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Chamber and committees

Official Report: search what was said in Parliament

The Official Report is a written record of public meetings of the Parliament and committees.  

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Dates of parliamentary sessions
  1. Session 1: 12 May 1999 to 31 March 2003
  2. Session 2: 7 May 2003 to 2 April 2007
  3. Session 3: 9 May 2007 to 22 March 2011
  4. Session 4: 11 May 2011 to 23 March 2016
  5. Session 5: 12 May 2016 to 5 May 2021
  6. Current session: 12 May 2021 to 16 August 2025
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Displaying 1311 contributions

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Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee

Disability Commissioner (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1

Meeting date: 17 September 2024

Jeremy Balfour

At the moment, it is the only thing on the table. I am not convinced that the model of having each disability covered by a different individual or by a sub-group works. Disability issues overlap, and there are pan-disability issues, so I think that one individual can do it. With the right person in post, they can advocate loudly. I am not concerned about having one individual. It is probably still the best model that pulls everybody together, and it can work in practice. We have seen that with the older people’s commissioners in Wales and Northern Ireland, and we have certainly seen it with the children’s commissioner in Scotland. I think that it can work. In the landscape at the moment, disabled people’s voices are not heard at all, so we need someone to do this work.

10:30  

Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee

Disability Commissioner (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1

Meeting date: 17 September 2024

Jeremy Balfour

It is pretty hard, to be honest. I am not being rude about the commission, but it has a massive remit. One of the things that has become very clear to me, not just with the bill but through contacting disabled people, is how difficult disabled people find any form of going to officialdom. One of the real challenges for the commission would be to make sure that it was absolutely open and had lots of different ways for people to communicate with it.

A few years ago, I said to somebody, “Why are you not out campaigning on this?” Their voice came back and said, “It takes 90 per cent of my energy to get out of bed in the morning.” With respect, I think that that is different from other protected characteristics, where you do not have the same physical difficulty of simply getting out of bed and being heard.

Perhaps I can give you a personal story here. A few years after I was born, somebody came to my late father and said, “We have just had a disabled child. What one piece of advice would you give me?” He said, “Don’t take no as the first answer.” However, for many disabled people, getting that no has taken so much effort that they do not have the energy to go on. Most people are not like my father, who was a bit like a Rottweiler with a bone—he would just keep going. That allowed me access to mainstream schooling and many other mainstream things that so many other people with a disability do not get.

Please do not take this in a patronising way, but unless you have lived with, experienced or been with somebody with a disability for a long time, it is almost impossible to explain what it is like. My wife worked with disabled people before we were married, but if you were to speak to her now, she would say that, after 19 years of marriage—and, okay, we are talking about marriage to me; I accept that—her view of disability is very different, having lived with it day in, day out. Until you have that experience, it is very difficult to explain it.

Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee

Disability Commissioner (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1

Meeting date: 17 September 2024

Jeremy Balfour

My gut feeling is that they will still remain to be heard. Again, I do not see where those reforms are coming from; there is no legislation coming down the road that will change that remit.

I genuinely welcome the statement from the Finance and Public Administration Committee that there should be a full review. I think that that should take place, and that we should then have an open debate among ourselves about what the landscape should look like over the next five to 10 years. However, it will take time—years—for us to get to that place, and in all that time, the disabled voice will not have been heard.

I am not saying that we could not get to that place at some point. My point is that we are not there now, it is going to be a long time before we get there, and many disabled people are going to suffer in that interim period.

Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee

Disability Commissioner (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1

Meeting date: 17 September 2024

Jeremy Balfour

Without labouring the point, the present structures simply are not doing it. I do not see any reason why, if the bill goes away and everyone goes back to normal in six months, they will not go back to doing what they have done normally. Who is going to hold them accountable for that?

That is a slightly cynical view. On a more positive note, to be absolutely honest, I would have been giving very different evidence if the programme for government had been different. If we had seen the implementation in Scots law of disabled stuff from the United Nations, we would have been in a very different place, because that would have given disabled people a statutory right to challenge decisions. We could have made a lot of progress in regard to those with neurodivergence conditions, if a bill on that had been proposed.

Even within the past two weeks, two major things that would have helped disabled people have disappeared. That has led to some comments on Twitter but, despite the impact on disabled people’s lives, there has not been the same input that there would have been if something had happened to a child or a young person.

