Statement from the Disabled Members' Standing Committee on the National Disability Strategy

The UK government's long-awaited National Disability Strategy sets out its plans on improving the lives of disabled people. Unfortunately, the strategy is hugely disappointing and has been roundly criticised by various disability rights organisations.

UCU's disabled members' standing committee issued the following statement:

National Disability Strategy

As an education union, we are appalled that post-16 education is barely mentioned in the 121 page document. On inclusive education, the strategy does not provide any clear direction for disabled students to access mainstream education and with the constant erosion of support for post-16 disabled students over a number of years, the strategy does nothing to redress this.

The onus of support is for the disabled individual, with no firm requirements for employers to increase employment for disabled people. This 'strategy' does nothing change society in a way that will meaningfully enhance the life chances for disabled people. In addition, employers will be provided with further information on addressing disability discrimination in the workplace and reasonable adjustments - but employers have been required to eradicate disability discrimination and provide reasonable adjustments since 2010, so this will do little to advance the interests of disabled people. 

UCU, along with the TUC, called for the strategy to include several elements which are missing from the strategy - these include:

• mandatory disability pay gap reporting for all employers with more than 50 employees. This should be accompanied by a duty on bosses to produce targeted action plans identifying the steps they will take to address any gaps identified
• enforcement of reasonable adjustments: The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) should get specific funding to enforce disabled workers' rights to reasonable adjustments
• a stronger legal framework for adjustments: the EHRC must update their statutory code of practice to include more examples of reasonable adjustments, to help disabled workers get the adjustments they need quickly and effectively. It will assist courts and tribunals when interpreting the law - and it will also help lawyers, advisers, union reps and human resources departments apply the law and understand its technical detail.

We call on the government to engage meaningfully with education unions and disabled people's organisations to right this egregious wrong.