The National Disability Strategy: Content, reaction and progress
What is the National Disability Strategy (NDS), how was it received, what were the legal issues and what progress has been made?
The National Disability Strategy, published in July 2021, by the Conservative Johnson government, is a cross-government strategy to improve the lives of disabled people.
In January 2022, the High Court ruled the strategy unlawful, based on a case brought by four disabled people in relation to the consultation process. The government paused some parts of the strategy while it appealed the ruling. In July 2023, the Court of Appeal ruled that the High Court was wrong to find the strategy was unlawful.
What’s in the National Disability Strategy?The National Disability Strategy was informed by the UK Government’s Disability Survey, which ran from January 2021 to April 2021, and engagement with disability stakeholders, disabled people, academics, charities and think tanks.
The strategy is UK-wide but individual policies vary across the nations.
The strategy is split into three parts and aims to address difficulties disabled people face daily, including:
- living in a home not adapted to their needs
- accessing the transport network to get out and about
- navigating inaccessible and inflexible workplaces or education settings
- facing limited choice and additional expense when shopping for goods and services
- navigating unresponsive and fragmented public services that don’t meet their needs
- feeling excluded from leisure opportunities and socialising
- finding themselves barred from exercising rights, such as voting and serving on a jury
The first part of the strategy (Part 1: practical steps now to improve disabled people's everyday lives) set out immediate actions the government would take.
The second part of the strategy (Part 2: disabled people's everyday experience at the heart of government policy making and service delivery) covered longer-term structural changes to the way government works with, and for, disabled people.
The third part of the strategy (Part 3: a cross-government effort to transform disabled people's everyday lives) set out each government department’s commitments.
Many of the commitments relied on other government work, including:
- Shaping future support: the health and disability green paper (March 2023), led by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). This set out proposals to make the disability benefits system easier to access and navigate.
- The government’s response to the Health is everyone’s business consultation (July 2021), led by the DWP and the Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC).
- The SEND review: right support, right place, right time (March 2022), led by the Department for Education (DfE) and the DHSC.
- The National strategy for autistic children, young people and adults: 2021 to 2026 (July 2022), led by the DHSC and the DfE.
The response was mixed. The concept of having a cross-departmental government strategy was generally welcomed. The last strategy, Fulfilling Potential: improving the lives of disabled people, had not been updated since November 2015.
There were positive comments on the description of inequalities experienced by disabled people and on some of the government’s plans. The disability equality charity Scope said that there were “promising” areas “such as the commitment to get companies reporting on disability figures in the workplace, the creation of an accessible technology centre, action to improve public transport, and a taskforce to look at the extra costs that disabled people face.”
More critical commentary said that the strategy’s content was not new. The Disability News Service said “Many of the ‘practical actions’ have already been announced, amount to nothing more than updated guidance, or are subject to further consultation, discussion or review”.
Criticism also focused on a lack of detail about commitments, targets and funding. Disability Rights UK CEO, Kamran Mallick, said the strategy was “disappointingly thin” in relation to immediate action, medium-term plans and longer-term investment. He called for radical plans:
The Strategy has insufficient concrete measures to address the current inequalities that Disabled people experience in living standards and life chances.
There are scant plans and timescales on how to bring about vastly needed improvements to benefits, housing, social care, jobs, education, transport, and equitable access to wider society.
While we welcome the Government’s recognition that Disabled people are much less likely than non-Disabled people to have a job, qualifications, to own a home, or to live in an accessible home, we haven’t been given the bold plans that will fix these huge issues.
A vision is not enough. Admitting change won’t happen ‘overnight’ isn’t enough. We need radical plans, timescales, and deep financial investment to make change a reality.
The strategy in courtAfter its publication, four disabled people took the DWP to court for failing to conduct a proper consultation process on the strategy. They argued that the UK Disability Survey of spring 2021 did not meet the standards required for a government consultation, as it did not give respondents an opportunity to shape the strategy. Respondents were asked only to respond to specific questions.
On 25 January 2022, the High Court’s judgment in R(Binder & Others) v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions declared the strategy to be unlawful due to failures in the consultation process.
The following week, the DWP was refused an opportunity to appeal against the High Court’s ruling and the High Court confirmed the whole strategy was unlawful, not just the consultation.
