[Relevant documents: First Report of the Women and Equalities Committee, “Unequal impact? Coronavirus, disability and access to services: interim Report on temporary provisions in the Coronavirus Act”, HC 386; and the Government Response, HC 1172.]
Virtual participation in proceedings commenced (Order, 25 February).
[NB: [V] denotes a Member participating virtually.]
I remind hon. Members that there have been some changes to normal practice in order to support the hybrid arrangements. Timings of debates have been amended to allow technical arrangements to be made for the next debate. There will also be suspensions between each debate. I remind Members participating physically and virtually that they must arrive for the start of Westminster Hall debates, and that they are expected to remain for the entire debate.
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The Chair of the Women and Equalities Committee is introducing the debate and will probably take a little longer, but if Back-Bench contributions could be kept to about five minutes, hopefully we can get through everybody on the list without my having to impose a formal time limit. I call Caroline Nokes to move the motion.
That this House has considered the Fourth Report of the Women and Equalities Committee, “Unequal impact? Coronavirus, disability and access to services: full Report”, HC 1050.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Graham, and I thank my colleagues on the Committee for their work on both the inquiry and the report. I am pleased to see the hon. Members for Jarrow (Kate Osborne), for Liverpool, Riverside (Kim Johnson) and for Lanark and Hamilton East (Angela Crawley) participating in the debate.
With your indulgence, Sir Graham, I would like to highlight that some of the issues we will discuss concern children with special educational needs, and when it comes to autistic spectrum disorders, there was one Member of this House who championed the issue, spoke in pretty much every debate on the subject, and chaired the all-party parliamentary group on autism. Cheryl Gillan is already much missed in this place, not least by me today. I know that she was a real expert and spoke with passion and knowledge in debates such as the one we are having today. I am sure she would have been present to put on record her thoughts about access to services for children with autistic spectrum disorders.
Relevant to this debate is our interim report, published in September last year, which was intended to inform the first six-monthly review of the Coronavirus Act 2020 temporary provisions. I will start by drawing attention to an important outstanding issue in this context—one that has not received a great deal of attention. The temporary provisions included unused provisions that relaxed requirements for sectioning under the Mental Health Act 1983, provisions that curtailed or restricted hard-won rights of disabled people to get the care and support that they needed in their everyday lives—the so-called Care Act 2014 easements—and a power to modify duties under the Children and Families Act 2014 in relation to assessment and provision for children with special educational needs and disabilities.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Graham. I thank the Women and Equalities Committee for its work on the report, which shines a light on issues that, sadly, have been too often overlooked throughout the pandemic. Before I get to the main points raised with me in the last year by my disabled constituents, I will echo the Committee’s findings about systemic issues in the SEND system and the way in which covid-19, and in my view the Government’s inadequate response to it, has exacerbated them.
The report correctly concludes that there must be targeted support for pupils with SEND to recover, and fundamental reform of the broken SEND system. I share the Committee’s hope that the Government’s SEND review will bring forth a blueprint for reform at the earliest opportunity. I feel that disabled people, much like children, have been an afterthought for the Government in the pandemic even though they have been disproportionally affected by the virus in health and social terms. We have seen that particularly in engagement and communications this past year, which the report rightly focuses on as a key issue facing disabled people.
Straight after the very first coronavirus press conference on 16 March 2020, I wrote to the Prime Minister requesting a British Sign Language interpreter. We eventually got one for the BBC coverage, but, despite the hefty £2.6 million price tag for the flash new press suite at Downing Street, no one thought to make provision for a BSL interpreter, as the right hon. Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes) said. Similarly, at the start of the crisis, it took weeks for written Government communications to be available in accessible formats or large fonts. As evidence gathered by the Committee shows, many deaf people and people with learning disabilities were not properly informed about what was happening around them or about the latest public health advice as Britain was plunged into lockdown. Lessons should have been learned from those early failures, but I am afraid that recent failures to provide BSL interpretation for Government communications indicate that they were not.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Graham. I thank the right hon. Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes) and her Committee for producing such an important report and for securing this debate.
