It is 25 years since the passing of the Disability Discrimination Act – but the fight for equality goes on

Today – 8 November – marks the 25th anniversary of the passing of the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) 1995. This landmark act made it unlawful to discriminate against disabled people in relation to employment, the provision of goods and services, education and transport for the very first time, although some protections were implemented in stages.

And like the other civil rights movements of the last century, it was the tens of thousands of disabled people leading the movement for change who were the driving force behind the legislation. As the late Mike Oliver, a leading academic and disability rights campaigner, said of the protests: “We had no resources but we created a movement, which mobilised at its height hundreds of thousands of people.”

Oliver was a pioneering voice for the social model of disability, which makes clear that it is societal barriers, such as the lack of an accessible public transport network, that exclude and discriminate against disabled people. So the exclusion that disabled people face is not inevitable but is caused by the way society is run and organised.

The DDA was amended in 2005 to take public authorities into its remit and in 2009 the last Labour government ratified the UN Convention for the Rights of Disabled People, seeking to promote respect for the dignity of all disabled people and safeguards for their human rights and fundamental freedoms.

The pioneering Disability Equality Duty, which placed a duty on public bodies to promote disability equality for the first time, introduced in 2006, was superseded by the Equality Act and Public Sector Equality Duty in 2010. The Public Sector Equality Duty harmonised the existing equality duties (for sex and race also) and extended it to cover all protected characteristics covered by the Equality Act.

Since Equality Impact Assessments (a systematic, evidence-based tool used to consider the likely impact of work on different groups of people) are no longer necessarily being carried out, we now need to see the law changed again to see the rigour these duties brought strengthened further.

While the DDA was a defining moment in the struggle for disability rights and equality, we still have such a long way to go to ensure equality for disabled people. Since 2010, successive Tory-led governments have been implementing austerity, including abolishing the Disability Living Allowance and replacing it with the Personal Independence Payment (PIP), introducing the cruel and inhumane sanctions regime, and cutting funding to disabled people’s led organisations. This was – and still is – a programme which demonises and harms the lives and livelihoods of disabled people, creating a hostile environment.

Since 2013, more than 650,000 people had their payments cut or stopped totally after moving from DLA to PIP. Figures from the Department for Work and Pensions show that 46 per cent of all those who have moved from the old system lost out financially.

Evidence from the think tank Demos showed that disabled people receiving social security were hit with a million sanctions in less than a decade since 2010 and that unemployed disabled people are up to 53 per cent more likely to be sanctioned than people who are not disabled.  

In 2015, the UK became the first member state to be investigated by the UN Committee on the Rights of Disabled Persons (CRPD) for an alleged violation of disabled people’s human rights. The report findings, published a year later, were damming. The committee found that the UK government’s welfare reforms led to "grave and systematic violations" of disabled people's rights and that changes to benefits "disproportionately affected" disabled people. The inquiry concluded that changes to housing benefits and criteria for parts of the Personal Independence Payment, along with a narrowing of social care criteria and the closure of the Independent Living Fund, all "hindered disabled people's right to live independently and be included in the community". Unsurprisingly, the government chose to dismiss the committee’s findings.

Current 2020 research by charity Joseph Rowntree Foundation shows that nearly half of everyone living in poverty is either a disabled person or lives with a disabled person; that the disability employment gap is around 30 per cent; and that disabled workers now earn a fifth (20 per cent) less than non-disabled workers. Figures published in September by the Office of National Statistics show that disabled people and those living with long term health conditions made up almost six in 10 (59 per cent) of all deaths involving Covid-19 in the period March to July.

Twenty-five years on, the fight for disabled people’s rights and equality goes on. That’s why we urgently need – and Labour is committed to delivering – a disability strategy, co-produced with disabled people, that incorporates the UN Convention on the Rights of Disabled Persons into British law. This means eliminating disability discrimination, enabling disabled people to live independently in the community, ensuring an inclusive education system and ensuring disabled people are protected from all forms of exploitation, violence and abuse. And critically, incorporating the CRPD into domestic law will ensure that people can take legal action if their rights have been breached.

In this way we will create a truly inclusive society.

Marsha de Cordova is the shadow women and equalities secretary and the Labour MP for Battersea