Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill

My Lords, it is with great pleasure that I address your Lordships’ House for the first time. My breathing does not permit me to give long speeches, so noble Lords will be pleased to know that I will seldom exceed seven minutes. I wish to begin by paying tribute to the late Lord Carter. His encouragement and support over the years is one of the main reasons I am in this House today. I should like to thank also my sponsor, the noble Lord, Lord Ashley. I have had the pleasure of working with him for over 15 years, and he has given me terrific and great inspiration. My thanks also go to the noble Baronesses, Lady Finlay and Lady Wilkins, and to others who have patiently answered my endless questions. I also wish to thank the staff of the House. Their enlightened approach to my access needs has been most welcome. As a disability rights commissioner, I am happy to inform your Lordships that this place is one of the best models of good practice under the DDA that I have ever come across. I have chosen this Bill for my maiden speech because most of my adult life has been spent helping under-represented groups fully to participate in their communities. I began my working life in local government as a disability awareness trainer, and I soon understood that disabled people needed to define the solutions to our own problems. Otherwise, public policy would fail. The term, "““nothing about us without us””," became our mantra in the late 1980s, and it has been our guiding principle ever since. I went on to become highly involved in campaigning for anti-discrimination legislation. That led, eventually, to the Disability Discrimination Act 1995. In parallel to this, I also campaigned for community care direct payments, and the noble Lord, Lord McColl, was strongly supportive, along with a large number of Members of this House. In both cases, disabled people fully shaped the legislation, and I think that is why it has been so very successful. These experiences demonstrated to me the importance of public involvement in shaping services, so I was thrilled to join the Department of Health’s expert panel on public and patient involvement last year. This panel was tasked with looking at one of the proposals in the Bill; the setting up of local involvement networks, or LINks. As your Lordships know, LINks will replace the current patients’ forums. My overriding reason for supporting the introduction of LINks is that they will bring together health and social care while placing greater emphasis on joined-up user and public participation. People like me who use both health and social care services seldom differentiate between social care support and health interventions. We need a holistic approach so that we are not bogged down by multitudes of different professionals, each armed with assessment forms which go on for days. Social care has a long and successful history of user involvement. Bringing it to work in an integrated way with healthcare within these LINks will bring a rich dimension to the public involvement described in the Bill. The exciting thing about LINks is that they will be supported by host organisations, one for each local authority. There is no blueprint for a LINk and that is what is so good; each will evolve to suit local circumstances. This is a great opportunity to use the energy and creativity of a whole range of diverse stakeholders; for example, centres for independent living run by disabled people. They are, after all, the experts by experience in health and social care. They will be key members of LINks. What is more exciting is that, at last, they may also be excellent candidates for the role of a host. To make LINks truly valuable in their local communities, they need to be opened to the widest range of user voices. This includes people with all types of impairments, people from minority ethnic communities and even people living in residential care. Consider how enabling LINks could be for older people. Their large and growing numbers mean that they are under-represented in local decision making. There is increasing evidence that they are often exploited, neglected or abused, but their voices are seldom heard. I believe that the measures in the Bill will go a long way to empowering such groups actively to improve their health and wellbeing. I am excited about some parts of the Bill which signal a culture of greater inclusion. As a new commissioner on the Commission for Equality and Human Rights, it is my responsibility to ensure that public services empower and involve all members of the public. We need inclusive communities where no one gets left out. Parts of the Bill take us in that direction.