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IN TOUCH – Representation in Parliament

TX:Ìý 16.01.2024Ìý 2040-2100

PRESENTER:Ìý ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý PETER WHITE

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PRODUCER:ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý BETH HEMMINGS

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White

Good evening.Ìý Tonight, our there signs that disability is losing ground within the political hierarchy?Ìý With a general election a certainty at some point this year, two recent developments have started tongues wagging in organisations representing disabled people.Ìý Firstly, the fund designed to give financial help to people seeking elected office was withdrawn in 2020 and has not yet been reinstated.Ìý And also, it’s being argued that in the Prime Minister’s latest reshuffle, the responsibility for disability has been given to someone who isn’t a senior minister, in other words, people are saying the role has been downgraded.

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Well, we’ll hear more about that later.Ìý But first, the issue of funding for people standing for elected office and therefore those who may wish to represent us as MPs in the forthcoming general election, whenever it happens.Ìý Lord Blunkett, of course, himself an MP for 30 years recently raised a question about this from the House of Lords and wasn’t too impressed with the answer he got.Ìý He’s with us.Ìý David, what did you ask and what were you told?

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Blunkett

Well, I put a written question down, partly because of the campaign by those outside Westminster and partly because I’ve been concerned for the last three and a half years about what was going to happen here.Ìý And I then had the opportunity of putting an oral question down.Ìý On the back of that I had a very interesting letter from the new minister – Mims Davies – very polite, I think she’s very able but clearly doesn’t have the clout to be able to move the decision on.Ìý I’m still hopeful that that will be made in a very short order because we are very close, as we know, whether it’s the summer or the autumn, to a general election.Ìý And for some people it’s probably too late because being able to present to a local constituency party membership that you have some support coming in, might just tip the difference in terms of selection.

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White

But why is it so important?Ìý After all you got yourself on to Sheffield Council, aged 22, you got elected as an MP 17 years later, without help from this kind of extra funding.

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Blunkett

Well, getting elected as the member of parliament was the easier bit because by then, as leader of the city I was extremely well known and there was a lot of support around me.Ìý And I think for people starting out that isn’t the case.Ìý They’ve obviously got family and friends and there is a responsibility on the political parties, which have never – I say this with some regret – never truly taken this seriously and provided pathways and support to get people to a point where they are selectable because obviously, this is not an easy route for people who don’t have any kind of obstacle to overcome and it’s more difficult for those who do, partly because you have to persuade people that you can do the job on equal terms.

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White

What kind of extra funding are we talking about?Ìý Are we talking about large sums of money?

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Blunkett

No, we weren’t and obviously, given the numbers we’re not talking about vast sums that are easily findable, not least within the Department of Work and Pensions, which I had some responsibility to all those years ago.Ìý You know, even if it was a million pounds, which would help with transport and with physical support, that wouldn’t be outrageous.Ìý There’s not going to be that many people standing and there’s not going to be, I don’t think, any pushback from other candidates.

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White

Just one more point before I move on.Ìý It wasn’t introduced until 2012, which means it wasn’t introduced during 13 years of Labour in power…

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Blunkett

Yeah, absolutely, no day zero, put my hands up, we didn’t do it, we certainly should have done, there are things I’m proud of, that’s not one of them.

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White

Okay.Ìý Well also with us is Steve Darling who’s been a member of Torbay Council for 30 years.Ìý In 2019 he became leader and he used the fund, then available.Ìý He’s now planning to stand as Torbay’s MP for the Liberal Democrats in the coming year.Ìý So, Steve, how did you use the fund back in 2019 and how was it useful?

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Darling

It was invaluable.Ìý I’ve clearly stood a number of times before but quite often, as alluded to, friends, family, activists, you’ve always got to have someone with you, whereas actually if you can pay somebody to come out with you and just be inputting into what used to be a clipboard but now tends to be an iPhone and saying – Oh, it’s a younger person coming to the door – you don’t have that embarrassment of speaking to the 10-year-old child as if was the mother.Ìý And equally even just to let you know that it’s male/female, which… my visual impairment I can see body shapes but it’s not always obvious, I’m afraid to say.Ìý Another element that I used it for was helping disposing of leaflets to the community and whilst I do go out and do that a bit myself, I’m significantly slower than the next person because going down steps I do have to be very careful otherwise I do get to the bottom quicker than I would like to.

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White

What about other aspects of administration?Ìý I mean… because I imagine there is quite a lot of paperwork involved.

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Darling

Yeah, assistance with that is really helpful and just being able to do it a little bit quicker.Ìý Quite often being in the disabled world you’ve got to put in the extra hours to be able to keep up with the other person.

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White

And I think it’s also a bit of a family affair for you, isn’t it, because I think your wife, who’s also visually impaired, benefited from it also as a councillor?

