Contribution
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Mark. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jen Craft) on securing this debate. Derby has the largest number of deaf people outside of London, which I am sure is in no small part because we are privileged to have the Royal School for the Deaf Derby. This specialist school was founded in 1894 by Dr William Roe, after he witnessed a young deaf man being bullied and called “Dumb Jack”. Dr Roe was struck by the social and educational exclusion of deaf people, and this Disability History Month I pay tribute to him and the school that he created.
There is no doubt that attitudes across society towards people who are deaf or have hearing loss have come a long way. The country was mesmerised when Rose Ayling-Ellis waltzed her way to lifting the glitterball trophy on “Strictly Come Dancing”, providing an overdue weekly prime-time lesson on deaf awareness and deaf culture for the nation. Films such as “The Silent Child” and “CODA” have not just showcased the rich talent that exists within the deaf community, but used stories and humour to give wider society an insight into the deaf existence and the barriers that people face on a daily basis.
The media representation of the deaf community has certainly, and rightfully, grown in recent years, whether through deaf participation in “Love Island”, “Bake Off”, or “Married at First Sight”, or simple acts of inclusion in everyday interactions, but people who are deaf or have hearing loss are still marginalised in society, and there is still so much to do to provide the community with the life chances they deserve.
Children and young people from across our country attend the Royal School for the Deaf Derby, which offers both day and residential specialist education. Last week, the Ofsted inspection on its residential provision was published, grading it as outstanding in all areas; I invite the Minister, if I may, to join me in congratulating the school. The school is also the largest employer in the midlands for deaf BSL users, who are incredible role models for their pupils, and provides training and development to partner agencies in Derbyshire and Derby. One example mentioned in the Ofsted report was a firefighter that the school had trained, who was able to use sign language in an emergency, providing support and reassurance to an individual involved in a road traffic collision.
I have seen art by the school’s pupils that was shown an exhibition alongside work by renowned deaf photographer Stephen Iliffe at the Artcore gallery in Derby, celebrating the achievements of the deaf community, highlighting the diverse experiences in careers of deaf people, and demonstrating that, with the right support, there are no limits to what they can accomplish.
However, we know that our wider education system across the country far too frequently fails our children and young people. The attainment gap facing deaf pupils is equivalent to 12 months of learning by the end of primary school, and, at GCSE, deaf students perform more than a whole grade worse than their non-deaf peers in both English and maths. People who are deaf or have hearing loss are also penalised in the labour market. Less than four in 10 working-age people who use BSL as their first language are in employment. A third of that group are classified as long-term economically inactive—a total waste of their talents and ability. That point was made powerfully by my hon. Friends the Members for Thurrock and for West Bromwich (Sarah Coombes).
Sadly, there are also far too many examples where the NHS is not doing enough to provide appropriate access. Two in three people who use BSL as their first language have no accessible method of contacting their GP, and four in five patients who are deaf or have hearing loss reported having an appointment at which their communication needs were unmet. Deaf people also suffer worse outcomes for physical and mental health than their peers. These are public policy failures, and as MPs and decision makers in Westminster, we need to take action to fix them.
There are many brilliant charities providing evidence and expertise to feed into that work. We recently had four of them—the British Deaf Association, the National Deaf Children’s Society, the Royal National Institute for Deaf People and SignHealth—in Parliament, at an event that I hosted and at which we were honoured to have the Minister attend and speak. Charities can act as a bridge to their communities, helping to facilitate policy- makers to learn directly from the lived experience of the communities themselves.
The work that we need to do in Westminster to support the deaf community cuts across Government, and we need action from all Government Departments—Health, Education, Transport, the Home Office, Business and Trade, Work and Pensions and others. I thank the Minister for and congratulate him on the positive step forward that we have seen with the appointment of lead Ministers in each Department to champion disability inclusion and accessibility. In his cross-Government role, I am sure that he will passionately drive the policies that we need to see in the lives of deaf and disabled people, so that they can thrive and we can all benefit from the full use of their talents and skills.