I welcome the Committee’s approach to looking at the effects of the covid-19 pandemic on people with protected characteristics under the Equality Act 2010. Although the pandemic has affected everyone, it is clear that those groups in society that already faced structural barriers and discrimination have been hardest hit. It is for this reason that last year I worked with an organisation in my local area to produce a report on the effect of the pandemic on people in Erith and Thamesmead with one or more protected characteristics.
In April last year, I met members and representatives from Inclusion London and the Greenwich Association of Disabled People to discuss the local and regional impacts of covid-19 on disabled people. In the time available to me, I will set out a few of our key findings relating to disabled people in my constituency, and steps that I believe the Government must now take.
A number of organisations and individuals have raised concerns about measures in the Coronavirus Act 2020 relating to the Care Act, the Mental Health Act and the Children and Families Act. I am pleased that the Government have now listened and ended the provisions related to the Care Act, but I know that there are still concerns about the risk to disabled young people due to the easements to the Children and Families Act.
Research by Inclusion London has found that only 32% of disabled children received all the SEND provision in their education and health care plan, with the rest either receiving some or none of their usual provision. As we move into the recovery stage of this crisis, I urge the Government to look at this again, and to ensure that disabled people and young children are able to access the support that they need for their education.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Graham. I thank the right hon. Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes) for leading this extremely important debate, and I thank the members of the Women and Equalities Committee, of which I am a member, and, most especially, the witnesses who gave evidence to help form this report.
Yesterday, as other hon. Members have already mentioned, I was pleased to see my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Vicky Foxcroft) highlight at Prime Minister’s questions how disabled people have been overlooked in something that could and should be easily fixed: the lack of a BSL interpreter during Government televised briefings. That is one of the report’s recommendations that I hope will be put in place very soon. We know that this lack of thought for disabled people during the televised briefings is symptomatic of the wider issues that we highlighted in the report.
Throughout the pandemic, disabled people have faced problems with unequal access to food and potentially discriminatory practices in health and social care services. On top of that, the existing systemic problems in education for children and young people with special educational needs have worsened. The pandemic has shone a light on the pre-existing inequalities in the UK and, if we are to build back fairer, we need the fullest possible understanding of why existing inequalities were highlighted and/or reinforced because of the pandemic, so that we do not leave people behind as we recover.
That is why it is so important that this report is listened to in full and why there must now be an independent inquiry into how Government policy and decisions led to disabled people being disproportionately affected by the pandemic. It is disappointing that the Government’s response to the report has not committed to this expert-led inquiry. I hope that the Minister can give a more detailed response and explain the reasons why there is no commitment from the Government on this.
I am grateful to the right hon. Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes) for securing this important debate, and to the Women and Equalities Committee for their report. I fully support the Committee’s call for an independent inquiry into the causes of adverse outcomes for disabled people.
From delayed and confusing guidance over shielding to difficulties accessing food, many disabled people have felt abandoned throughout the crisis. To this day, as we have already heard, we are waiting for the live British Sign Language interpretation of the Government’s press briefings on TV. One of my constituents in Bath was born with a rare and incurable breathing problem, and is in a high-risk group. Despite registering as extremely vulnerable on the Government’s website to receive food parcels in March last year, she did not receive her parcel until mid-June. Of the Government’s guidance about ending shielding, another constituent said:
“I don’t understand anything the Prime Minister said at all. It is so confusing. Why can’t they just say this in basic language?”
One of the most obvious failures we see again and again is that services are being designed for disabled people without actually consulting them. This pandemic has hit disabled people particularly hard, and in so many ways. In employment, disabled people have been disproportionately affected by furlough, reduced hours and redundancies. Despite this, the Chancellor’s plan for jobs made only one reference to disabled people, and contained nothing to address the specific challenges facing them. Recent figures released by the Department for Work and Pensions reveal that the number of disability employment advisors has fallen by 32% during the pandemic, at a time when knowledge of the barriers faced by disabled people will be even more necessary. Everyone should have the right to secure employment. I sincerely hope that promotion of inclusive workplace practices will be a top priority in the Government’s national strategy for disabled people. We need a targeted strategy to tackle barriers to work for disabled people as we emerge from the pandemic.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Graham. This pandemic has been one of poverty and inequality. Pre-existing health, housing, employment and income inequalities have combined to form a perfect storm for disabled people.
