Brexit: Disabled People

Lord Addington Excerpts

Thursday 2nd February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, there are certain debates in which you discover quite happily that someone else has done the heavy lifting for you. I thank my noble friend for that. What strikes me about this debate is that it is not about the big acts of principle because when it comes to disability, this Chamber—and, indeed, the whole British Parliament—handles it pretty well. It is the small things. It is the stream of regulation that we are always struggling with to make those big acts of principle count.

I remember when we were dealing with small concessions in regulations about transport, people from all Benches coming up to me and saying, “It is really inconvenient to make sure that the displays at stations are the right size, that we have the easiest tables to fold down to change a baby on, that the toilets are accessible”—there is always a good reason why not. That gets easier and easier to ignore when you have a smaller machine driving it, when you have people saying, “It is very inconvenient regulation for me”. If you do not have real weight and determination behind it, or an energy, it gets picked off.

People will say, “That is red tape. It gets in the way”. One of the many things I have covered in your Lordships’ House is health and safety. I came to the conclusion that everybody was against health and safety regulations until their child was up a ladder. It will be inconvenient for you until you have a disabled child or a disabled parent who needs that support. We need a clear guide and energy here, with the Government prepared to commit time, resources and, indeed, political capital to standing up to people like that. It is going to get more difficult because the EU is a convenient punchbag, let us face it. We can duck round it and say it is the EU’s fault, not ours—“We have to do it, I’m afraid”. If anybody has not seen that here, I can take them through a few events. I will not do that now because no one has annoyed me quite enough to do it. But that happens and unless the Government are prepared to publicly start taking on the responsibility for those unpopular small decisions with certain sectors, we are going to fall down here.

The Papworth Trust report points out that the drive from Europe means there is a focus. You have to come behind it grumblingly, saying, “Oh, I wouldn’t do this but I appreciate you have problems”. You have to take it on. Unless the Government are prepared to look for a cross-party consensus about how we go about this, we will get into trouble. The disabled are one group but others will suffer as well. We must take on the fact that this unpleasant grind to make sure that things are accessible and easy to use is there. If we do not do that, we will jump from events where we have a big, dramatic event—“We’ll make a change. Oh, that doesn’t work. It’s out of date, we’ll have to go back”. That is inefficient and inconvenient for those who happen to have their lives disrupted in a large way in that process.