UN committee set to examine UK government’s ‘absolutely shocking’ behaviour

A delegation of disabled activists will travel to Geneva this week to help the United Nations hold the UK government to account for its continuing breaches of the UN disability convention.

Members of the delegation, representing leading disabled people’s organisations (DPOs) and allies, are likely to brief members of the UN committee on the rights of persons with disabilities on the government’s failure to meet its obligations under the treaty.

Representatives of more than 10 DPOs from across the UK, more than half of them grassroots organisations, will be joined in Geneva by representatives of five unions.

Although they will not be giving evidence publicly, they will keep a close eye on the public evidence given by the UK government during its cross-examination by the committee, to ensure its evidence is both factually correct and not misleading.

The UN committee will question the government on the progress it has made since being found guilty of grave and systematic violations of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in 2016.

It was the first such high-level inquiry carried out by the committee and was the result of years of research and lobbying by Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC), which will be sending several of its members to Geneva.

The 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.

Ellen Clifford, who has been coordinating work by the coalition of UK disabled people’s organisations that monitors implementation of the convention, said this week: “It’s clear the United Nations are very, very upset with the UK government.

“They think what they’re doing is absolutely shocking.”

She told an online event organised by the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) that the 2016 findings had been “unprecedented”.

She told the event, arranged to brief journalists on the convention ahead of next week’s session: “Disabled people felt validated by it. They felt finally that they were being listened to, but the government, of course, dismissed it.”

Clifford, award-winning author of The War on Disabled People, said the written reports already submitted to the committee by DPOs were “very, very comprehensive” and carefully researched “because the government dismisses everything it possibly can”.

The government was supposed to be examined last August on its progress but failed to send a representative.

It refused at the time to offer an explanation, with the then minister for disabled people Tom Pursglove declining three times to offer an excuse at last October’s Conservative party conference.

It was only last week, in its response to a critical report by the Commons women and equalities committee about its National Disability Strategy, that it finally produced an explanation.

It told the committee that the decision not to attend in August had been due to “competing pressures and commitments” and that “by the time we received the date of the dialogue we would have been unable to adequately prepare”.

Picture: A DPAC protest outside the London headquarters of the Department for Work and Pensions last week. It focused on ending benefit-related deaths

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