'Disability Action Plan fails to tackle issues important to disabled people'
Not one to miss out on an opportunity to pretend to care about disabled people, Minister for disabled people Tom Pursglove launched the long-awaited Consultation for the Disability Action Plan.
The DAP will sit alongside the National Disability Strategy and work on short-term solutions to the pressing issues disabled people face in everyday life.
The NDA itself has just had a huge win (cough) in the court of appeal. Despite the High Court finding it unlawful, it got off via the Tories' favourite method - a loophole. You see the thing that was clearly labelled an “open consultation” on the Disability Unit’s site was actually an “information-gathering survey”, apparently.
Anyway back to the Disability Action Plan. Last week it was criticised for taking longer than expected and not consulting disabled people organisations. Fazilet Hadi, head of policy for Disability Rights UK, said “The trouble is that this is not coming from disabled people… It’s not our list of actions.”
So isn’t it an amazing coincidence that it was released just days later? But you all know by now there's a twist coming.
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As always, with labour the government expects disabled people to do, it’s horrifically long-winded and the real issues are buried under government bluster. Of course, I can’t know for sure, but it always feels like this is done on purpose knowing disabled people have limited energy or capacity. It means the government can shrug “Well we asked for responses, these are the responses we got!”
The consultation document is eighty-eight pages long, but because I’m committed to giving you all the full scope (and bullying the tories a little) I read the whole thing, so you don’t have to.
The first thing that struck me is that the Disability Unit says the DAP is supposed to help disabled people throughout 2023 and 2024, but this initial consultation doesn't close til October. So we’re going to be well into 2024 by the time this is collated and put into a full plan. Oh, what a coincidence just in time for elections.
The disabled people’s minister starts by saying “Every part of government is working together to transform the lives of disabled people in the UK for the better and ensure disabled people can participate fully in society"
Nice to see he’s got a side hustle in comedy.
Thirty-six pages of the huge document have nothing to do with the disability action plan or the consultation. Instead pages 14-40 focus on what the government has done and plans to do for disabled people.
The introduction states “These actions are subject to departments’ own consultation approaches, where appropriate and are not individually consulted on within this consultation” Basically there was absolutely no need for this section to be included other than to brag about how much they’re supposedly doing for us - though we get no say in these actions.
In amongst these are the lol-worthy claims from the Department for Transport that they are “assessing over 300 nominations to make stations more accessible“- this comes as the consultation on whether to close over to 1,000 train station ticket offices ends.
There’s also a section from the DWP, the disability minister’s own department that hasn’t been formatted, so is basically an unreadable wall of text about access to work. You couldn’t make it up.
So onto what the disability unit is actually putting forward to make disabled lives better- and remember these are just for the next year or so, not long term.
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With that in mind, here’s what the government are proposing:
access to elected office
playground accessibility
emergency planning and resilience work
climate adaptations and mitigations
creating a Disability Enabled Badge to encourage disability awareness in businesses and services and improve access for disabled people
commissioning a feasibility report into Great Britain bidding to host the Special Olympics World Summer Games in 2031
working to address access refusals for guide dogs
raising the profile of assistive technology
Some of these in theory are needed, such as stronger emergency planning, but for the most part, the issues the Disability Unit has pledged to tackle aren’t the most pressing issues we’re going to face in the next two years. In fact, guide dog access refusals seem to be the only item on the list that can be immediately tackled, as the plan is supposed to.
Of all the policies set out by the government, including making benefits fairer, commitment to housing, web accessibility, work and business support, SEND provision, training and guidance, the fact the DU went with accessible playgrounds and getting disabled people into politics speaks volumes for how in tune they are with our needs.
While I agree that there does need to be more disabled people in politics, I don’t think it’s a pressing issue that requires extra funding - not when the DWP is blaming “benefit fraudsters” for the embarrassingly low cost of living payments.
The creation of the Disability Enabled Badge has the air of Purple Tuesday in which companies get to brag about how inclusive they are so they can take our money. In a consultation document that is supposed to help disabled people with the issues disabled people face now, I was shocked but sadly not surprised to see there was no mention or plan to help us face the extra pressures of the cost of living crisis.
The Disability Action Plan consultation shows how out of touch the Tories are with the needs of disabled people. But more than that it shows how little they care to actually help us., they’d rather just appear to help us.
The consultation process is open until 6th October, you can respond via gov.uk
Please do so if you can, the government needs to know they can’t get away with just looking like they’re actually helping us.
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