin to require the government to implement section 106 of the Equality Act 2010, which would force political parties to publish information on the protected characteristics of their candidates in UK parliamentary elections, and elections to the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Senedd.

Section 106 would show how many disabled politicians each party was putting forward to stand in elections.

Dixon told the committee the government was “committed” to commencing section 106, but that “careful consideration needs to be given to how it might be implemented, the supporting regulations and whether any phasing might be needed in implementation”.

She said civil servants would “consult with stakeholders, including political parties, in due course”.

Franklin is likely to bring back her amendments when the bill’s final stages are debated in the Commons this summer, before the bill is considered in the Lords.

The Access to Elected Office Fund was set up in 2012, following Liberal Democrat pressure on its Conservative coalition partner, but the fund was scrapped by the Conservatives after the 2015 general election.

It was replaced in 2018 with the temporary EnAble fund in response to a legal action taken by three disabled politicians who had warned that the failure to reopen it breached the Equality Act.

EnAble eventually covered the 2019 English local elections, the May 2020 local and police and crime commissioner elections, which were postponed to 2021 because of the pandemic, and retrospective funding for applicants who stood in the 2019 elections to the European Parliament.

The last Conservative government had been promising to set up a replacement fund for three years until it lost power at the general election in July 2024.