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	TX: 01.10.07 - The End of the Disability Rights Commission PRESENTER: WINIFRED ROBINSON

	THE ATTACHED TRANSCRIPT WAS TYPED FROM A RECORDING AND NOT COPIED FROM AN ORIGINAL SCRIPT. BECAUSE OF THE RISK OF MISHEARING AND THE DIFFICULTY IN SOME CASES OF IDENTIFYING INDIVIDUAL SPEAKERS, THE 麻豆约拍 CANNOT VOUCH FOR ITS COMPLETE ACCURACY. THE QUEEN My government will introduce legislation to establish a Disability Rights Commission which will assist disabled people in securing comprehensive civil rights and help employers to meet their obligations. ROBINSON It was with those words, back in 1998, that the Queen announced the setting up of the Disability Rights Commission. It started in April 2000 but from today it is no more. Its role has been absorbed into the new Equality and Human Rights Commission. So what did it achieve? We asked some interested parties what they thought and the first voice you'll hear is Paul Dark of the Outside Centre, it's a charity to advance the cause of disability. DARK The word I'd use to sum up the DRC is lacking. The very thing that disabled people are accused of is in what I accuse the DRC of - lacking. It never really dealt with the all round picture. I think the DRC have achieved quite a lot in relation to the law and individual disabled people, enabling them to take various companies to court. But I think culturally and even politically and sociologically they've been a failure really. ATRIBOLT Hello my name's Susan Atribolt. I was discriminated against very badly with Fife Council. I fought to work in the council, took it to appeal and lost, we took it to a tribunal and we lost, we took it to the Court of Sessions where we lost too. I could safely say if it hadn't been for the Disability Rights Commission I could never have taken my case forward to the House of Lords. RICKELL I am Andy Rickell and I am Scope's disability commissioner. I think it was really important to have an organisation with the words disability rights in the title, putting disability and rights together was really important. The DRC also built up an excellent evidence base and provided some useful resources, including its website. We were pleased to see the DRC testing and trying to enforce the Disability Discrimination Act because we're too well aware that that particular piece of legislation is full of holes. On the other hand the DRC's perhaps not been so great at involving disabled people and their organisations directly and I don't think it's been as outspoken an organisation as it might have been. Given the choice between carrot and stick, between education and enforcement it's tended to concentrate on education. DARK My hopes for the Commission for Equality and Human Rights are both high and low. High in the sense that they can't be any worse than the DRC but low in the sense they may well be worse than the DRC. If they stick to the law and ensure that that kind of educational role and that kind of promotion of equality is farmed out to other groups of disabled people who know the complexities and can reveal the complexities of disability then that'll be a very good success and because they're new I think they might actually do that. ATRIBOLT I wish the Commission for Equality and Human Rights the best of luck and I really hope that they use myself as an outside body, an independent body for the work collectively, that's the way forward, if you don't use the people that you're trying to help and get their views and take things on board then it just will not work. RICKELL The idea of a body which brings together equality and human rights which has disability within it has to be a very positive thing. The possibility of being able to bring multiple issues, let's say, around a person who's black and disabled is a real benefit of the new organisation. On the negative side though it's one organisation, it's got a whole range of equality issues to deal with and there's a danger that disability ends up well down the agenda. ROBINSON Well Sir Bert Massey was chairman of the Disability Rights Commission from its formation, let's deal with that last point first if you would. Will disability rights slip down the agenda in the big new Equality and Human Rights Commission? MASSEY There's always a danger of that and many disabled people, including some of the DRC, were very anxious about that. So when the bill was going through to set up the new Equality Commission, we insisted on a disability committee on which at least half the membership be disabled and that will be chaired by Baroness Jane Campbell who is a well known campaigner for disability rights. ROBINSON Do you accept what seemed to be a consensus among those people we spoke to that the biggest achievement of the Disability Rights Commission was the support that you were able to give individuals in testing the law. MASSEY No it wasn't the biggest achievement and of course all those people who were interviewed were all people with physical impairments, you didn't interview anybody on the mental health issues where we did quite a lot in the health services field with mental health issues. We also changed the law quite considerably. For example the Disability Equality Duty was not bringing law, it was changing law, we did that a lot. ROBINSON And what was that? MASSEY Now every public authority has to not only not discriminate against disabled people but has to promote their equality. Now that's a major change and that would not come about had the DRC not forced the government to change the law. ROBINSON Now the criticism there was that you employed too few disabled people in your work, or that was the implied criticism, that too few people - too few campaigners - were actively involved. MASSEY At any one time two thirds of our commissioners were disabled and they're the people who ran the DRC. Indeed I'm disabled myself. And between one third and 40% of our staff were disabled. So the fact disabled people were not an essential part of the DRC is manifest nonsense. We also made great efforts to reach out to the disability community and we had regular meetings with all the major organisations both of and for disabled people. ROBINSON And are those levels that you describe of involvement high enough - two thirds of the commissioners and 40% of the staff? MASSEY The important point about the DRC was we employed the best people available and in many cases the best people were disabled people. In other cases they weren't but we always ensured that our employment practices were such that disabled people who wanted to apply they did, they got the jobs and they did a superb rate job for the DRC and for disabled people. ROBINSON You haven't changed public perceptions of disabled people, was that a fair expectation in the time that you've had? MASSEY I'm not entirely sure that the evidence supports the statement. I think public perceptions have changed. But I think one thing that we did do was we helped to change the perception from all disabled people have a physical impairment and all disabled people use wheelchairs. Now manifestly they don't. We made a point of trying to raise issues of people with other impairments like HIV, like cancer, like early stage Multiple Sclerosis and like mental health issues and I think we have done that and certainly our own research evidence suggests that that perception has changed. ROBINSON Though what do you say to the charge that you were somehow lacking and that you were too emollient, that seemed to be the suggestion, not confrontational enough? MASSEY We made a point at the DRC of always checking the effect of the work we were doing and we used the external agencies, in this case we used the Office of Public Management and they analysed whether we would have got more success had we simply been more aggressive and their view was the line we took, which was being very assertive and aggressive when we need to be but being more emollient when we didn't, actually got better results, we brought over more organisations, we got more people to understand disability. So it wasn't a case of using sticks or carrots because we have no carrots but we used the stick wisely. ROBINSON And what happens to you from today are you out of a job? MASSEY Alas so but I am a commissioner on the new Equality and Human Rights Commission and I'm sure I'll find something to keep myself occupied. ROBINSON That was Sir Bert Massey speaking to me a little earlier and that interview will be available as our disability podcast. We're hoping to speak to Trevor Philips who's chair of the new Equality and Human Rights Commission next month and if you have a question that you would like to put to him then please let us know contact details coming up in a minute. Back to the Transcripts homepage Back to the You and Yours homepage The 麻豆约拍 is not responsible for external websites

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