Meeting of the Parliament 20 November 2024
I thank the minister for advance sight of her statement and for agreeing to our request to give the statement. However, I am really disappointed with where we are and what has been said today.
I introduced my bill in 2022 because I believed—and I still do—that disabled children and young people need extra support at transition to give them a fighting chance in future. However, my bill was rejected and this Government promised to introduce a national transitions to adulthood strategy. The minister at the time, Clare Haughey, said on behalf of the Government that
“we are not resting on our laurels.”—[Official Report, Education, Children and Young People Committee, 22 February 2023; c 51.]
That the strategy is now delayed, a year since my bill was rejected—and, indeed, eight years since the Government promised a strategy in its 2016 manifesto—makes it hard to see how the Government is not resting on its laurels when it comes that commitment. Also, to use as a reason for that delay engagement with a group of people who have been consistently engaged and who have been telling the Government about this issue is really unfortunate.
In 2023, 2,202 young disabled people finished school. They could have had support, had the Government published the promised strategy. The fact that this Government is delaying the strategy again is a betrayal, and the Government needs to answer to the thousands of disabled children who have missed out. After all, what is the point in a Government if it takes more than eight years to commit to something that it said that it would do in its manifesto? Does the minister agree with Martin Luther King that a right delayed is a right denied?