In my role on the Women and Equalities Committee, I have listened to so many heartbreaking and shocking stories of the barriers that disabled people have faced during the pandemic. Disabled people have overwhelmingly been abandoned without the basic support they need to survive or live in dignity—from the suspension of local authority’s legal responsibilities to provide basic social care, to the reduction of access to activities and day centres, to an increase in isolation and loneliness, and difficulties in accessing healthcare, education and even food.
Mencap’s “My Health, My Life” report into inaccessible healthcare during covid highlighted some truly shocking realities faced by people with a learning disability during the pandemic. Some people with a learning disability were told that they may not receive life-saving treatment. Some were encouraged to avoid hospital and were asked to consent to DNRs. Overstretched and under-resourced hospitals meant there was a reduction in learning disability nurses, and some acute learning disability nurses were redeployed to other units.
While we welcome the Government’s commitment in their written response to the report to more funding for local authorities, their reference to the recent hike in the social care council precept raised concerns that they intend to place the burden for social care on those least able to pay for it. Such an approach is both unfair and completely unable to meet the scale of the challenge. This Government are in denial of the social care crisis that we are facing.
Can the Minister explain how this Government can claim a levelling-up agenda while forcing the costs of the crisis in social care on to the worst-off through this regressive taxation? About 60% of people in the UK who have died from coronavirus are disabled. Will the Minister please explain in clear terms why the Government have not taken up our report’s recommendation for an independent inquiry into the disproportionate deaths and adverse outcomes for disabled people from the pandemic? Also, why did the Government reject the recommendation for a statutory code of practice on the public sector equality duty?
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Graham. I am grateful to the Women and Equalities Committee for all its work. It is also a pleasure to follow such a powerful speech advocating for the rights of disabled people. For too many disabled people, the pandemic has raised new challenges and barriers to accessing services as they go about their daily lives. We need to be clear that equality for disabled people should be central to what we do here every day, but the attitude of Westminster and the Tory Government towards disabled people is nothing short of a disgrace. Scotland has not voted for a right-wing Tory Government for decades, but the harmful policies that they inflict daily on disabled people come none the less.
The SNP’s manifesto includes a disability manifesto, and I am sure that anyone watching its launch this morning—there was a BSL interpreter and subtitles; perhaps the Prime Minister could take note of that— will have thought very deeply about that. It focuses on strengthening rights and opportunities, investing in the NHS, supporting disabled young people, a commissioner for autism, fairer social security, improving accessibility and employment representation. Those critical steps matter all the more now because of the disproportionate impact of covid on disabled people. The UK Government’s response to the Select Committee report landed in inboxes only last night. I am afraid that does not speak well of the Tory Government’s priorities or their views of this important issue.
All of us surely know, from our constituency work and from discussions with local and national organisations, about the impact of covid on disabled people and on existing inequalities. Along with my hon. Friend the Member for Motherwell and Wishaw (Marion Fellows), I have had extremely useful meetings with organisations such as Epilepsy Action, looking specifically at how we can support people through this period. More locally, I have had great cause to value the excellent work of East Renfrewshire Disability Action, Cosgrove Care and Include Me 2 Club, among so many other excellent third sector and voluntary groups making a huge impact on the ground. That work has been vital, along with the work of NHS and care professionals, because of the stark fact that disabled people were more likely than non-disabled people to have died of covid-19.
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We welcomed the Government’s decision last year to repeal the unused Mental Health Act 1983 provisions. We very much welcome the recent decision to remove the Care Act 2014 easement provisions, and we look forward to this happening as swiftly as possible. Perhaps my hon. Friend the Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work will chase that up with the Minister for Care at the Department for Health and Social Care. Although the easements were not widely used, their availability in statute exacerbated a perception, which has existed among disabled people right from the outset of this crisis, that their rights are somehow seen as less important than other people’s.
The outstanding issue from our interim report is that one of the temporary provisions affecting young disabled people remains in place. The power to modify education, health and care plan duties was used by way of national notices issued by the Secretary of State for Education in May, June and July. The power remains available in the Coronavirus Act. My view is that this power must be removed.
