Meeting of the Parliament 08 December 2016
I welcome the fact that this debate is being signed, which is something that I hope we can do much more often in Parliament, and indeed in public life in Scotland more generally.
There is much that I agree with in the minister’s speech; in fact, I agree with nearly all of it, although there were one or two unnecessary sentences. I particularly and strongly agree with what she said about skills, work and transport.
I start on that theme of where we agree. We welcome the Scottish Government’s fairer Scotland action plan for disabled people and we agree, by and large, with the Scottish Government’s stated ambitions for it. Like the Scottish Government, we want support services that promote independent living, meet needs and enable a life of choices, opportunities and participation. Like the Scottish Government, we want decent incomes and fairer working lives for disabled people, as we do for able-bodied people. Like the Scottish Government, we want fully accessible workplaces, homes and transport. Like the Scottish Government, we want society to do everything that it can to ensure that people with disabilities have full and active participation in all aspects of public, and indeed commercial, life.
We Conservatives are proud of our long record of supporting and promoting people with disability. The minister mentioned the Disability Discrimination Act 1995, which was passed under a Conservative Government. William Hague described the passage of that legislation as his greatest political achievement—and who are we to disagree? As our amendment states, the act has long been regarded internationally as a model of effective anti-discrimination legislation. With its requirements for “reasonable adjustments” to be made by employers and service providers, it went considerably further than non-discrimination legislation passed under Labour Governments in the 1960s and 1970s—invaluable and essential though that was in its day.