Tory leadership hopefuls ignore disabled people in pitch to MPs and party members

All four of the candidates to be the next Conservative leader have ignored disabled people in their pitches to party members.

None of the quartet – Kemi Badenoch, James Cleverly, Robert Jenrick, and Tom Tugendhat – discussed how they would address any of the barriers facing disabled people, in their speeches yesterday (Wednesday).

Issues such as social care, accessible housing and transport, and social security were almost completely absent from their speeches, although all four briefly mentioned the NHS.

Jenrick did mention “welfare” twice, once to claim that the Conservatives had created “a fairer welfare system” and then confusingly to argue that the “welfare system” was one of the parts of the public sector that was not “working as it should”.

All four spoke about cutting migration and taxes, defence (except Badenoch), and reducing regulation.

Badenoch and Jenrick both launched attacks on human rights laws, while Badenoch said her “plan” would target both the Equality Act and the use of judicial reviews.

She promised a “comprehensive plan to reprogramme the British state” that would examine the Equality Act, but she did not provide further details on how she would reform equality laws.

She appeared to promise a new wave of attacks on what she called “identity politics” if she became Conservative leader.

And she claimed that “class warfare” had been promoted “under the banner of equality”, and that Conservative governments had “allowed ourselves to be bound by aggressive identity politics”.

She told party members: “Ministers need to be able to make decisions that aren’t endlessly challenged in the courts.

“If people don’t like those decisions, there are elections.”

Jenrick’s approach was even further to the right of Badenoch’s.

He promised to scrap the Human Rights Act, leave the European Convention on Human Rights, and end “the age of mass migration”, arguing that “the sheer scale and the lack of integration is sapping at our culture and our national cohesion”.

And he said his “new Conservative party… must stand for our nation and our culture, for our identity and our way of life”.

Cleverly promised to “build more homes”, reduce the cost of childcare, and “cut red tape, so we can build the energy and transport infrastructure we need, but more cheaply and quickly”.

He said his party needed to “make sure that work always pays” and be the party of “free markets and freedom, of business and enterprise”.

Tugendhat called for a legal cap on net migration at 100,000 and said he would “fix migration by fixing the gaps in education and skills, in transport and housing, so we can recruit at home and not abroad”.

He said he would “end the cap on apprenticeships and use the immigration skills charge to invest in further education and train our own people”.

None of the four candidates had responded by noon today (Thursday) to requests from Disability News Service to describe the policies they are putting forward to address the barriers faced by disabled people.

Picture: Banners of each of the four candidates hanging from the ceiling of the venue for this week’s Conservative party conference, the International Convention Centre in Birmingham

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