We are in a very different place in the pandemic. As the Minister for Children and Families acknowledged in a recent letter to me, there is much less need for the additional flexibilities, yet the power is being retained, for the time being, as a contingency. The Government have said they will act to remove temporary provisions as soon as they are no longer necessary. They have done so in relation to the mental health and social care provisions. It is an important matter of principle: the Government must not hold on to emergency powers a moment longer than they absolutely need to. Removing the power to modify duties in relation to children’s and young people’s education, health and care needs would send a clear message to children and their families that the Government fully support their right to receive the provision they need. I see no reasonable justification for keeping the Secretary of State’s power to modify duties in statute any longer.
Over the last year, my Committee’s work has emphasised the unequal impacts of the pandemic on three groups of people with protected characteristics under the Equality Act 2010; women, groups of black and minority ethnic people, and disabled people—the subject of the debate today, who have received, sadly, relatively little attention. Yet the adverse effects on disabled people have been starkly disproportionate, including tragically high death rates. The chance of dying from covid was more than three times greater for someone with a disability than for someone who was not disabled. The chance of dying for a person with a learning disability was probably more than six times greater than that of the general population. A young person aged between 18 and 34 with a learning disability was some 30 times more likely to die than a young non-disabled person.
Our inquiry heard evidence about decisions and policies that might have contributed to those tragic statistics, such as a relative slowness to protect people in a range of social care settings, and a lack of clear and accessible information for disabled people. That is why we called for a discrete independent inquiry into the causes, including the decisions made by Government. The response, “Now is not the time,” will inevitably start to wear thin. The Government should commit to an independent inquiry, including into what led to disabled people feeling the brunt of the pandemic, and they should set out a timetable not just for its start but for its completion. They should do so now.
A major theme in our full report was the Government’s consultation and communications with disabled people during the pandemic. We heard that disabled people felt excluded and ignored. Witnesses pointed out that effective consultation with disabled people could have made it possible to avoid some of the problems that they faced early in the pandemic, such as a lack of accessible food shopping. Disability charities told us that the Government were talking to them, but in broadcast mode—not listening and not resolving problems effectively. When the Government did communicate with disabled people, their communications were not always psychologically informed, and too often they exacerbated disabled people’s already heightened anxieties. There was confusing guidance on shielding, and it was sometimes poorly thought through and poorly timed—for example, a text message sent at the weekend before important changes to guidance were issued on the Monday.
I want to see evidence that the Government have learned from what happened. Right from the outset, from the Prime Minister’s letter to the nation in March explaining the need to stay at home, communications have not been fully accessible. There were no accessible versions of that letter for several days. I know that a great deal of work is going on in the Cabinet Office to provide the shopping list of accessible communications asks put forward by disability charities last year; but the Government could and should go further and faster. I find it utterly incomprehensible, for example, that the Government have still not arranged in-person British Sign Language interpretation of their televised covid briefings. I raised that issue with the Prime Minister at the Liaison Committee in January, and the hon. Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Vicky Foxcroft) raised it again very effectively at Prime Minister’s Question Time yesterday. On neither occasion was a proper response forthcoming. The reasons relied on in written responses—that there is not enough space in Downing Street, or that there is not enough time to make arrangements—are weak. Surely the Government could have found space during the recent media suite refit. I am unsurprised that campaigners have resorted to judicial review, but I am surprised that the Government have not sought to resolve the issues swiftly and simply by finding both the space and the inclination to include a BSL interpreter.
Practices in health and social care added to disabled people’s perceptions that their lives were less valued than others. The guidelines issued by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence on the use of the clinical frailty scale in making decisions about who should receive critical care if NHS resources had been overwhelmed were potentially discriminatory against disabled people. We heard from disabled people that, while they accepted that the guidelines were swiftly amended, it left a very bad taste.
Extremely concerning issues about the inappropriate use of “do not attempt resuscitation” notices, or DNARs, have been much more prolonged. The Government asked the Care Quality Commission to investigate in October last year, and last month the CQC found that that hundreds of inappropriate DNARs had been applied. These issues demonstrate a deeply worrying lack of concern for the rights of some groups of disabled people.