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Darling

My wife has benefited from it in 2019 and we’ve been through elections recently and it wasn’t there and it was a bit tougher for her.Ìý However, my son, he’s visually impaired, he did get on to the council last time but he worked very hard… so there’s three of us.

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White

As things stand at the moment it may not be available this time around, it’s certainly not yet confirmed.Ìý When you’re standing for parliament, how much will that matter?

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Darling

It’s really frustrating because clearly it’s not what you do in the election period itself, unless it’s an extremely marginal seat, it’s what you do in advance that makes all the difference.Ìý So, not only do we have disabilities to content with, we’ve perhaps got one arm tied behind our backs compared to four years ago when it was the previous general election in 2019.Ìý And it is a pity that we’ve had that backward step, as was alluded to earlier on, with the downgrading with the minister for disabilities responsibilities, it does make you wonder whether that’s truly being represented at the cabinet table, as one would wish.

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White

Well, someone who… I’m not sure whether she’ll be able to tell us whether it’s being represented at the cabinet table but also standing this year for Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes, having been elected in 2019 in Great Grimsby is Conservative MP Lia Nici.Ìý

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Lia, you’ve got a form of macular disease, I know you still have quite a lot of useful vision but, I mean, what would your attitude be to the fund?Ìý I’m not sure you even knew it existed, did you?

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Nici

No, I mean, I didn’t know the fund existed and nobody told me about it either and so you just make the best of it as you can.Ìý I mean, as you say, I’m visually impaired rather than registered blind but it still does give you some challenges.Ìý I have particular difficulty recognising faces and reading print, small print, quickly these days.Ìý But I have to say, once I was actually in parliament and had been elected, the occupational health department were very, very good.

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White

Now it was introduced under the Conservatives, albeit as part of a coalition in 2012, so if then, why not now?

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Nici

Well, obviously, I’m not a minister, I’m a backbencher, so I mean I can only assume that the reason for that is perhaps that, as you would expect any other employer, that you would expect each political party to make arrangements and that it’s not directly something that comes through government.Ìý And I haven’t heard any discussions from particular parties and it certainly wasn’t part of my campaign, as far as the candidates’ list was concerned, there was never any discussion about disability or additional needs.

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White

Well, we’ll come back to the issue of who pays because it was something I was going to raise.Ìý A number of disability organisations are making noises about this – Disability Rights UK, for instance, said the access to elected office fund should be reinstated and disabled people should be represented in parliament in proportion to their numbers in society.Ìý Well, we did ask the Department for Work and Pensions for a minister to interview about this, no one was available yet, they said but they referred us to their equalities’ hub, which works with the cabinet office.Ìý They told us, in a statement:

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Statement – Department of Work and Pensions

The Enable Fund was an interim measure intended to encourage political parties to provide financial support for candidates.Ìý The government sought disabled people’s views on this in its disability action plan consultation and is considering options for how it might support disabled candidates in the future.

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Well, let me bring in Anna Tylor, who is Chair of the RNIB, she also joins us.Ìý You’re exorcised about this too, aren’t you?

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Tylor

I am, Peter, because I don’t see this as partisan in any way and I think that access issues should be entirely neutral, not politicised at all.Ìý This is about nurturing and maintaining a healthy democratic society.Ìý And we know that people putting themselves forward for elected office is lower amongst disabled people.Ìý But we also know that where you don’t have equity of representation you have poor decisions and we saw this through the covid inquiry that had we have been able to consult with policy makers and with elected representatives, who had that breadth of experience, disabled people might have got a different outcome.Ìý So, I’m incredibly keen to see this and we’ve seen it work well in other areas where the number of women, who are represented in parliament, has now risen to 35%, still a long way to go and fully accept that’s a double whammy if you’re a woman and you’re disabled.Ìý We’ve seen the rise of ethnic minority representation in parliament.Ìý And all of these things are to the good in the way that policy makers are able to lead.

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White

You’ve talked about proportionate representation, it is the case that after the last election only, I think it was, five MPs out of 650 identified themselves as having a disability.Ìý But would the fund really be a factor in encouraging more visually impaired people to stand for parliament and/or for local councils?

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Tyler

Yes, I think it would.Ìý First of all, we’re in the foothills of trying to make sure that our democracy is fully inclusive and that disabled people aren’t left behind.Ìý We know from the research that’s been done through places like the John Smith Centre, that those people who benefit from the fund really benefit from the fund, they couldn’t have done it without it.Ìý So, it really is, you know, like cutting your teeth, this is the beginning of the process.

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White

Okay.Ìý I did say I was going to come back to this issue of money and who pays.Ìý David, this has been something of a revolving door, this fund, since it was first introduced in 2012, do you think there is an issue here about who should pay for it, you know, whether it should come out of the public purse or be paid for by individual parties?

