Dropping off the political radar

The new decade began with staggering levels of unemployment. The recession has shaken all sections of society, but its tremors hit young people particularly hard. At the end of 2009 youth unemployment numbers totalled nearly a million. Yet, pre-existing this group is another – one far less visible than its better-known counterpart, but still accounting for a fifth of our population: disabled people. Eugene Grant, a Junior Associate at the think tank Demos says we risk being left out in the political cold

Over the coming months, we will see each party’s election campaign unfold in full. We will hear a plethora of pledges, plans and proposals – many of them centred on fixing our finances, cutting the deficit, and getting people back to work. However, if trends continue, there will be a glaring gap in the parties’ respective manifestos – a gap where Brown and Cameron’s promises to disabled people should be.

A few observations put this omission and the current state of disability inequality into perspective. Presently, 1.3 million disabled people are unemployed, but willing and able to work; only 50 per cent of disabled people of working age are employed, as opposed to 80 per cent of non-disabled people. Those disabled people in work are likely to get paid significantly less than their non-disabled counterparts, but the “disability pay-gap” is little known and much less talked about.

The incoming “age of austerity” and onslaught of public spending cuts – as put forward by all three parties – will hit our disabled population very hard. Their disabilities themselves, coupled with disability-induced poverty, means many disabled people are heavily reliant on those services set to bear the brunt of the spending squeeze. Factor in to this a public sector that is a major employer of disabled people – employing almost a third of the entire disabled population – and those same cuts make the months ahead look as turbulent and treacherous as ever before.

Far from being just a “health issue”, disability inequality transcends social, cultural, and economic domains; so it needs to be addressed on social, cultural, and economic fronts. And yet, thus far, neither of the two main parties are willing to talk about the impact of the recession on a group that were already economically vulnerable even before the crisis began. Their commitments appear weak; their policies opaque.

The outrage over MPs’ expenses and bankers’ bonuses has, thankfully, brought issues of fairness back to the forefront of public debate. Now, the coming election presents the best opportunity in a long time for a real, meaningful and honest discussion about inequality in Britain. Now is a perfect moment for an open and progressive dialogue about dealing with – what Demos once described as “the last prejudice”.