We all understand the pressures that people were under early in the pandemic, but more than 10 years on from the Equality Act 2010, it is shocking that disabled people’s rights were not properly considered in the formulation of policies and practices in health and social care. That is why we recommended a robust response to prevent such mistakes being repeated. We called on the Government to allow the Equality and Human Rights Commission to issue a statutory code of practice on the public sector equality duty, to provide greater legal certainty about the actions that public authorities must take to prevent discrimination. Greater certainty would provide more effective protection, so the Government’s dismissal of our recommendation is extremely disappointing. Their argument that the status quo is sufficient flies in the face of recent experience. If there is not a statutory code of practice, how will the Government prevent these issues from arising in future public health crises? Again, we have to learn from experience.
The pandemic has very clearly emphasised and exacerbated known systemic problems affecting disabled people. We know that the SEND system is facing a crisis. The aims of the Children and Families Act reforms have never been consistently achieved. Services for children with SEND are too often inadequate. In too many places, the integrated education, health and care services envisaged in the 2014 Act have never materialised.
I speak as a member of the Bill Committee that way back in 2012 or 2013 scrutinised the Bill that became that Act. We spoke endlessly in our debates about parents having to fight to get their children the services they need. However, parents are still struggling in an overly bureaucratic system and the evidence that they gave us through our inquiry was that they are still using the word “fight” when describing their attempt to get their children’s needs assessed and provided for. The Government acknowledged that in announcing their SEND review, but that was in September 2019, more than 18 months ago. The experience of children with SEND and their families during the pandemic must provide the impetus to sort these problems out. We called for the review outcome to be published in the first quarter of this year, but we are still waiting. The Government’s response to our report acknowledges the importance of these issues. The Government say they need more time to get the reforms right. Of course time is needed to grapple with the complex issues in the SEND system, but if much more time elapses people will start to question whether SEND is the priority that it ought to be.
The same is true of the review of adult social care. There is no doubt that the devastating experience of the pandemic in social care settings was exacerbated by systemic issues of funding, of workforce—including pay and staff turnover—and a lack of proper integration with NHS services. That is why we were disappointed in the spending review settlement for social care and disappointed that there was nothing on social care in the Budget. We only know that the Government intend to bring forward their proposals for social care later this year. That needs to happen sooner rather than later.
There are positives in the Government’s response and I do not denigrate the hard work that is undeniably going on in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in relation to disabled people’s access to food and in the Cabinet Office on accessible communications; and the work that the Disability Unit is putting into the national strategy for disabled people. The Government have opportunities in the national strategy, the social care review and their SEND review to understand the particular problems faced by disabled people, their carers and their families in the pandemic, to understand the part they have played in those problems, and to start putting things right and restoring trust. I urge my hon. Friend the Minister in his response to make it clear that the Government will grasp those opportunities and do so in a timely fashion.
Face masks are another issue for deaf people and the hard of hearing. They are of course essential to protecting us against coronavirus, but they can be profoundly isolating for those who rely on lip-reading and facial expressions to communicate. In Parliament last year I raised several times the importance of rolling out clear face masks—those with a transparent strip over the mouth. Like the Committee, I was pleased to see procurement of clear face masks for NHS trusts towards the end of last year, and I echo the Committee’s call for a proper evaluation of the roll-out and an assessment of need across services. However, I remain concerned that the Department for Education’s guidance continues to state that there is
“currently very limited evidence regarding the effectiveness or safety of transparent face coverings”
given that they have been rolled out in health and care settings. I urge Ministers to take another look at that guidance to avoid teachers being unnecessarily put off using clear face masks and impeding the education of children with hearing loss.
I want to focus briefly on “do not attempt resuscitation” notices being issued without consent, which in the last year has, perhaps more than anything else, sowed mistrust among the disabled community and made many feel their lives were valued less than others’. During the first wave of coronavirus, some people with learning disabilities were told, shockingly, without prior consultation, that they would not be resuscitated if they were to fall ill from covid-19. The Care Quality Commission found that, since March 2020, more than 500 DNAR decisions were made without being agreed with the individual or their family beforehand and, in some cases, such decisions caused potentially avoidable deaths.
