Government disability strategy a “lacklustre effort”, says Labour

Labour’s Vicky Foxcroft has criticised the government’s new national strategy for disabled people published this morning, describing the plan as a “lacklustre effort with too much talking and not enough doing”.

Commenting on the proposals, which ministers have said will deliver more accessible housing, easier commuting and better job prospects for disabled people, Boris Johnson claimed the plan provides a “path to improve their everyday lives”.

The document put forward by the government includes 100 pledges, backed by £1.6bn in funding already announced, focused on the workplace, tackling inclusion and seeking to cut the disability employment gap, which is currently 28.6%.

“This long overdue strategy promised bold thinking, instead we got a lacklustre effort with too much talking and not enough doing,” Foxcroft said.

“The whole consultation process failed to properly consult with disabled people organisations, while many critical areas such as collecting data, adequate funding and the ongoing crisis in social care were completely ignored.”

The 140-page report published by ministers this morning was informed by a survey of more than 14,000 people. But campaigners and charities said they were not consulted in crafting it and the questions were not fit for purpose.

Labour’s shadow minister for disabled people said: “Adding insult to injury, the government released this crucial strategy while parliament isn’t sitting therefore avoiding any proper scrutiny. A future Labour government would produce policies in partnership with disabled people that have dignity and respect at their heart.”

Proposals in the plan include the possibility of making larger companies report how many disabled people they employ, increasing the number of disabled people employed by official institutions such as the civilian military, MI5, MI6 and GCHQ.

The government will pilot an “access to work adjustments passport” scheme, which will outline people’s access needs so they can move freely between jobs, and an online centre advising disabled people on flexible working and discrimination.

Johnson last year billed the plan as “the most far-reaching endeavour in this area for a generation or more”, and disabled people minister Justin Tomlinson hailed today as a “significant first step as we work towards a fully inclusive society”.

But the government has been criticised over the engagement process for the strategy. National Federation of the Blind of the UK president Andrew Hodgson said the survey was “far too long and the questions were badly constructed”.

He voiced concerns over the inclusion of a particular question on relationships that he said was “basically asking if you’d have a relationship with a disabled person”. Disability rights campaigner Doug Paulley called the question bizarre.

Paulley described the survey as “fundamentally broken” as it was only accessible online and argued the topics showed that it was not written “with or by disabled people”. He and others have been granted permission for a judicial review.

Conservative peer Kevin Shinkwin and chair of the disability commission for Tory think tank Centre for Social Justice warned ahead of the release of the plan that the lack of engagement risked making the strategy “another car crash”.

Shinkwin told POLITICO today: “There’s no way this amounts to a credible strategy, let alone the most ambitious and transformative disability plan in a generation that the Prime Minister promised.”

The strategy has been described as an attempt by the government to translate its ‘levelling up’ rhetoric into concrete policies. The document released this morning claimed the government is “solely focussed on levelling up opportunity”.

But Shinkwin added: “I’m really sad to say that on the basis of this flimsy document, levelling up has just failed its first big test. To his credit, the Prime Minister communicated a bold vision. Responsibility for failing to deliver on that vision lies squarely with the Department for Work and Pensions.”

The department has committed to regular disability surveys from January next year in a bid to reassure stakeholders that disabled people are included in the government’s policy-making process.

“Despite being nearly 100 pages long, the strategy is disappointingly thin on immediate actions, medium-term plans and the details of longer term investment,” Disability Rights UK CEO Kamran Mallick said.

“Government speaks of ‘building back better’, but disabled people’s lives have yet to be given the first set of strong foundations on which to build anything at all.”