Government rejects call to work with disabled people to draft new 10-year disability strategy

The government has accepted just two of the recommendations made by a committee of MPs who delivered a powerful attack on the government’s discredited National Disability Strategy.

The Commons women and equalities committee said in December that the strategy was merely “a list consisting mainly of pre-existing departmental actions with minimal strategic thinking behind how those actions interact”.

Its cross-party members made a series of recommendations, including a call for the government to collaborate with disabled people on developing a 10-year strategy.

But the government rejected this recommendation, and said it was “fully committed” to the “long-term vision” in its existing National Disability Strategy.

Analysis by Disability News Service suggests the government rejected four of the committee’s recommendations, and accepted just two, while partially accepting two others.

The committee published the government’s response yesterday (6 March), a month after it was received, because it wanted to wait until the document was available in multiple formats, including EasyRead.

The committee had said in its report that the government’s efforts to engage with disabled people were seen as being “superficial” and that disabled people and their organisations “continue to feel excluded from having meaningful input into policies directly affecting them”.

It called on ministers to set up a new national advisory group of the DPO Forum England (whose members are all leading DPOs) and the chairs of the government’s own regional stakeholder networks to “review disability policy proposals, advise ministers on key issues, and develop, implement and monitor the NDS”.

But the government rejected this idea, saying such a move would replicate its existing arrangements, which it said had been designed to ensure that the voices of “disabled people and their communities and organisations, charities, business leaders” are “meaningfully considered”.

It said the DPO Forum England already met officials of the Disability Unit (DU) monthly and the minister for disabled people four times a year, while DU civil servants and the minister for disabled people also met regularly with the regional stakeholder network’s chairs, their own disability and access ambassadors, and the Disability Charities Consortium.

The committee had also called for the Disability Unit to have the final say on all disability policy “to ensure that the whole of government works towards the same long-term strategic objectives”, with the power to challenge ministers in other departments.

But the government said it would “not be appropriate for the DU to have the final say on all disability policy sitting in or originating from other government departments”.

The high court ruled the National Disability Strategy was unlawful in January 2022 because the government’s consultation process was unlawful, with the government then pausing 14 policies it said were directly connected to the strategy, while continuing progress on another 100.

The Court of Appeal eventually overturned the high court’s judgment last year.

The committee had called on the government to “immediately” provide an update with “specific timescales for delivery on all outstanding actions in the National Disability Strategy”.

But the government said it had already provided a “full update” to parliament last September, and it promised only to “publish further updates on progress”.

December’s report by the committee had also criticised the government’s failure to send a representative to the UN in Geneva last August for a public examination of its progress since being found guilty of grave and systematic violations of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD).

It will now appear before the UN’s committee on the rights of persons with disabilities later this month.

The UN committee found in November 2016 that the UK government had discriminated against disabled people on the right to an adequate standard of living and social protection, work and employment, and independent living.

The women and equalities committee’s report said in December that the government had made “little to no progress” against the UN recommendations and that its refusal to attend the meeting in Geneva was “disrespectful to both the UN committee and disabled people”, and it asked for an explanation.

In one of only two recommendations to be accepted, the government agreed to explain its absence, saying: “Due to competing pressures and commitments, by the time we received the date of the dialogue we would have been unable to adequately prepare.”

It said it recognised that “more needs to be done” to “tackle the barriers faced by disabled people” and so it had “published the Disability Action Plan, setting out the immediate action the Government will take in 2024 to improve disabled people’s lives, laying the foundations for longer term change, and complementing the long-term vision set out in the Strategy”.

The action plan was dismissed last month by DPOs as a series of “empty promises” that fail to address the “dire situation” disabled people are facing.

The government said it would outline its “further progress” to the UN committee in Geneva.

Conservative MP Caroline Nokes, chair of the women and equalities committee, declined to comment on the government accepting only two of the recommendations in full.

The committee plans to publish two further reports on its inquiry into the National Disability Strategy.

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