Given the outcry when that first happened, I was appalled to hear reports from Mencap that the same practice was happening again at the start of this year. As one constituent, who has been a care home operator and seen this issue affect elderly people in hospitals, wrote to me,
“imagine the horror and terrible stress now imposed on parents or relatives to think that their child or adult will not be given the absolute best care and may be abandoned by the NHS in their hour of most need”.
The truth is it that this is unimaginable, and it is something that we have fought to address.
I urge Ministers to heed the advice of the CQC by making urgent and wide-ranging improvements to care planning, including better training and information storage, and creating better oversight structures. What struck me most when reading this report is that there seems to be no one at the highest levels of Government actively thinking about the impact of policies and communications on disabled people. This failure to consider the needs of disabled people has to change, and I hope that this report and this debate can be part of that push to ensure that disabled people are properly represented and accounted for in policy making and Government decision taking, especially at moments of crisis.
Erith and Thamesmead constituents have raised a number of concerns about access to food for disabled people during the pandemic. For example, disabled people who usually rely on supermarket deliveries, but who are not considered clinically extremely vulnerable, struggle to access delivery slots. Food parcels provided by the Government did not take into consideration accessibility needs, such as mobility and available cooking appliances. There were also limited supermarket delivery slots, which meant people were unable to shop at cheaper supermarkets, so grocery outgoings increased for some people. That is something the Royal National Institute of Blind People has also reported.
I welcome the guidance from the Equality and Human Rights Commission to ensure that food retailers make reasonable adjustments for disabled people throughout the pandemic. However, the Government must do more to ensure that disabled people are properly supported in any future pandemic or emergency.
Many constituents have raised concerns about mobility and travel accessibility during the pandemic. Issues included: being unable to access support on public transport due to social distancing; problems visiting certain locations, such as supermarkets, with carers due to one-person shopping rules; and difficulty in hiring personal assistants during the pandemic.
Finally, looking towards the future, disabled people have been disproportionately impacted by the effects of the pandemic on employment. According to Inclusion London, over 37% of disabled people have experienced financial difficulties or employment issues due to covid-19, including problems with the Access to Work scheme, discrimination in the workplace and failure by employers to make reasonable adjustments. I fully support the Committee’s call for an independent inquiry into the profoundly adverse effects that the pandemic has had on disabled people, including the stark disparity of the death rate. We should look into the decisions and policies of the Government and public authorities.
As we begin to recover from the coronavirus, we need to see increased funding for health and care services that are tailored towards disabled people. I strongly believe that legacy benefits should have been uplifted in line with universal credit and that neither should be cut later this year. I want the Government to fund user-led organisations to a level that recognises their essential role in ensuring that all public and private services are accessible to disabled people. A national strategy for disabled people is needed now more than ever, and must contain a long-term plan for employment and accessibility at work. As we begin our social and economic recovery, the Government must ensure that disabled people are never again left behind. Sadly, they have been too often over the last year.
On the report’s wider recommendations, it is pleasing that several were accepted by the Government, but four were rejected and 10 were accepted in part or in principle. For me, one of the most concerning is the lack of commitment to include access to food in future emergency situations within the forthcoming national strategy for disabled people. I hope that the Minister can clear up whether the Government agree with the report’s recommendation that access to food must be included in the national strategy, and explain how they plan to consult with disabled people on the struggles that many have faced in accessing food during the pandemic.
On health and social care, the report recommends a code of practice that lays out what the NHS and local authorities must do, unlike the current situation, where they are told only what they should do. Can the Minister explain the Government’s reasoning for rejecting this proposal, and why they believe that a code of practice would not make life better for disabled people and staff in the NHS and local authorities? The report highlights how the pandemic has exacerbated the pre-existing crisis in provision for children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities. Can the Minister update us on any progress the Government have made on their SEND review, which was supposed to be published in the spring?
The report widely acknowledges the problems created by a lack of ring-fenced funding for children with SEND in mainstream schools, and evidence that these pupils consistently make less progress than other pupils with the same starting points. It is disappointing that the Government rejected the recommendation that funding be increased to allow for pupils with SEND in mainstream schools to receive £240 per child, ring-fenced for their catch-up support in this academic year. I hope that the Minister can give further explanation as to why the Government have not committed to ring-fencing funding for pupils with SEND in mainstream schools.
