Double think on disabled people's rights

Does what the Government is doing on welfare reform fly directly in the face of what the UK signed up to in the United Nation’s Disability Convention? Dr Marc Bush finds that our international reputation may be slipping

At home, we’ve been necessarily consumed by the regressive changes to our benefit, healthcare and legal aid systems, but abroad things are changing. Beyond the churnings of our Westminster Government, things are afoot “about us”, but “without us”.

Earlier this month I was in the eerie metropolis of Doha in Qatar at the 5th International Shafallah Forum, which brings together some 250 delegates and dignitaries from over 50 countries, including representatives from UN agencies. It was the perfect opportunity to gauge the thoughts of opinion formers about the UK’s record on disability rights.

So I got to chatting to delegates between sessions, over lunch, in the halls; all the usual places that gossip lurks. Not the most scientific of methods I know, but the conversations provided me with an interesting insight into our international reputation.

The consensus seemed to be that the UK was a country of best practice, a go to for ideas about equality, or, as one of the American delegates put it, a country that has “got it all sorted”. I wondered if my fellow disabled Britains back home would be so quick to agree.

One nameless delegate, however, described us as a “fading voice” on the international stage of disability politics.

So who was right?

Back in the early to mid 2000s, during the negotiations and drafting of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (aka the Disability Convention), disabled people from the UK were actively involved in designing and articulating the fundamental principles and articles which define it. The UK Government was among the first countries to sign the convention on 30 March 2007, bringing both pride and acknowledgement to the thousands of disabled people who had been a part of the disability rights and independent living movements.

We brought in protection against discrimination, recognition of the extra costs disabled people faced in our society, increased rights to care and support in our communities and created funds so that we can participate and contribute to our local communities.

Given how far we have come in the past three decades, it is understandable then that we would be seen as a beacon of disability equality internationally. But is our record so clean?

We were doing so well, or so we thought until the UK delayed its ratification of the Convention, slipped in some reservations and interpretative declarations on rights afforded under it, ummed and ahhed about the Optional Protocol and missed the opportunity to sit alongside our peers on the UN Committee scrutinising the compliance of countries with it.

So perhaps not “as sorted” as was suggested?

The important thing about setting an international reputation is maintaining it, and that is what is under threat with the reforms currently going through our parliament. If we take the Convention as our basis, we see just how regressive and crude these domestic reforms are.

Restricting eligibility to care and closing the Independent Living Fund, removing financial support for those who leave work because of a disability and removing financial support for disabled people seeking justice in our legal system all infringe on fundamental articles in the Convention.

A sentiment that was reflected in a response to the UN’s Universal Periodic Review from Disability Rights Watch UK (a civil society reporting initiative led by the UK Disabled People’s Council) drawing attention to the failure of the UK Government to: take concrete steps towards withdrawing its four reservations and the interpretative declaration to the Convention; commit to incorporate the Convention into domestic law, lead on disability issues and particularly the failure to create an adequate mechanism to ensure effective cross-government work on disability.

In pursuing these reforms the Government needs to keep in mind that making an international commitment to disability rights and equality is meant to be about moving forwards, not heading back the way you came.

So perhaps the suggestion that our “voice is getting quieter” on disability rights is correct. Not because of the volume, but our ability and legitimacy to claim we are a “country of best practice”.

At the Forum in Qatar, Ron McCallum, Chair of the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and Hassan Ali Bin Ali, Chairman of the Shafallah Center both spoke about the need to address an increasing gap between principle and practice, between Governments aspiring to articles in the Convention and giving their citizens the resources to make it a reality on the ground.

And it is an important point.

As a developed country with more resources than many of the other signatories of the Convention, we need to invest in disability equality, and especially when we find ourselves in a tougher economic climate. Because not to do so comes at the cost of disabled people’s participation and contribution to our society.

Our Government needs to share in the challenge of improving the lives of the one billion disabled people around the globe, by also making sure it is upholding its reputation internationally on disability rights and putting it to practice back home. The risk we face otherwise is not just that developing countries fail to make the leap in terms of disability rights, but also that developed countries like the UK risk taking major steps backwards.

• Dr Marc Bush is Head of Public Policy at Scope (the charity which publishes Disability Now).