I just think that no one is going to do that work. There are some very able people, such as Mr O’Kane and others, who are very good at advocating on behalf of disabled people, but they have 500 other things to do. That is why we need that individual person who can be the advocate and who can bring together those voices and make sure that they are heard. At the moment, the disabled voice just is not being heard in the public sphere.

Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee

Disability Commissioner (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1

Meeting date: 17 September 2024

Jeremy Balfour

As I said to the convener, if you look at education, health, social services and even things such as changing places toilets, you see that there is mass discrimination. I will be honest. As I think that I have said previously, I was born with a disability and, before I came into the Parliament, I thought that most disabled people’s experience had been my experience, which had been pretty positive. I went to a mainstream school, to mainstream further education and into mainstream work. I thought that that was most disabled people’s experience.

When I entered the Parliament and started hearing the stories about what the majority of disabled people face and what the majority of parents of disabled children face, I was horrified. I will be honest—I was naive in that regard. Until you start talking to people who have disabilities about how they struggle to get interviews for jobs, how they seem to be at the bottom of the list when it comes to social care or about how their packages are being cut, you do not realise. There is so much that disabled people or parents of disabled children can talk about.

To use a very basic example, in Edinburgh, we are very good at clearing the main roads for the buses, as they should be. However, that is no good to me on an icy day if I cannot get out of my house to the main street, and no one ever clears the side streets. Older people, people in a wheelchair or those with some form of disability that makes them more likely to slip are housebound for far longer than others. That voice has not been heard by us in the Parliament or by other bodies in Scotland.

Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee

Disability Commissioner (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1

Meeting date: 17 September 2024

Jeremy Balfour

Absolutely. I appreciate that ÂŁ1 million or ÂŁ1.5 million sounds like a lot of money, but in a ÂŁ30 billion budget, it is not so much. When the Scottish Government was promoting the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021, it spent ÂŁ400,000 or thereabouts on that. A third of the budget for a commissioner was spent, not on introducing that act, but simply advertising it on social media and through other forms of communication. The cost for the commissioner sounds like a lot of money, but it is not in real terms, and this is something that needs to happen.

Two weeks ago, we heard that, although the Government was going to commit £10 million to changing places toilets—that money has been promised for the past four to five years—that has now been taken away. If that had related to another protected characteristic, there would have been outrage in the Parliament, and people would have been emailing and writing to members. However, because it has happened to disabled people and, looking at it realistically, because of all the problems that they have, there has not been much of a campaign on the issue. However, that will be a massive blow to many people with disabilities.

The commissioner is an investment in relation to what the Government, local authorities and other public bodies do. We are setting this up over the long term; it is not just a one-year budget decision. I think that it is worth funding the commissioner until that review, if it ever takes place.

Social Justice and Social Security Committee

Pre-budget Scrutiny 2025-26

Meeting date: 12 September 2024

Jeremy Balfour

Good morning. I will start with funding, and specifically multiyear funding. From your experience in your different organisations, what is the benefit of multiyear funding? Are there any disadvantages to multiyear funding? You probably want it for 100 years but, realistically, what timescale are we looking at for multiyear funding? Is it two, three or five years? From your experience, what would work best? We will start with Judith Turbyne and work our way along the line of witnesses.

Social Justice and Social Security Committee

Pre-budget Scrutiny 2025-26

Meeting date: 12 September 2024

Jeremy Balfour

I will follow up on that briefly. Obviously the money itself is important, but is there, to a degree, a perception of work in the third sector that is based on the funding model? The Government guarantees funding for public bodies and public services for indefinite periods, so a doctor or someone who works in the Parliament knows that they are going to get paid, and have a job, next year, but that is not true for the third sector. Does that affect recruitment, because people do not want that lack of stability?

Social Justice and Social Security Committee

Pre-budget Scrutiny 2025-26

Meeting date: 12 September 2024

Jeremy Balfour

I see the problem that you are outlining, Rachel, but what is the solution? How do we get around that problem?

Social Justice and Social Security Committee

Pre-budget Scrutiny 2025-26

Meeting date: 12 September 2024

Jeremy Balfour

I want to address one other issue, convener.