The UK government has been accused of showing contempt for disabled people after it refused to give evidence on its progress since being found guilty of grave and systematic violations of the UN’s disability convention seven years ago.
The government has told the UN committee that monitors implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities that it does not want to be examined in public on its progress!
A UN committee of disabled human rights experts found in November 2016 that the UK government had discriminated against disabled people on the right to an adequate standard of living and social protection, work and employment, and independent living. Most of those breaches were caused by policies introduced by Conservative ministers at the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).
The 2016 findings were the result of the first high-level inquiry ever carried out by the UN’s committee on the rights of persons with disabilities (CRPD), which followed years of research and lobbying in the UK mainly by Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC).
The committee had put aside a day in August to examine the government’s progress in implementing the recommendations over the last seven years. But the UK government backed out of attending the session in Geneva which took place on 28th August and says it will not give its evidence until next March.
Representatives of Deaf and Disabled People’s Organisations (DDPO’s) – and four UK human rights and equality bodies – attended the session in Geneva to give their evidence, presenting a “shadow” report on the government’s progress since the 2016 report. However, it now looks that they will also have to fund a second trip in March 2024.
CRPD confirmed this week that the “interaction between the State party and the Committee” had been postponed, but it declined to comment on the UK government’s decision.
Ellen Clifford, a disabled activist who has been working on the DDPO shadow report for the coalition, said:
“It is not surprising that the government has chosen not to participate in the special inquiry follow-up this year given that their treatment of Deaf and disabled people is publicly indefensible. They are consciously breaching and ignoring substantive obligations under the convention and there is clear evidence of further retrogression.”
She added that:
“I believe the government is scared of the bad publicity at a time when they are in a weakened position with continuing industrial disputes and unhappiness due to the cost-of-living crisis and had hoped to avoid further critical scrutiny and bad press through attempting to postpone the session. This decision showed contempt for the efforts that disabled people and their organisations have put into preparing for the evidence session.”
As for Tom Pursglove, the alleged Minister for Disabled people, not a word has been heard from his office. One could be forgiven for thinking that the statement from the government that ‘it does not want to be examined in public on its progress’ might well have originated from him!
Read more about this latest government shambles in Disability News Service.
Crippen Cartoons 