Meeting of the Parliament 05 December 2023
I am grateful to the Government for bringing its motion to the chamber for debate. When I think back to my time as convener of the for Scotland’s disabled children coalition, I can see that we have travelled a great distance. I recognise the good will in the minister’s remarks and the Government’s intent, but our legislation is only as good as its implementation, and that is often where legislation falls down. I will come on to that later.
As I said in my intervention on the minister, this is a timely debate, not least as it comes during the week in which we will debate a legislative reconsideration of our attempts to incorporate into Scots law the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. The disabled people who watch our proceedings this afternoon will watch us take steps to incorporate the UNCRC into law with a hunger and a desire for us to follow that with the incorporation of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. I am therefore gratified by the minister’s restated commitment to that end and her timeline for it.
Disabled people matter. Their rights matter. It therefore matters a great deal that we do all that we can to include them in our society in every possible way; to take steps in this place so that people with disabilities prosper and achieve their potential; and not by act of either omission or commission to make their lives harder than they already are.
Sadly, in many ways, we miss the mark. The Scottish Government’s equality evidence finder reported that, in 2018, the employment rate for disabled people was 45 per cent, compared with 81 per cent for those without a disability. That represents a huge disparity in employment.
It comes then as no surprise that rates of poverty are far higher in households in which somebody lives with a disability, compared with those in which no one is disabled. In fact, half of those in poverty live in a household that has at least one disabled family member.
We must bear in mind that people with disabilities sometimes have additional strains on their budget. For example, due to reliance on assistive technologies, they might have higher fuel bills, higher electricity costs and other essential expenses. Often the poverty that people face, due to their having a disability, can mean that they are not able to meet their most basic needs. That is just not humane.