The government should be “held to account” over its failure to meet its
independent living obligations under the UN disability convention, according to
a leading disabled peer.
Baroness [Jane] Campbell said that disabled people would be “stuffed” if the
government went ahead with plans to close the Independent Living Fund (ILF) in
2015 and pass the non-ring-fenced money to local authorities instead.
She spoke out as the government continued to debate its next move, in the
wake of three court of appeal judges upholding an appeal challenging the
decision to close the fund.
A Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) spokesman said in a statement: “The
court of appeal judgment is being considered carefully and any plans will be
announced in due course.”
But Baroness Campbell, a leading campaigner on independent living, although
not an ILF-user, said she particularly welcomed the
decision by Lord Justice Elias, one of the three judges, to refer to the
UK’s “specific obligations” under article 19 of the UN Convention on the Rights
of Persons with Disabilities.
Lord Justice Elias stated that article 19 meant the UK government should
“take effective and appropriate measures” to “facilitate” the right for disabled
people to live in the community, a duty “which would require where appropriate
the promotion of independent living”.
He added: “There was no evidence that any of these considerations were in the
mind of the minister.”
Baroness Campbell secured a similar recommendation when she sat on the joint
committee on human rights (JCHR), for its investigation into the implementation
of article 19.
She said: “That was one of my recommendations when I did the
JCHR inquiry into article 19. [The closure of ILF] came up then as a major
threat and that the government should do something to maintain that
independence.”
The JCHR inquiry, which reported last year, concluded that it was “extremely
concerned that the closure of the Independent Living Fund to new applicants,
with no ring-fenced alternative source of funding, may severely limit the
ability of disabled people to participate in society”.
Baroness Campbell said the government could not ignore the UN convention.
She added: “We should see it as a success that this challenge has been made
because we now have the opportunity to hold the government to account over its
breach of the UN convention, so let’s use it and hold them to account and say,
‘What are you going to do?’”
Meanwhile, Jenny Morris, the writer and campaigner, and retired academic, published
a blog this week which also pointed to the UN convention, which she said had
“the right to independent living at its heart”.
Morris, who advised the last Labour government on its influential independent
living strategy, Improving the Life Chances of Disabled People, wrote in her
blog: “Far from abolishing the ILF we need a system which builds on the way it
has enabled thousands to lead ‘ordinary lives’.
“We need a system which funds the additional costs that disabled people have
– of all ages, and across the whole range of impairments and long-term health
conditions.”
She said the system needed to be free of any postcode lottery and
means-testing.
She also said that the five disabled ILF-users who fought the court case had
“shown us that we need something worth fighting for – and the current tinkering
with the social care system is not it”.
The new minister for disabled people, Mike Penning, has yet to respond to
calls for a face-to-face meeting with ILF-users.
The DWP spokesman said: “Requests for meetings with the minister are handled
through the ministerial office in the usual way.“
There was also reaction to last week’s calls for Ester McVey, the
Conservative minister for disabled people at the time the decision was made to
close the fund, to resign from her current post as employment minister.
Mark Wilson wrote
on the Promove website that he understood that it was hard as a disabled
person not to read the criticism of McVey’s actions in the judgment and “see
resignation as the way to make amends”.
But he said he believed that it was the “culture and style” of
decision-making in government that needed to change, or else
“ill-thought-through decision-making at the highest levels will continue to
weaken our society and reduce still further the trust we have, or don’t have, in
our politicians”.
DNS
