Disabled Persons (Independent Living) Bill [HL]

My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Ashley, on his amazing tenacity in fighting for a better deal for disabled people all round. My eyes were opened to the plight of disabled people when I was asked to chair a government committee of inquiry into services for disabled people some years ago. I found it difficult to believe that the services were in such a poor state. There was plenty of money but the management was fundamentally flawed. We made 49 recommendations to help disabled people, but the civil servants simply said, ““We will bury your report””. I was astonished at their apparent lack of concern for disabled people. When we asked Prime Minister Thatcher to intervene, however, she soon straightened them out and almost all the recommendations were accepted apart from the vision for indoor/outdoor wheelchairs. That was implemented later, together with direct payments, for which we campaigned along with other noble Lords. As the noble Lord, Lord Pearson of Rannoch, mentioned, when severely disabled people have to rely on carers who come each day at a time that suits the carer, their lives tend to be rather chaotic and disorganised. However, when disabled people themselves have direct payment, they can employ the carers and have them come at a time that is essential to them, to enable them to leave home early and go to work. The recent announcement by the Government that they will extend direct payments and carry on their trials of individual budgets is certainly welcome. There are too many barriers preventing disabled people from accessing direct payments. The Disability Rights Commission recently emphasised that a subjective judgment made by local authority staff that a person lacks the competence to manage direct payments can preclude those payments, and there are too many restrictions on how they can be used. That is a polite way of saying that there are too many little bureaucrats sitting behind desks pontificating about subjects about which they know little. For instance, a young lady with a severe heart condition went to her GP for a repeat prescription. The GP said to her, ““Mary, you’re really quite severely disabled””. ““No I’m not””, she said, ““I don’t recognise disability””. The GP said, ““I’m telling you, my girl, you are severely disabled. You can’t walk up a hill and you’re pretty blue. You need, and are entitled to, a car, and you will get one””. She reluctantly agreed to that, but she encountered ridicule and disbelief on three separate occasions when she was told by a clerk sitting behind a desk, ““You’re not disabled. You don’t need a car””. She had not even asked for the car. She was so angry that she nearly told them exactly what they could do with it. What sort of procedures are in place to minimise that kind of discrimination? Disabled people tend to conceal their disabilities when they can. For instance, that particular girl, Mary, used to get really quite angry when she held out her hand in a shop or to collect a paper and the other person would say, ““Ooh, aren’t you blue?””. She learnt to squeeze her hand while she was waiting so that, when she held it out, it was white rather than blue. Disabled people do not like to be different from the rest of the population. As my right honourable friend the leader of the Opposition has said, the Conservative Party welcomes the principles underlying the Bill. We are pleased that the noble Lord, Lord Ashley, has again introduced the subject, enabling us to discuss it again in detail. The Conservative Party is committed to introducing individual budgets so that people can take care of their own needs. Individual budgets would allow people to commission healthcare and social care services jointly for themselves, because they know better what they need. Prime Minister Thatcher was always very supportive of respite care, emphasising what a great contribution carers made and how we should do much more to support them. We are exploring means to give more support to carers, including through the tax and benefit system. Noble Lords may not be aware that it was Mrs Thatcher who emphasised the importance of disabled people by splitting the old Department of Health and Social Security into its two present component parts. She also changed the title ““Minister for the Disabled””—disabled people do not like being called ““the disabled””—to ““Minister for Disabled People””. She said, however, ““They’ll want to change the notepaper””, and they were allowed to use up the existing notepaper first. The provision of services for disabled people is uneven across the country, as the noble Baronesses, Lady Masham and Lady Campbell, mentioned. How do the Government plan to deal with that? There seems to be no system in place at the moment to cover a disabled person who moves to a different part of the country. They often have to start from scratch to renegotiate a new care package from a variety of different sources. The Bill is designed to ensure that they have a right to this to avoid the present confusion and frustration. How will the Bill improve the provision of accessible information and advice and ensure that the comprehensive assessment of a disabled person’s needs will be effective across all local authorities and NHS bodies equally? The new concordat, which was published this week, is certainly welcome, but it seems to contain no means to ensure that individual disabled people can challenge local service provision if it is inadequate. Does the Minister have any estimate of the cost of the provisions in the Bill? I have always been very impressed by how much so many disabled people contribute to society. They enrich it and are an inspiration to us all. A severely disabled girl with liver disease, rickets and kidney failure could not find a job when she left school. A secretarial job was created for her at Guy’s Hospital, and she soon proved to be one of the best secretaries that we had. Moreover, she insisted on being dialysed three times a week at night, so she took no time off work. The effect on the rest of the department was very impressive, because, suddenly, no one else took any time off work—how could they? She later started to go downhill, but was given a kidney and liver transplant, which was a great success. She took on a new lease of life. She went into the church; when she gets up to preach, everyone listens to what she has to say, because she knows what she is talking about. A few years later, she got married. What an amazing transformation. What courage. We have friends who adopted a Chinese boy of 10, who was born without eyes and thrown on the rubbish tip soon after birth. He was rescued and taken to an orphanage, but was neglected there for years. However, after adoption, he was surrounded by love and attention and, within two years, this almost uncontrollable boy had improved so much that he was able to go skiing. There are many examples in this House of amazing, cheerful triumphs over adversity. What an inspiration and a great investment are so many disabled people. However, if altruism is not enough to encourage us to strive to improve the life of disabled people, a touch of realism might do, because half of us will be disabled to a greater or lesser extent before we die. We need to declare an interest in more senses than one.