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Blunkett

I think practical issues require public funding.Ìý This came out, incidentally, a speaker’s commission on equality and access to public life and the initial proposal was about race, gender and sexual orientation and the one bit I was able to do then was to intervene and say – what about disability – and I’m afraid we are in the area and the era, at the moment, of what about disability.Ìý It’s not intentional but it gets left out, it falls off the end when people are making judgments about the equality agenda more broadly.Ìý So, I think, getting this small step and it is a very small step in a build up to a general election, would be a very helpful gesture and I can’t see how the incumbent government could actually lose on this one.

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White

Is there also an issue… it occurs to me that, you know, if it was the parties, wouldn’t this discourage smaller parties from adopting disabled people, you know, it would cost them proportionately more than the bigger parties, wouldn’t it?

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Blunkett

Well, I think, if they stand a certain number of candidates and there is a smaller party, the Reform UK, who claim they’re going to stand across the country, they would be entitled to it on whatever basis and proportionality was laid down in the terms of reference.Ìý It was possible to do it from 2012, it’s possible to do it now.

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White

Right, well, there is a related issue, which some people may feel is even more fundamental and that’s the status of the minister for disabled people.Ìý In his most recent government reshuffle, the Prime Minister didn’t appoint a specific minister for disabled people but allocated the job to Mims Davies, as Lord Blunkett has mentioned, who’s a parliamentary under secretary of state, which is seen as the most junior level of government.Ìý Now Number 10 denied that the post was being downgraded, they said it had been given to an existing member of government who had other duties.Ìý But the disability organisation Sense, they said that the job fulfilled a vital role in ensuring that disabled people’s interests were represented in government and shouldn’t be allocated to someone juggling other responsibilities.Ìý While Scope said it was an appalling and retrograde step.Ìý If I can just stay with David, for a minute.Ìý You were a senior minister for getting on for a decade, how important is it where the minister for disabled people sits in the pecking order?

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Blunkett

Well, first and foremost, it’s important that they really take it seriously and that they’re deeply committed but a minister of state does have more clout than a parliamentary under secretary, no matter how able and I think Mims Davies is able, it makes it a lot more difficult to get the ear of the secretary of state and therefore the broader debating cabinet.

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White

And Anna Tylor, what about the argument that disabled issues will arise in all aspects of politics and all departments and that therefore, it’s the responsibility of all ministers, not just one, to take full account of disabled people’s issues?

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Tylor

It’s absolutely right that there isn’t a single member of the government who can shirk that responsibility, disability is everywhere.Ìý But we do need somebody who’s got the clout and who’s got the drive and who’s got the commitment to ensure that that is what happens because without that drive, without that leadership, without that clout, my fear is that it doesn’t happen.

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White

Lia Nici, this is a move by your party, you aren’t necessarily here to speak for the decision and how it was made but I would like to know your thoughts on it.

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Nici

Well, the role is vitally important and just to reiterate David’s comments that Mims Davies is actually an excellent minister and is very passionate about making sure that she’s going to make sure that disabilities of all types are represented but I think there is an argument with regard to seniority.Ìý But I also think that actually the perception of when there was the mini reshuffle, I’m on the committee for women and equalities and when the reshuffle was happening there was a delay in the minister for disabilities being appointed and announced and I don’t think that that really was a particularly good decision for the government to have made because that was the first question we were all asking – well, have disabilities been forgotten and who’s going to be the minister.Ìý So, I think, that perhaps was an error on the government’s part.Ìý But I think if we look at parliament as a whole and we look at the civil service as a whole, I have to say, coming from education as a background where we take equal opportunities and the people’s access very, very seriously and it’s a priority in everything that we do, I have to say that I don’t necessarily see that across the civil service.Ìý I don’t think it’s necessarily a political thing but, for instance, when I go into departments, I don’t see accessible signage.Ìý The parliamentary estate, particularly, is awful to work in, especially if you’ve got a visual impairment, the lighting is terrible.Ìý So, we’ve got some fundamental discussions because otherwise we do end up with a homogenised civil service and we don’t actually get that full representation as well as a political point of view.

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White

Just finally, Lord Blunkett, it does sound as if it is still being considered this, would you think it likely that this will be reinstated in some form or other?

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Blunkett

Yes, my instincts are that they will make a decision in the next two or three weeks, the sooner the better.

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White

Lord Blunkett, Lia Nici, Anna Tylor and Steve Darling, thank you all very much indeed.

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That’s it for today.Ìý As always, we welcome your comments and opinions, you can email intouch@bbc.co.uk, you can leave messages on 0161 8361338 or go to our website bbc.co.uk/intouch from where you can also download tonight’s and previous editions of the programme.

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From me, Peter White, producer Beth Hemmings, studio managers Nat Stokes and Helen Williams, goodbye.

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