Disabled experts who advised the Labour government on its ground-breaking Life Chances report – which was published 20 years ago on Sunday – say successive governments over the last 20 years have abandoned its ambitious goals.
The 20th anniversary of the report – which placed independent living at its heart – comes just days after the new Labour government announced further delays to long-term reform of the adult social care system in England.
Improving the Life Chances of Disabled People was widely viewed as a radical and ambitious report that had the language of rights embedded in its pages.
Influential disabled people played a key role in drafting the report, which used social model language and principles, and called for every local area to have its own user-led organisation modelled on centres for independent living (CILs).
It made recommendations across four key areas: independent living; early years and family support; transition to adulthood; and employment.
The report – produced by the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit – also made an ambitious pledge: “By 2025, disabled people in Britain should have full opportunities and choices to improve their quality of life, and will be respected and included as equal members of society.”
There was optimism at the time that Life Chances could secure the “transformation in disabled people’s life chances” that prime minister Tony Blair suggested was possible in his foreword to the report.
But 20 years on, three of the disabled people who advised the government on the report have told Disability News Service (DNS) that successive governments have failed to fulfil its promises.
Baroness [Jane] Campbell and Dr Sally Witcher were both members of the project’s advisory group, while Professor Peter Beresford was a member of its independent living expert group.
Dr Witcher said the Life Chances report had brought “cause for hope”, but that reading it 20 years on showed “how far backwards we’ve gone”.
She told DNS: “In 2025 we emphatically do not have full opportunities and choices to improve our quality of life. We are not respected as equal members of society. Far from it.”
At the time it was published, she said, she could not remember any other report “being received with such enthusiasm by disabled people and their organisations”.
Her enthusiasm for the report led to her applying for, and securing, the role of deputy director of Labour’s new Office for Disability Issues, which was tasked with rolling out the recommendations across government.
But she said people who were disabled, sick, or both, were now, 20 years on, “under siege”.
She said Labour had continued the previous governments’ attacks on benefits and public services, while the disabled population “continues to swell as failure to act on Covid safety takes an ever-higher toll on the nation’s public and economic health”.
She said: “We are not responsible for long-term government and economic failure. It’s not our fault we’re disabled, sick, or both.
“Do governments, including this one, seriously think anyone would choose destitution if they had any real choice?”
Dr Witcher appealed to the new government not to launch another 20-year strategy, as “strategy after strategy” had failed to deliver “lasting positive change”, but instead to work with disabled people to “assist us to live and stop making our lives ever more impossible”.
Professor Beresford said it was not difficult to see the way successive governments had failed to implement Life Chances as “a huge betrayal”, which had been led “from the front” by politicians.
He said: “Governments of all colours since have been determined to attack disabled people and treat us as fraudulent.
“Life Chances was an integrated policy, led by disabled people and true in spirit to the aims of the disabled people’s movement with its commitment to truly independent living and a national network of disabled people-led organisations.
“Sadly, its grasp fell far short of its reach.”
He said the continuing attacks on disabled people and disability benefits over the last two decades “constitute a crime no less than the hated pre-war poor law.
“This, together with the failure to prioritise social care and disabled people’s rights and involvement, continue to besmirch our politics and any claim to challenging disability discrimination.”
Baroness Campbell said she found it “deeply disappointing” that none of the goals laid out in the report had been achieved.
She said: “In terms of living independently in one’s own home, we were promised a CIL-type organisation in every area of England.
“Such local organisations would have gone some way to help prevent such a monumental crisis in social care for working-age disabled adults.”
She said disabled adults were now facing the prospect of leaving work or being forced into residential care “because they cannot afford to pay for essential care and support to remain independent citizens in the community, once provided by local authorities”.
She said: “All this government can offer since coming to power is yet another independent commission on the issue, which won’t report fully on proposals until 2028.
“This will be the fifth time I have been involved in a government exercise to reform our failing social care system.
“I really can’t face going around the same roundabout, with the same outcomes, only to be told the investment costs too much.”
The message being sent to disabled people, she said, was that “only the fit and able deserve our investment; all others can wait, yet again”.
Baroness Campbell added: “Short-term plasters or delaying tactics such as this one are akin to throwing good money after bad.
“When is this government and opposition going to understand that by investing in disabled and older citizens, savings will be made within the healthcare and welfare benefits systems in the longer-term.”
Asked to respond to the failure to produce the change the Labour government of the time had hoped for from the report, and whether the new government would try again with a new strategy to achieve this change, a UK government spokesperson said: “Nobody deserves to be treated unfairly because of their disability and we remain focused on championing the rights of all disabled people.
“That’s why we are increasing funding to allow disabled people to stay in their homes, boosting the carer’s allowance, and working with disabled people and their representative organisations to break down barriers which prevent individuals from being fully respected and included in society.”
The increased funding relates to the extra £86 million for the disabled facilities grant scheme – which helps councils fund access improvements to disabled people’s homes – which brings total government spending on the programme for 2024-25 to £711 million and will support about 7,800 more adaptations.
Picture: (From left to right) Professor Peter Beresford, Baroness Campbell, and Dr Sally Witcher
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