Scottish government making progress on equality

Sunil Peck

The Scottish government is making progress on removing barriers hampering equality for disabled people, a report has found.

In December 2006, the Scottish Parliament's equal opportunities committee put forward more than 150 recommendations aimed at removing the barriers which prevent disabled people enjoying equality in education, gaining and maintaining work and leading independent lives.

The report was welcomed by disability campaigners for its thoroughness and far-reaching recommendations.

The Scottish Executive provided what the committee calls a "detailed response" to its report. But the Labour/Liberal Democrat Scottish Executive has now been replaced by an SNP government and the committee wanted to ensure that the new administration was implementing its recommendations.

In its progress report, the committee said it was "broadly content" with the progress the Scottish government was making.

But the committee said it regretted the government's failure to make an announcement in January on how it was going to make progress on independent living, even though the SNP minister for communities and sport said he would do so.

The committee also said that it did not know whether the government had carried out work into developing standards and accreditation for disability equality training, even though a group of disability-led organisations had been established in August 2007 to develop a strategy.

Bill Campbell, projects director at Inclusion Scotland, agreed with the committee's assessment of the government's progress.

He said: "We are certainly happy with the progress of the government. Such wide-ranging attitudinal changes cannot be made overnight."

A Scottish government spokeswoman said a response to the progress report would be issued within two months.

She added that the government would be announcing plans for progressing independent living "very soon".


Pictured: Margaret Mitchell MSP, convener of the equal opportunities committee, learning sign language from a pupil of Donaldson's School in Linlithgow at the launch of the progress report.

Picture courtesy of the Scottish Parliament