Crippen Cartoons cartoons at the cutting edge of disability

Remember when Labour’s general election manifesto stated that it was “committed to championing the rights of disabled people and to the principle of working with them, so that their views and voices will be at the heart of all we do”.

Well, you’ll be forgiven for thinking that another party won the election because everything that they claimed to do on our behalf seems to have gone right out of the window!

As reported in Disability News Service (DNS), Disabled Rights activists have criticised the Labour government’s “hugely disappointing” and “exclusionary” decision to set up a board of experts to examine “economic inactivity” without appointing a single representative of a disabled people’s organisation.

Work and pensions secretary Liz Kendall appears to have failed to appoint any disabled experts to the Labour Market Advisory Board, even though she made it clear that its key aim was tackling the “spiralling inactivity” caused by a record number of people out of work due to long-term sickness.

But the eight members of the board, labour market experts from across business, industrial relations and academia, do not appear to include any disabled experts and certainly do not include representatives of any disabled people’s organisations (DPOs).

Disabled researcher Stef Benstead, author of Second Class Citizens, which describes the harm caused to disabled people by a decade of cuts and reforms, said: “It should not be thinkable for any modern government department to have an advisory board that does not include representatives of the community impacted by the policy proposals.”

Dan White, policy and campaigns officer for Disability Rights UK, said it was “hugely disappointing that not one disabled people’s organisation or disabled people’s expert representative” was on the board, despite Labour’s past commitments to involving disabled people in developing policy. Would any other group be left out of an expert board that is focused on their future?”

Inclusion London said it was “extremely concerned” that disabled people were “once again missing from an important forum where programmes targeting us will be shaped” with their senior policy and campaigns manager Julia Modern adding that:

“Under the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, the government is obliged to consult with disabled people”.

You can read the full article in DNS.

Description of cartoon for those using screen reading software

Labour politicians Starmer, Reeves and Kendall are attending the Labour Party Conference 2024. Reeves is holding a card that reads ‘Disabled are scroungers’. Starmer’s card reads ‘Recycled Tory Speeches’ whilst Kendall’s card reads ‘DWP work not welfare’. Two disabled activists representing GMCDP and DPAC are in front of them looking angry. One is holding a card that reads ‘UN Convention – Government is obliged to consult with disabled’ whilst the other one is saying: “So not only DON’T they consult with us – they’re also peddling the same Tory lies about us!”