Debbie Abrahams

The hon. Member—a fellow member of the Work and Pensions Committee—makes a good point. I am sorry that I was unable to attend that event myself, but I will certainly give that matter some consideration, and I hope that the Government will, too. More than 16 million people in the UK have a disability—nearly one in four of us—and nearly half of all disabilities are acquired during a person’s lifetime. In recognition of that, in 2009 the UK not only became a signatory to the UN convention on the rights of persons with disabilities, which includes 40 articles ranging from education and work and employment to the right to life, but enshrined disability as a protected characteristic in the Equality Act 2010. We should be proud that we as a country have adopted that, but now it is about how we put it into practice, because we have unfortunately gone backwards in many ways. Despite the important moves that the then Government had undertaken, the austerity brought in by the coalition Government in 2010, and amplified by the Conservative Government in 2015, not only restricted financial and other state support for disabled people—adding further challenges to their lives—but created a culture of fear, particularly for those reliant on social security support who were unable to work. All too often, disabled people were treated as workshy, with the shirker-scrounger narrative perpetuated in policy and practice and, unfortunately, also in our media.