Labour’s disability minister has said for the first time that he is drawing up a list of priorities for action to address the barriers faced by disabled people.
It is believed to be the first time that Sir Stephen Timms has spoken publicly of any plans to replace the last government’s much-criticised and deeply-flawed disability strategy and disability action plan.
During a webinar organised by the Communication Workers Union on Tuesday evening, Sir Stephen said that, over the next few months, in connection with the government’s Disability Unit, he would be “drawing up a list of priorities of areas that I think we can make some real progress on in the course of this parliament”.
He said: “I know we’re not going to be able to do everything that everyone would like, but we will I believe be able to make some really substantial progress on key things.”
He had been asked by Joyce Stevenson, the union’s regional disability lead for Scotland, whether he had plans to replace the Enable fund, which supported disabled people who want to stand for elected office with their extra costs.
Sir Stephen (pictured, at last year’s Labour conference) told her that “we need to do more” in that area.
He said: “I am going to be looking at the possibility of funding to help those who want to seek elected office.
“I’m not in a position to say we are going to do it, but I think it is an interesting idea and as you say it has been tried out in the past, although it wrapped up a few years ago.”
He said the question of increasing political representation among disabled people was “a strong candidate for inclusion in that priority list”.
A short-lived fund – the Access to Elected Office Fund (AEOF) – was originally set up in 2012 following Liberal Democrat pressure on its Conservative coalition partner.
It funded disability-related costs for candidates in parliamentary and other elections, before it was closed by the Conservatives after the 2015 general election.
It was eventually replaced three years later with the temporary EnAble fund in response to a legal action taken by a trio of disabled politicians who warned that the failure to reopen AEOF breached the Equality Act.
The fund initially only covered the 2019 English local elections, but it was later extended to cover the May 2020 local and police and crime commissioner elections, although these were postponed to the following year because of the pandemic.
It also provided retrospective funding for applicants who stood in the 2019 elections to the European Parliament.
The last government had been promising to set up a replacement for EnAble for three years until it lost power at the general election last July.
Sir Stephen also told the CWU webinar that the government would carry out a 12-week consultation on the disability benefits green paper it plans to publish this spring.
He said this would be followed by a white paper, which he hoped would be published by the end of the year “with firm proposals based on the original proposals and the responses we’ve received in consultation”.
He was speaking just days after disabled activist Ellen Clifford won a “groundbreaking” legal victory at the high court over the last government’s plans to cut spending on out-of-work disability benefits, proposals which the Labour government has yet to rule out (see separate story).
Mark Anthony Bastiani, CWU’s disability lead on its national executive committee, asked Sir Stephen when the government would fully implement the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) into UK law.
Before the general election, the party – through shadow disability minister Vicky Foxcroft – had made repeated pledges that a Labour government would implement the treaty into UK law.
That pledge was weakened in the subsequent National Policy Forum report to a promise to “honour our commitments to the United Nations’ Convention for the Rights of Disabled People and ensure its principles are reflected across government”.
But the general election manifesto did not even offer that weakened promise.
This week, Sir Stephen offered a new explanation – which is likely to leave many disabled activists bemused – for why Labour has backed away from its previous promises to implement the convention.
He told Bastiani: “We haven’t incorporated any of the UN human rights treaties into law in the UK.
“We have ratified them all, we are committed to them all.
“I think that is because they are not really in the form of laws… particularly not in the form of UK law.
“There are other countries that have laws that are more aspirational… and then you kind of leave it sometimes to judges to work out in detail what that means.
“That isn’t how we do law in the UK. Our laws are set out in quite a lot of detail and none of the UN conventions are in that form.
“I think that’s the reason we haven’t adopted any of the UN conventions into law.”
That explanation is in sharp contrast to the years of pledges by the party in opposition to implement the UN convention into UK law, which included its commitment to do so ahead of the 2019 general election.
Only two months ago, disabled Labour MP Marsha de Cordova – herself a former shadow disability minister – pledged in a lecture to push her government to implement the UN convention into UK law.
Despite his excuse for his party reneging on its repeated promises to implement the UN convention, Sir Stephen said he was “very keen” to improve the UK’s standing with the UN committee on the rights of persons with disabilities, which delivered a series of stinging reports on violations of the treaty by successive Conservative-led governments.
Sir Stephen said: “I am going to New York in June when the UN committee meets and I will want to tell them what we have been doing since the general election to put right the problems that have been identified and to remove, we hope, more and more of the barriers that society has put in the way of disabled people.”
He said he hoped to “reassure the committee this new government is committed properly to delivering for disabled people and putting right the problems the previous government was responsible for”.
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