Meeting of the Parliament 28 March 2019
I thank the Government for making time for today’s debate and I thank the minister for the tone that she set at the top of the debate. The motion commands the support of the Liberal Democrats—as it should command the support of every party in the Parliament. We have to strip the party politics out of the issue because we have all been collectively failing in the shared endeavour to improve the lives of people with disabilities. We have made progress, but there is still a lot more to do.
The reality is that there has always been a disconnect between the good will found in the words spoken in the Parliament—and in councils around the country—and the lived experiences of people with disabilities in Scotland.
In 2009, I worked as a policy officer and I had to digest all 32 single outcome agreements—the local authorities’ road maps for delivering on the national outcomes framework. One metropolitan authority said that it would endeavour to get 200 young people with a disability into employment by the end of that year. Reporting on that effort 12 months later, it noted that it had succeeded in getting only 11 such people into work—that is the extent of the gulf between rhetoric and reality.
There are many reasons for that gap. We have heard a lot about the fact that the built environment can still be inaccessible, particularly in our older cities, such as Edinburgh, where there are inaccessible toilets in accessible buildings. There is also the absence of a falls strategy, which is an issue that I have mentioned in Parliament before. All of that compounds the loneliness and isolation that people feel when their social universe is decreased by the physical realities of the spaces that they simply cannot occupy.
It is fair to say that underrepresentation of people with disabilities in our society is rife. Only 7 per cent of people with any kind of learning difficulty will be in any kind of employment. There is a massive gulf between MSPs and the society that we seek to serve. We do not reflect the rich panoply of mixed abilities in our society. Similarly, public boards fail to reflect that mix. The Scottish Parliament moved mountains with its Gender Representation on Public Boards (Scotland) Act 2018. That was great, but there is still a job of work to be done to see people with disabilities and other equalities groups more effectively represented on the public boards that we appoint.
The UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities said:
“In Scotland, disabled people continued to be omitted from the key policy areas concerning them, and a range of policies, while positive in intent, were not adequately supported to deliver disabled people’s rights in practice.”
That is not an assault on our Government; it is an assault on us all. It is a challenge that we should all heed. In part, it is due to the fact that since the first days of organised social policy, Governments have had a slightly paternalistic approach to disability legislation and policy. That comes from a well-meaning place, but we got it wrong: we were trying to overly protect people, rather than to empower them and, because they have no place at the table, their voice has been missing from the debate. That is a charge that can be laid at the feet of all the Administrations that have served in the Scottish Government.
Being heard matters—I would have said a lot about that if my amendment had been selected today. The reality of public policy in some areas still denies both self-determination and agency. To make one’s own decisions and to be heard in one’s own voice has to be part of the fabric of our human rights approach to public policy. However, we are getting that right.
The general comment on article 12 of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities reinforces the assumption that all people with disabilities have full legal capacity and that the perceived or actual deficit in mental capacity should not be used as a justification for denying or restricting legal capacity. That is really important. One of the things that the committee points to—and I raised the issue with the Minister for Mental Health following the announcement of the review of the Mental Health (Care and Treatment) (Scotland) Act 2003—is the fact that we are still overusing curators when those who sit in judgment on mental health tribunals do not believe that it is possible to get the views of the person who is the subject of the tribunal. We are also overmedicating in psychiatric wards to the point of incapacity, meaning that people cannot use their own voice to be heard, and we still have an insufficient use of independent advocacy.
Again, I do not ascribe party-political blame on the issue; it is a reality, and we have an imperative as a chamber to work together to solve the problem. The review of the 2003 act and the Adults with Incapacity (Scotland) Act 2000 is an opportunity for us to work together to answer the challenges that the UN has laid down for us.
Last week, I held a great reception, which some members were at, for an organisation in Edinburgh called get2gether. Get2gether is about adult self-determination. It is about recognising and busting myths. Adults with disabilities are adults—with disabilities. They have the same interests, desires and needs as other adults. Get2gether seeks to provide for that, whether that is by scotching myths about sexuality among people with learning difficulties or adults with other kinds of disability or by recognising that adults with disabilities want the independence to stay out late, come home drunk or find their own way home drunk. It fosters an environment that supports the kind of social interaction in relation to which many people in political circles have often written off disabled people.
I was very proud to host the reception. Get2gether taught me some things and dispelled some myths and preconceptions that I had held. It showed me what an important ignition self-determination can be in transforming lives—perhaps vulnerable lives and lives that have faced challenges—by giving them that spark of determination and self-sufficiency. We must do more to support it and organisations like it.
We must give people in this country with disabilities a seat at our table, or they will have every right to continue to rage at us from the street.