Labour government faces questions over why it stuffed access to elected office committee with Tories

The Labour government has refused to explain why more than a third of the members of a new steering group that will target the barriers to elected office faced by disabled people have close links to the Conservative party.

Nearly a year after Labour won a landslide general election, the steering group is one of the first non-employment-related steps the new government has taken to try to improve disabled people’s lives.

The government also announced it will set up a new fund to help with the disability-related costs faced by disabled people who want to achieve elected office, particularly as MPs and councillors.

The cross-party steering group will advise the government on how to boost opportunities for disabled people in seeking to enter elected office and ensure the new fund “is effective in increasing disability representation in future elections”.

But the announcement failed to explain that four of the 13 members of the steering group have played key roles within the Conservative party, while another has a senior role within a thinktank closely linked to the party.

Just two members of the steering group appear to have links to the Labour party and two to the Liberal Democrats, while others have links with smaller parties or no apparent party political links.

One member, Chloe Schendel-Wilson, is a former head of outreach for the Conservative party and co-founder of the party’s Ability2Win campaign, which was designed to help more disabled Conservatives into elected office.

Another, Barry Ginley, is a former Conservative councillor and deputy chair and former chair of the Conservative Disability Group.

Celia Chartres-Aris is former executive of the Conservative Disability Group and former manager of Richmond Park and North Kingston Conservatives.

And the fourth member linked to the party, Dr Mustafa Mohammed, is co-chair of Ability2Win and chair and founder of Genix Healthcare; he donated more than £400,000 to the Conservative party between 2013 and 2019, either personally or through companies he controls.

Schendel-Wilson, Chartres-Aris and Mohammed are all current or former directors of the Disability Policy Centre (DPC) – and were its three founding directors – although the centre has never disclosed its funding sources.

After the thinktank launched, it had to remove the publications page from its website after a disabled campaigner pointed out that the only links on the page were to articles published on the Conservative Home website.

Schendel-Wilson claimed again this week that DPC was a “cross-party, independent think tank, and [is] not affiliated with any political party”.

A fifth member of the government’s new steering group, Dr Mark Carew, is an assistant professor at the International Centre for Evidence in Disability at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, but he is also a non-executive director at the Disability Policy Centre, although Schendel-Wilson stressed that he has no affiliation with the Conservative party.

Asked why a Labour government had appointed so many disabled people with links to the Conservative party to the steering group, a spokesperson for the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) refused to comment and suggested that Disability News Service contact the Labour party.

DWP also refused to say how much money the government expects the fund to receive every year, and when it expects the fund to go live.

And it refused to say if the Disability Policy Centre had disclosed the source of its funding to the government.

Kathy Bole, chair of Disability Labour and another member of the steering group, said she was “dismayed” to hear that there were so many members with Conservative links, which she said “does feel a bit strange”.

She said many disabled people with current or former links to Labour “would not run for office as they don’t trust in the direction which the party is going in” because the party “has strayed from its long-held set of values”.

She said: “If this steering group is incompatible with my ideals on how things have to change, I will step down.

“I am hoping this project has the ability to create positive change, but I will wait to be convinced.”

David Buxton, a Liberal Democrat member of the steering group, said he was “surprised” by the number of Conservatives on the steering group.

He said: “It would be good to see a natural and sensible approach from the Labour government minister, one that ensures fair and equal representation of disabled people from each main political party.”

But he said he was “very pleased” that the government had resurrected the Access to Elected Office Fund.

He assisted a Liberal Democrat minister during the coalition government in setting up the first Access to Elected Office Fund in 2012, following Liberal Democrat pressure on its Conservative coalition partner.

The fund was scrapped by the Conservatives after the 2015 general election, and was replaced in 2018 with the temporary EnAble fund in response to legal action taken by Buxton and two other 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 government had been promising to set up a replacement for three years until it lost power at the general election last July.

Buxton said there was now a “genuine opportunity to sit down and have a proper, constructive discussion on establishing the fund as a permanent resource, no longer a pilot or temporary measure”.

When he stood for parliament in East Hampshire in December 2019, he spent more than £5,000 on British Sign Language interpreters, mostly out of his own pocket, with some help from family and friends.

He said: “This is not the kind of financial burden candidates should bear.

“Candidates should be able to spend their funds on campaign resources to reach voters, not on accessibility costs.

“This must stop once and for all.

“I hope the steering group will work together to establish new funding criteria and availability, enabling Deaf and disabled candidates to confidently stand for public office without financial barriers related to their impairments.

“They should be able to compete on equal footing with non-disabled candidates.”

Picture: Chloe Schendel-Wilson (left) and Celia Chartres-Aris

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