‘Support still lacking’ - 30 years after Morris’s act

By John Pring

Disabled people are still not getting the support they need from local authorities, 30 years after a groundbreaking law came into effect, peers have been told.

The Lords debate marked three decades since the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act (CSDPA) was extended to cover the whole of the UK.

But Lord [Colin] Low, who chairs RNIB, told fellow peers the comprehensive services that councils were encouraged to develop through the act were “still anything but comprehensive”.

He said: “Currently, many disabled people are not getting the support they need to live independent lives.”

And he said some groups, such as blind and partially-sighted people, were mostly excluded from council support because their needs were not judged to be “critical or substantial”.

Lord [Alf] Morris said disabled people had few rights when his private members bill became law as the CSDPA in 1970.

He said: “The notion that disabled people had rights was regarded as absurd, just as it had been for peasants, slaves, religious minorities, black people and
women.

“To talk of as-of-right cash benefits for services for disabled people was to invite ridicule, while local authority services were mostly discretionary and often non-existent.”

The CSDPA became law in 1970 and applied to England and Wales. In 1972 it was extended to Scotland and in 1978 to Northern Ireland.

Baroness Thomas, who has a mobility impairment, said there had been “a sea change in attitudes to all forms of disability in the past 30 years”.

But she said that some disabled people call the Disability Discrimination Act “a paper tiger” because there were some areas where the law has not made much difference.

“There are still all too many public buildings with bad access; for example, with steps and no rail, let alone a ramp.”

And she highlighted the fact that the health club nearest to Parliament, Bannatyne’s, has ignored repeated requests for a hoist to be installed beside its swimming pool. She said this was “a real slap in the face for elderly and disabled club members”.

The junior work and pensions minister Lord McKenzie said: “The government are committed to bridging the gap between national policy and the realities that disabled people face every day.”

He also promised that no-one moving from incapacity benefit to the new employment and support allowance under the government’s benefits reform programme “will face a cash cut in their benefit”.

He also promised that final decisions on the government’s reform of social care funding would “take account of the interaction between charging policies, benefits and employment support programmes and the impact on disability equality”.
9 June, 2008