Labour’s shadow minister for the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) Alison McGovern has thrown the spotlight on another galling Labour U-turn. This one concerned the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD).
Channel 4 News reporter Ruben Reuter took the Labour minister to task. All it took, was a simple question on whether the party would commit to make the UNCRPD law, for the Starmerite lackey to come undone – and the party’s supposed commitments to disabled people along with her.
Labour’s DWP minister leaving out disabled people – again
On 2 July, Channel 4 News published a video report on the main political parties’ positions on disabled people’s rights.
Disabled reporter Ruben Reuter traveled the country to interview ministers. Reuter first spoke to Liberal Democrat deputy leader Daisy Cooper. For the Tories’ part, the party did not provide a single spokesperson for Reuter to interrogate:
There are 16 million disabled people in the UK but during the six weeks of campaigning, there’s been little focus on how the main political parties are going to help them.
Ruben Reuter went to find out what they have to offer. pic.twitter.com/CNHoyf36mC
— Channel 4 News (@Channel4News) July 2, 2024
However, while Labour did field shadow DWP minister Alison McGovern to talk to him, she quickly showed Labour up too. The video clip shows Reuter putting a straightforward question to McGovern:
I just want to ask you a question, and it’s a simple one. It is a yes or a no. Would your party commit to incorporating the UN convention of the Rights of Disabled People into UK law?
Predictably, McGovern responded like a true-blue Tory-esque politician – by largely avoiding the question altogether. Politician playbook front and centre, she first evaded Reuter’s question:
I know that the UN has reported on the state of disabled people’s rights in the UK, and we want to learn all of the lessons of that. And we’re not in those terms, at the moment.
Then, in a masterful display of deflection, she crooned about the party’s manifesto:
But I just wanted to read, if I may, the line in Labour’s manifesto on this very point.
Specifically, McGovern read out the line in it which reads:
Labour is committed to championing the rights of disabled people and to the principle of working with them, so that their views and voices will be at the heart of all we do.
One thing disabled people will invariably tell them? Enshrine the UNCRPD in law – because disabled communities have quite literally been calling for this for years. Here’s the highlights from the latest example of which, from the Disabled Peoples Organisations (DPOs) manifesto in February.
Palpably exasperated as much as the rest of us, Reuter wasn’t about to let McGovern weasel out of it. He retorted back:
Is that a yes or a no?
To which, she shamelessly claimed:
Our commitment is to work with disabled people. When it comes to the law, we want to make sure that the Equality Act is there for disabled people.
So in other words, McGovern bleated out a very politician’s round-the-houses way of saying, essentially, “not fucking likely.”
UNCRPD: successive government human rights violations
What McGovern referred to as UN’s assessment on the “state of disabled people’s rights” was a report the international body published in March.
In March, the UN hauled the UK government in front of the UNCRPD. Essentially, the committee was investigating the UK government and DWP’s treatment of disabled people. Predictably, as the Canary’s Steve Topple detailed, the UK government spent the 90-minute hearing displaying:
contempt for chronically ill and disabled people – lying, gaslighting, and misrepresenting
And as Topple also reported, this wasn’t the first time the UNCRPD had pulled up the UK government for questioning either. It followed a previous assessment in 2016, which found that:
successive UK governments had committed “grave” and “systematic” violations of disabled people’s human rights.
After this, the UNCRPD followed this up with another report:
accusing the government of creating a “human catastrophe” for disabled people.
Fast-forward, and the situation has little changed. In March, the UNCRPD issued its report from the session. Once more, the UNCRPD found that:
The Committee finds that the State party has failed to take all appropriate measures to address grave and systematic violations of the human rights of persons with disabilities and has failed to eliminate the root causes of inequality and discrimination.
Sound familiar? There’s those “grave” and “systematic” violations again.
Broadly, it listed a damning rap-sheet of the government’s failures on multiple protections under the convention. The Canary’s Rachel Charlton-Dailey has explored a number of these here. In summary, these included the unconscionable scale of benefit-related deaths, the institutionalisation of disabled people, and lack of support for independent living. It also lambasted everything from indefensibly low benefits, to the Tory government’s callous Work Capability Assessment reforms, and its plans to snoop on disabled people’s bank accounts with AI.
Given the outright scandal of the Tories’ time in government, you’d think Labour would want to set itself apart from all this. Not so: it’s already falling at the first hurdle on disabled people’s rights.
Labour ditches UNCRPD in another U-turn
Ultimately, McGovern’s response practically confirmed that Labour isn’t planning to incorporate the UNCRPD into law. This means that the protections the UNCRPD offers still won’t be enshrined in UK legislation. It’s yet another 2020 leadership promise consigned to the dustbin of wasteman Starmer’s self-serving ambitions.
You read that right, in the party leader’s bid for Labour premiership, Starmer originally pledged to implement this. In fact, as Disability News Service previously reported, until July 2023, Labour’s ministers had made a song and dance about this very commitment. It wrote that:
Labour leader Keir Starmer backed the policy during his leadership campaign in February 2020, telling Disability News Service (DNS): “Before I was elected as an MP, I was a human rights lawyer and I spent a career championing human rights and the work of organisations, including the United Nations.”
And the pledge has been repeated more recently by the party’s shadow minister for disabled people, Vicky Foxcroft.
On last December’s international day of disabled people, she tweeted: “We promise to incorporate the UNCRPD into UK law to tackle discrimination and ensure better support and protection for the most vulnerable.”
And in July, in an email to a disabled campaigner, Foxcroft said: “Regarding your questions on policy, Labour is fully committed to incorporating the UNCRPD into law and working in co-production with disabled people in our entire approach to policy.”
However, the outlet highlighted that by September 2023, the party’s had visibly watered this down. In particular, its National Policy Forum (NPF) document – which the party uses to formulate its manifesto policies – had dropped it.
But then, it’s hardly surprising from the man who’s made more sudden U-turns than a malfunctioning Roomba. And in reality, the ham-faced ‘handout’ hypocrite couldn’t give a crap about disabled people. With more red flags than we care to count, the Labour leader cemented this fact in a recent DWP puff-piece for the Telegraph. As Charlton-Dailey pointed out, Starmer harped on about handouts and dignity, but the implication was obvious:
This was a clear dog whistle to the most hateful in society. Coincidentally I’m sure, the hateful wet wipe in charge of the DWP (but not for long) Mel Stride also regularly writes for them.
The piece was a classic appeal to Tory voters, signposting economic growth, tax burdens, our country is going backwards, etc
Of course, Charlton-Dailey was on the money; Labour has been courting the Tory vote alright. The Canary has repeatedly shown the Labour Party’s clear contempt for disabled people – playing into the Tories’ favourite DWP demonising narratives. From failing to publish an accessible manifesto, to largely ignoring them in it anyway, while barking out its back to work bullshit agenda.
Now, the fact the party has abandoned its promise to make the UNCRPD law shows this isn’t about to change anytime soon.
Feature image via the Canary
