Equality 2025 holds first public meeting

Disabled people must pressurise the government to ratify the UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities, a conference heard on 12 November.

The call came at the first public meeting of Equality 2025 (E2025), a group of disabled people who were appointed by the government to advise on how to deliver recommendations in its report, Improving the Life Chances of Disabled People.

Delegates gathered in Birmingham to give their views and suggestions on four key issues: independent living and user-led organisations, disability hate crime, the UN Convention, and transition into adulthood for disabled people.

During group discussions, delegates said they were concerned about the decline of user-led organisations and the lack of support and low expectations of young disabled people.

E2025 member Miro Griffiths (pictured) told the conference that disabled people are “thrown over the fence” of childhood into adulthood.

The conference also heard that disabled people would like more training and awareness within the police force and judicial system in order to combat hate crime.

Delegates called for a clear-cut definition of disability hate crime as well as a discussion about the best way to approach perpetrators. Several delegates called for “restorative” instead of “punitive” justice, suggesting that mandatory community service and mediation could be a way to educate people and challenge the stereotypes that lead to hate crime. But E2025 member Clenton Farquharson told Disability Now that he wasn’t sure that disabled victims would automatically endorse “restorative justice”.

Mr Farquharson went on to endorse the widespread view that centres for independent living are in trouble and said that they needed mandatory funding.