The Disability Agenda: creating an alternative future
'Reader in seeking a memorial, look around you.'
Inscription dedicated to Sir Christopher Wren, St Paul’s Cathedral
Shortly after the Disability Rights Commission (DRC) opened for business in 2000 we discussed the sort of future we wished to build. We decided that society should expect disabled people, including those with long-term health conditions, to be participating fully as equal citizens.
Over the last seven years we have pursued our vision with energy and commitment, working with a vast array of partners to implement change at every level of society.
Disabled people have acquired powerful rights to non-discrimination and equality. There are many more disabled people in work than 10 years ago. Across Britain, housing, the built environment and transport are becoming more inclusive. More young disabled people are achieving at school and staying on in education.
Where recently disability equality was a peripheral issue for policy-makers, it is now viewed as critical to ending child poverty and achieving full employment.
Public and media representations of disabled people are more positive: a statue of a naked disabled woman, ‘Alison Lapper, pregnant’, on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square in London; reality TV shows recruiting a wheelchair-user and a young man with Tourette’s; the BBC’s defence correspondent Frank Gardner’s wheelchair visible on screen; politicians talking publicly about the experience of disability within their families.
With all this progress, some might ask why we need a fresh agenda. The answer is simple: whilst much has been achieved, far too many disabled people still face persistent social and economic exclusion. And in the next 10-15 years, demographic and technological changes, migration and changing family structures will create new challenges requiring fresh responses.
This Agenda’s central proposition is that a sustainable future for Britain demands levels of prosperity and productivity that can only be achieved if everyone is empowered to play an active part.
This is an agenda for all those who live in poverty, who have little control or choice in their lives, who are victims of abuse or live in fear, who needlessly suffer poor health and die prematurely, whose life chances are constrained by poor educational opportunities, who live in poor housing, and who never get the chance to show what they can do.
It is also an agenda for all who believe that Britain can do better than maintain millions of its citizens in such conditions, recognising that otherwise we all pay.
When disabled people contribute to families, communities and wider society, everyone benefits.
We hope this Agenda will guide policy-makers across governments in the three countries of Great Britain. They cannot meet core policy goals – to improve skills, employment or health – if disabled people are left out of the equation.
The Commission for Equality and Human Rights (CEHR) will in future work to tackle discrimination and promote human rights, equality of opportunity and good relations between individuals and communities across differences of age, disability, gender, race, religion and sexual orientation. The Commission must establish an influential role at the centre of British life and, with partners, forge a new way forward that embraces future challenges. We hope this Agenda will help the Commission to deliver its vision.
The Disability Agenda has been developed with the active involvement of disabled people, our colleagues in other areas of equality and human rights, business, public and voluntary sector leaders, academics, think tanks, government officials and many others.
Thank you to all who have provided your experience, expertise and ideas. The priorities in this Agenda already have widespread support. The recommendations are achievable. By putting them into action, together we can create an alternative future.
It is crucial that people are able to determine whether this Agenda has succeeded. Throughout, we have sought to provide clear objectives and recommendations against which progress can be measured. But our main proposal for measuring progress is as follows: look around you.
Sir Bert Massie CBE
Chairman
Disability Rights Commission
Download the Overview document in full:
Creating an alternative future (Word 171kb)
Creating an alternative future (PDF 517kb)