On 13 June 2022, then Minister for Disabled People, Chloe Smith, updated Parliament. She said that the government had applied for permission to appeal to the Court of Appeal and that in the meantime some of the policies in the strategy were being paused. The list of policies paused were set out in a letter from the Minister for Disabled People to Virginia Crosbie MP.
In response to a parliamentary question, PQ95763 in November 2022, the then Minister for Disabled People, Tom Pursglove, said that “the Secretary of State has been granted permission to appeal the Court's declaration.”
On 28 and 29 June 2023, the Court of Appeal heard the government’s appeal against the High Court’s judgment that the National Disability Strategy was unlawful. The Appeal Court’s judgment was handed down on 11 July 2023. Lady Justice Laing said that the previous judgment on the National Disability Strategy was wrong:
I have decided that the Judge was wrong to decide that the Survey was subject to the requirements first described in Gunning (‘the Gunning requirements’). He was therefore also wrong to hold that the Secretary of State acted unlawfully by not complying with those requirements, and wrong to quash the Strategy.
The strategy’s progressIt was originally planned that progress on the strategy would be reviewed each year. However, this did not happen in 2022 because some policies were paused following the High Court judgment.
In May 2023, the then Minister for Disabled People, Tom Pursglove, said the government would be providing details of its “achievements to improve disabled people’s lives”:
we will be providing details of the Government’s recent achievements to improve disabled people’s lives in the forthcoming Disability Action Plan consultation due for publication in the summer.
Ahead of this, I will write providing a list of these achievements and will place a copy in the House Library.
On 18 September 2023, the then Minister for Disabled People, Tom Pursglove, provided a further update on the National Disability Strategy. The minister then deposited a paper in the House of Commons Library to provide an update on “how the Government now proposes to take… [forward] the 14 commitments that were paused to comply with the High Court’s declaration” (PDF) and details, by department, which commitments have been completed or are still in progress, in total:
There are 47 commitments which have been ‘completed’, 54 commitments ‘in progress’, 1 which is currently ‘paused’ and 2 which are no longer being taken forward.
Disability Action Plan 2023 to 2024On 18 July 2023, the government launched a consultation on the Disability Action Plan 2023 to 2024 .The then Minister for Disabled People, Tom Pursglove, introduced the plan in a written statement and explained that it would set out the immediate and long-term actions that the government would take to improve the lives of disabled people:
The disability action plan will set out the immediate action the UK Government will take in 2023 and 2024 to improve disabled people’s lives and lay the foundations for longer-term change.
The consultation document set out the government’s achievements in the previous year, ongoing commitments by department, proposals for new actions led by the Disability Unit and consultation questions on these actions.
The consultation ran until 6 October 2023. The Disability Action Plan was published in February 2024 by the Sunak Conservative government, it discusses the main themes in the feedback from the consultation. Thirty-two actions in the following areas were committed to for 2024:
- Support disabled people who want to be elected to public office
- Include disabled people’s needs in emergency and resilience planning
- Include disabled people’s needs in climate-related policies
- Improve information and outcomes for families in which someone is disabled
- Make playgrounds more accessible
- Help businesses to understand the needs and deliver improvements for disabled people
- Explore if the UK could host the Special Olympics World Summer Games
- Support people with guide and assistance dogs
- Help the government measure how effective its policies and services are for disabled people
- Research issues facing disabled people in the future
- Make government publications and communications more accessible
- Improve understanding of the cost of living for disabled people
- Promote better understanding of the UNCRPD across government
- Monitor and report progress of the Disability Action Plan
In response to a parliamentary question, in December 2024, the Minister of State for the Department of Work and Pensions, Stephen Timms, said that the government would provide further updates on its plans for disability policy “in due course”:
The Disability Action Plan and the National Disability Strategy were both initiatives of the previous administration. The National Disability Strategy was delayed as it was originally declared unlawful, due to a challenge as to whether an information gathering exercise constituted a consultation. The Court of Appeal later overturned the original High Court declaration. This Government is committed to championing the rights of disabled people. We will build on the insights shared by disabled people and their representative organisations, working closely with them so that their views and voices are at the heart of everything we do.
We will provide further updates on the Government’s priorities for disability policy in due course.
Further information- Disability strategies in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland
- National Disability Strategy Inquiry, Women and Equalities Committee
- The Common’s Library has a disability page where all the publications relating to disability are available.