Speech by Baroness Jane Campbell, Chair of the Disability Committee and EHRC Commissioner, 22 February 2008
Thank you for inviting me to speak today. It is always daunting speaking to a room of legal professionals and experts in the field of public service delivery. However this afternoon I have a feeling, I am amongst friends and hope nothing I say will be taken down in evidence....
But I expect it is evidence you are looking for - evidence that the Commission is going to build on DRC's legacy, that disability will not be lost, that it will be a champion for disability equality and human rights.
So I am going to tell it like it is, and then you can ask me some questions. By the end, I hope you will be feeling rather more reassured and I will go home without a caution.
But first... what did the Romans ever do for us?
I thought I would start with a brief reflection on the DRC's impact and legacy.
Less than 10 years ago in 1999, there was no DRC. The DDA was in its infancy and did not comprehensively cover education, transport, housing, public functions such as highways and planning - or physical features in relation to goods, facilities and services. Nor did we have the Disability Equality Duty. The ink was not yet dry on the pages of the Human Rights Act, and I was still getting over the accumulated stress caused by my countless road-blocking activities on Westminster Bridge.
The Disability Rights Task Force can be credited with setting out an agenda to close all these gaps. But would these gaps have been plugged as well as they have without the DRC? I like to think not.
And nor would legislation have been followed up with Codes, guidance, promotion, enforcement and litigation. Partnerships would not have been forged across key sectors to ensure rights became reality. Disabled people, especially those not connected with the disability movement, and their families would not have had anything like the levels of awareness of their rights without DRC campaigns and media activity.
The DRC led the way in using the Human Rights Act to reach the parts the DDA did not - most notably in the East Sussex lifting and handling case and in support for Leslie Burke’s end of life treatment.
The DRC was led by disabled people, and staffed by people committed to disability rights, many of whom were disabled themselves. It may have been a public body, but it was also resolutely a disability organisation.
That's why it was not satisfied to simply implement the Government's agenda. It put equal stock in seeking to shape the agenda.
As well as helping to bring about 2005's Disability Discrimination Act, the Commission was successful amongst others things, in influencing changes to Planning Law to promote accessibility, health policy via its formal investigation into health inequalities, and taking on issues where other people might shy away, like assisted dying. In its last 18 months it helped see in the Disability Equality Duty.
Through its Disability Agenda the Commission was successful in anchoring disability equality within a whole range of high profile Government agenda's including child poverty, pioneering approaches to policy which accounted not only for equalities in relation to group identity, but also its relationship with inequality of socio-economic status and class.
But all good things come to a close.... some of us feel it was too early for the DRC to hand on the mantle, others like myself were becoming increasingly interested in taking disability equality into a more inclusive equality journey.
And here we are: a wider road where many more of us who have experienced discrimination on the grounds of difference will journey. We will exchange ideas about where to go and what to do on the way. Our shared experience will enhance our ability to understand how to build a fairer society, which does not put people into boxes but understands multiple identities.
Think for a moment, how are we to tackle the duality of race and disability discrimination - for instance - in the households of disabled Bangladeshi parents where their children have an 83% risk of growing up in poverty. Or the growing crisis in our threadbare social care system which cannot meet the basic human rights of older disabled people. This is when integrated conversations at the EHRC take on a new vitality and power.
So the journey takes on another gear or six.
But what form should that struggle now take? Should it be solely the preserve of a disability movement forged around a shared identity or narrative of oppression, fighting for recognition and rights? Or do we need to look laterally for new communities of shared interest, with disabled people playing a wider part in the mutual enterprise of building a fairer society?
I feel our quest for equal citizenship would suggest the latter, and it is worth reminding ourselves of the words of our Disability movement pioneers when during the International Year of Disabled People in 1981 they said:
'As we enjoy equal rights, so we will have equal responsibilities. It is our duty to take part in the building of society'
They recognised that the participation which greater rights and opportunities enables, is not an end in itself, but the means to the end of achieving equality and human rights for all.
And it is my contention that we can only achieve this by taking our rightful place around the table in whatever way we can - as social policy experts, lawyers, academics, politicians, volunteers, campaigners, individual citizens....Or as a member of the Equality and Human Rights Commission.