In conclusion, although it is welcome that a number of the report’s findings and recommendations have been accepted or will be looked at further, it is still worrying that a number have been rejected. It is also worrying that there is a lack of commitment to an independent inquiry. It is vital that the Government learn from their mistakes in regard to disabled people’s experiences of the pandemic, and it is essential that effective mechanisms are put in place by which disabled people can influence policies and practices that affect them, and ensure that hard-won equality rights are not eroded but built upon.
Covid has also exposed how isolated some disabled people can be. Many of those with mental health difficulties in Bath have already been struggling without face-to-face care. The value of our social care sector and its workforce has never been clearer, and I pay tribute in particular to the 7.3 million unpaid carers in the UK, without whom the pressures on adult social care services would be even greater. Many are facing extreme financial hardship. The Liberal Democrats are calling for carer’s allowance to be raised by £1,000 a year—the same as the uplift in universal credit. The underfunding of social care was a problem long before covid. Now its effects will be felt even more severely. I support the Select Committee’s recommendations, which highlight that the £300 million in additional grant funding for local authority social care budgets falls far short of what is needed.
We are now 25 years on from the Disability Discrimination Act 1995. Unless we truly recognise the value of the social care sector, we risk going backwards on the progress we have made towards equality for disabled people.
We are having this debate in the most tragic of circumstances. What will it take for this Government to act? Disabled people’s lives must be valued equally. This Government have a responsibility to take action against the disadvantage and discrimination that put the mental and physical health of disabled people at risk. To do that, the Government must commit to full and transparent engagement with disabled people and groups about their concerns during the pandemic when forming a proposed national strategy for disabled people, upholding the principle of “nothing about us without us”.
Everyone has the fundamental right to live in safety and in dignity, with full access to health, social care and education. The report and the evidence we have heard has shown that we have failed disabled people by not upholding these basic rights during the pandemic. The report must be a turning point. The Government must investigate their failures, involve disabled people in developing a national strategy to uphold, protect and strength the rights of disabled people, and commit to significant and progressive funding to tackle our crisis in social care and ensure that disabled people can live in safety and in dignity.
We know that nearly half of all people in poverty in the UK are disabled or live with someone who is disabled, and we can easily predict a very challenging period ahead because of decisions this Government are taking, which we know will disproportionately impact on people with disabilities. We know that 82% of disabled claimants have had to spend more money than normal during the pandemic as a result of increased costs. Two thirds of those disabled claimants have had to go without essential items at some point during the pandemic, and almost half say that they have been unable to meet financial commitments such as rent and household bills. Those are the most fundamental things, so we should not be surprised to learn from research by Scope that disabled people were increasingly worried about extra utilities costs because of the pandemic.
In that context, there is no exaggeration when I say that Westminster’s policies are damaging lives, and the Government’s response to the report does not give me great confidence that that will change. I am hugely concerned at the prospect of people who receive universal credit facing benefit cuts later this year, when unemployment is likely to hit its peak, and that is before we get on to the lack of support for people on legacy benefits, including many disabled people. The SNP has been very clear that failing to extend an equivalent uplift to legacy benefits is discriminatory to the core and disproportionately impacts on disabled claimants.
The Social Market Foundation and Scope have found that, despite decades of reforms and political promises from successive Westminster Governments, more than four in 10 of all people in homes relying on disability benefits live in poverty. There can be no more compelling evidence that the UK Government must commit to making permanent the £20 uplift to universal credit and to extending it to other legacy benefits. The system is simply not fit for purpose, and that includes the work capability assessments. The SNP welcomed the suspension of face-to-face assessments, but some have started again and the anxiety and practical issues that that has caused cannot be underestimated.
To conclude, I would like to focus briefly on the issue of work. For so many disabled people, the disability employment gap and the challenges of work are so important and will become so much more pressing as we move out of the pandemic period. This is a time for the UK Government to step up and look at what is happening in Scotland and to show the leadership that will allow flexible, sustainable and continued work for many disabled people.