Disabled People (Developing Countries)

Debate between Mark Lazarowicz and James Duddridge

Tuesday 22nd July 2014 Westminster Hall

[James Duddridge (Rochford and Southend East) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to be here on this warm day and to see the Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest West (Mr Swayne), in his place. I congratulate him enormously on his elevation to Minister of State in the Department for International Development, which is well deserved and comes on the back of many years’ work in the sector in Rwanda and beyond.

I thank Mr Speaker for allowing time for the debate. As chair of the all-party group on Africa and as an ex-member of the Select Committee on International Development, I have followed the issues that I will raise carefully. I also did so while working in developing countries across Africa during a business career outside the House. In all countries, the prevalence and awareness of disabilities is growing. As a result of an ageing population and a number of other factors, people with disabilities now make up 15% of the global population, or more than 1 billion people around the world. Of those 1 billion people, 80% live in developing countries, and at least 785 million are of working age.

Across the world, people with disabilities are statistically more likely to be unemployed, more likely to be illiterate, less likely to have access to a formal education and less likely to have access to the support networks that even people in the developing world currently enjoy. They are further isolated by discrimination, ignorance and prejudice. Disability is only one driver among many of social and economic exclusion. When disability combines with other factors—gender, ethnicity, caste, age, geography and location—it makes individuals more disadvantaged in society. People with disabilities are more likely to be excluded from the benefits that society has to offer if they hold a combination of those attributes.

[Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this important debate. On the question of exclusion, does he agree that a particular priority should be to ensure that children with disabilities have access to education? If children are excluded from education at an early stage of their life, they are even more likely to suffer some of the challenges and exclusion that disabled people suffer later in life.

[James Duddridge]

Although we have made much progress on the millennium development goals, my understanding is that people with disabilities make up approximately a third of those who are still uneducated. In the post-2015 model that is the successor to the millennium development goals, it is essential that we pick up on those issues. I will touch on that later in my speech, but I agree with the sentiments expressed by the hon. Gentleman.

Disabled women and girls, in particular, lack support. They face great difficulty accessing education, which the hon. Gentleman mentioned, and training and employment compared with non-disabled females and even disabled men in a similar environment. According to the UN, a survey conducted in Orissa, India, in 2004 found that virtually all women and girls with disabilities were beaten at home. I could not believe that fact when I read it; it is quite unbelievable. The survey found that 25% of women with intellectual disabilities had been raped and 6% of women with disabilities had been forcibly sterilised. Those are horrific statistics. The National Council of Disabled Women in Bangladesh, which helps to promote the rights and dignity of women with disabilities, has noted that the isolation and stigma faced by such women can lead to violence in the home and discrimination in the workplace, but that violence and discrimination often go unreported and criminals escape punishment.