I can perfectly understand people's anxieties about the demise of the DRC, and the advent of the Equality and Human Rights Commission. The DRC, though not perfect, is a hard act to follow. And no, we haven't 520 people solely dedicated to disability issues. Our delivery on disability will be very different but that does not mean it will be poorer.
So let me try to offer some reassurance.
Firstly, we have a statutory Disability Committee, 90% of whom are disabled people. This is unique, insofar as the various 'strands' of equality within the EHRC are concerned. The Disability Committee is the only strand which enjoys decision-making authority. The Commission has a duty to consult the Committee wherever disability is affected by a decision.
We have chosen wherever possible to seek to achieve our objectives by drawing on the mainstream resources of the Commission, contributing to the development and delivery of its plans, but we have also been doing disability-specific work too.
For example, we were approached by parents of young people with learning disabilities banned from participating in the UK school games, and simply indicating our interest in pursuing a named party formal investigation helped to see the ban lifted. We now have our sights on the International Paralympic Association to see their ban lifted by the time of the London Olympics in 2012.
We are planning action against Arcadia Group and Pizza Express in relation to physical access to their shops and restaurants, acting in our own name, using Part 3 of the DDA in a way the DRC was not empowered to.
We have continued to pursue implementation of the DRC's formal investigation into fitness standards and only last month the General Social Care Council gave their support. We are optimistic that fitness standards which act as a barrier to so many disabled people's entry into nursing and social work will soon be removed.
We have just commissioned a review concerning violence, abuse and hate crime against disabled people. This review will help us determine how we can best intervene to ensure public authorities act to eliminate and provide effective redress for such incidents.
And this year the Commission aims to become Britain's designated 'independent mechanism' tasked with promoting, protecting and monitoring the new UN Convention on the rights of persons with disabilities. We are co-hosting with DAA, UKDPC and Scope, a conference on the Convention on 28th March in London - please do come along.
I was asked in particular to talk about our work on the Disability Equality Duty.
The Commission is continuing with the enforcement work started by the Disability Rights Commission. In October around 70 'active cases' were brought forward from the DRC to the EHRC. These included government departments, universities, strategic health authorities, and other public bodies. In some cases, minded letters and or compliance notices had been issued to the 'active' public authorities, though it is only a small minority of these that is now with the EHRC's legal department.
The remainder of these cases are being assessed and/or re-assessed by colleagues in the public duties team within the strategy directorate.
Clearly the EHRC cannot monitor compliance of every Public Authority of which there are 44,000 in Britain!
For this reason we are keen to move towards building the capacity of strategic partners to monitor compliance in particular areas across the public sector - strategic partners would include trade unions and inspectorates. For example, Ofsted will monitor for compliance of the duties within schools, and the EHRC will then dip sample the sector to quality assure the work of the strategic partner and monitor compliance.
In relation to trade unions we are keen for them to be identifying key trends, and key public authorities for the EHRC to target in its monitoring and enforcement work. The EHRC is currently formulating a trade union training project. This will show trade unions how to use the duties in their bargaining role, and bring them alive in the workplace.
Most public authorities will have now produced their first Annual Report and government departments will be preparing for their first Secretary of State report in December 2008.
The EHRC intends to look at a sample of annual reports from government departments and sectors that have as yet not been looked at in DRC work. We are currently deciding which those sectors will be, but we want within those sectors to focus on the key players who drive change.
We are in the process of writing to Permanent Secretaries to remind them of their Secretary of State duty and to ask for details about progress made so far. Having looked at the Secretary of State reports, EHRC will set out what it expects Departments to have achieved by their next annual report.
And finally, we want creatively to use the duties to achieve specific policy aims. For example, by challenging public authorities to eliminate harassment and promote positive attitudes as a route to tackling bullying and negative behaviours, or building on the recent case in Harrow, using the duties to challenge local authority eligibility criteria for social care.
So in conclusion.
The new Commission has a hard act to follow and is at an early stage in its development.
So I ask for your patience.
But I also ask you to have faith when I say that in my view disability rights has not been lost with the advent of EHRC; it has reached the next stage in being found.