Roger Berry describes some of the Parliamentary battles that took place to move disability rights towards the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 and the Equality Act 2010.
“I first got engaged in the Disability Rights Movement when I was an Avon County Councillor back in the late ’80s, early ’90s. We had a Disability Advisory Group with whom councillors met, to enable Disabled people to influence the policies of the Council. We’d also set up an Equal Opportunities unit, (as one of the ‘loony left’ councils as we were described in those days!), trying to do the right thing. Some very important issues started cropping up, [not least] the lack of proper access to the main building at the council.
“I became more and more aware of the issues that Disabled people faced. Mike Oliver had talked about the Social Model 10 years or more before and that was becoming increasingly part of the whole debate. Where were we with anti-discrimination legislation? Where were we with equal rights legislation? We’d had, in this country, laws to outlaw unfair discrimination on grounds of race and gender, but there was no legislation that protected Disabled people’s rights. There had been attempts in Parliament to introduce such legislation but, thus far, all had failed.
“In 1991 I was the prospective Labour [Parliamentary] candidate for Kingswood, Bristol [when] the then sitting MP [Rob Hayward] talked out Alf Morris’s Civil Rights (Disabled Persons) Bill. Alf Morris was the first Minister for Disabled People in the UK in the 1970s, He was also the first Minister for Disabled People anywhere in the world. So this became for me not just of personal interest because I’d been trying to support Alf’s bill. It became a [political] issue [in Bristol] as well.
“When I was elected in 1992, I was very fortunate in that, the following year, the number of private members’ bills [bills that backbench MPs could introduce] was increased from six to seven. There was a ballot and my name came out as number seven. So, I could [introduce] a bill.
I’d been working with Alf in the Commons trying to find [an] MP who, if they came in the top seven, would [pick up] his bill. Since my name came up, then I obviously had to [take] it up and was very happy to [do so]. So that’s how I got involved in [introducing] a bill that I had not written. The work had already been done by Alf and others in the Disability Rights Movement.
In the Parliamentary session, 1993 – 1994, I started spending an increasing amount of time on this whole issue of trying to secure, for the first time in the UK, legislation to provide equal rights for Disabled people. It was meant to cover tackling discrimination in employment, housing, [and other issues including education and the provision of other goods and services] and to set up a Disability Rights Commission that would advise Government on how to improve legislation.
“At the time, VOADL -Voluntary Organisations for Anti-Discrimination Legislation – [was] a coalition of 50+ organisations of or for Disabled people – the British Council of Organisations of Disabled People and other organisations run by Disabled people, and a large number of organisations for Disabled people, including RNID, RNIB and Radar, and also the TUC. This coalition was incredibly well organised and running and ready to pick up Alf’s bill and support whoever was the lucky MP [in the ballot prepared to promote it.] We thought ‘VOADL’ was a pretty daft acronym. Most people wouldn’t understand it. So this was re-branded as ‘Rights Now!’ which seemed a much better name for the organisation. The Rights Now! campaign was a broad-based organisation that legislation [that would secure equal rights for Disabled people].
“The government was extremely hostile. It basically said that, [to secure equal rights], all we needed was “more education and persuasion”. We pointed out that there’d been decades, indeed centuries, in which to have education and persuasion, and it hadn’t yet even given the same rights to Disabled people that, for example, protected others from discrimination on grounds of race and gender. The Parliamentary process then became rather complicated.
The government clearly didn’t want the bill [to get through]. And I couldn’t see any way that the then Conservative government was going to let the bill become law. However, it did present a unique opportunity to campaign on an issue that eventually, we hoped, we would win through. So, we used this parliamentary opportunity to build on the campaign for equal rights, in the hope that someday in the future, we would get the kind of legislation that we now have.
“The Member of Parliament who is promoting a private member’s bill can effectively choose who sits on the standing committee set up to consider the bill, before it is considered by the full House of Commons. Another [Bristol] MP who totally opposed the legislation wanted to sit on the committee. I said no , for the simple reason that on the committee, he could have just kept tabling amendments, so that we would run out of time, and the bill would never got out of committee. On the committee, I needed people I knew would give the bill a fair hearing. [So], I appointed MPs, on a cross-party basis, whom I knew supported the Bill. I was very keen that we should be a broad coalition. Nicholas Scott was the Minister responsible for dealing with the Bill. [He was personally sympathetic]. So I made a point of recommending that his Private Secretary serve on the Committee.
“Normally you would expect the Minister responsible for dealing with this bill to table a whole list of amendments. However, meeting after meeting, he didn’t table a single amendment. He was not in the business of trying to amend the bill. He let it go through Committee. That was a major achievement, but Nicholas Scott [knew that the bill would have to go back onto the floor of the House later and that would be when the government could block it. And this is precisely what happened.
“Five Conservative backbenchers tabled 80 amendments, all claiming that these had nothing to do with the government.” However, it soon became clear that “they’d all been cleared by civil servants working with Nicholas Scott, because the Prime Minister [and] the Industry Department decided they were going to block the bill. These wrecking amendments meant that our bill collapsed.” But Roger and his colleagues We were able to prove that the wrecking amendments had been written by civil servants on government instruction and so their Minister had to apologise for misleading the House.
“We thought, ‘Well, we’ve got to keep trucking’. So, the Rights Now! campaign organised a big rally in Trafalgar Square. We had a couple of thousand people there, and some colleagues who were wheelchair users handcuffed themselves to as many London buses as they could. Others wore “Piss on Pity” T-shirts. And red paint appeared near Downing Street.”
From a publicity point of view, one of the most helpful things that came out of all this was that the media discovered that the administrator of the Rights Now! Campaign, Victoria Scott, “happened to be Nicholas Scott’s daughter. Once the tabloids got this story, they suddenly became interested in Disability rights! That, together with further demonstrations helped to keep the campaign rolling.
This eventually led to a situation where the Government said it would consult on its own draft Disability Discrimination Bill, which eventually became the Disability Discrimination Act, 1995. Roger reflected that “they thought this would calm things down.”
And while the DDA was the first significant piece of legislation in the UK to tackle some important areas of discrimination against Disabled people, Roger acknowledges that it failed to adequately address many areas of discrimination – for example, in education, transport, access to goods and services and there was a significant “small firm” exemption.
“The problem was that the government had been quite clear. They really didn’t want this legislation. It was being opposed very strongly by the Institute of Directors, by the Daily Telegraph and by most Conservative members of parliament who were furious at the idea that there should be more equalities legislation.”
“But it did mean that there was now a recognition that Parliament not only could [legislate], but had legislated, for some, albeit modest, rights for Disabled people. And, from there on, other pieces of legislation would be introduced until eventually, under a different government we [saw] further legislation, the Disability Rights Commission established and then of course in 2010, the Equality Act.”
