Aff assumes engagement with the state is possible—past empirics don’t prove—welfare state reinforces social model of disability

The social model of disability and the concepts of ‘independent living’, and ‘user involvement’ or ‘co-production’. I want to look at the way governments have colonised and corrupted these ideas, and to start to identify some possible responses which may help with future progress on disability policies. The significant shifts in policies affecting disabled people’s lives which have taken place over the last 20 years have been influenced by organisations and individuals working both inside and outside the key decision-making bodies. Both approaches involve, to a greater or lesser extent, negotiating one’s way across the policy agenda and require degrees of manoeuvring to make progress. This can include adjusting one’s language to suit the prevailing discourse: many organisations now seeking funding find they need to use language which fits within the ‘Big Society’ agenda, whereas a few years ago it was politic to use terms such as ‘active citizenship’. Some policy agendas are more amenable to advancing disability equality than others: the human rights agenda, for example, has provided particularly fertile ground over the last ten years, leading to the UN Convention on the Rights of Disabled People, which is now being used by disabled people in Britain and elsewhere to pursue the goal of independent living. These are examples of the various ways in which people seize opportunities to work within dominant political agendas, in that disabled people (and progressive professionals and civil servants) seek out the words and phrases which will resonate with the dominant discourse. As Mike Oliver and Colin Barnes identify, the dilemma for disabled people’s organisations is that ‘To get too close to the Government is to risk incorporation and end up carrying out their proposals rather than ours. To move too far away is to risk marginalisation and eventual demise’ (Oliver and Barnes, 2006). One key example of past successes in finding opportunities within prevailing political agendas concerns the campaign for direct payments. The resulting legislation, passed by a Conservative government in 1996, fitted in with an agenda which sought the privatisation of services and an undermining of public sector trade unions. While disabled people’s organisations did not support such policies, we did – when making the case for direct payments – use language which fitted well with the individualist political framework which was becoming more and more dominant. Thus we emphasised disabled people’s rights to autonomy and self-determination, which resonated with the Conservative Government’s agenda; and drew attention to the way a lack of choice and control could undermine human rights, which then fitted well with New Labour’s agenda. My concern is that – in engaging with the dominant policy agendas – we have lost touch with more fundamental issues concerning the welfare state, and that we have, unintentionally, contributed towards a steady undermining of collective responsibility and redistribution. From my perspective, this matters because I do not believe that the alternative – a small state and a market of private providers – will deliver the opportunities and quality of life which disabled people should expect in the twenty-first century. 3 Introduction I should make it clear that it is not my intention to undermine or criticise the valuable work that disabled people’s organisations have done over the last 20 years, influencing governments to develop and implement policies intended to improve disabled people’s life chances. My research since 1990, and my subsequent work with the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit and the Office for Disability Issues, relied on the pioneering ideas and campaigns of disabled people and their organisations. Like them, I looked for, and took advantage of, whatever opportunities there were within the prevailing political climate – in the way I have described above. However, the current onslaught on services and benefits has led me to conclude that there is very little scope for making progress within the current political agenda. This discussion paper is an attempt to take stock and propose more fundamental changes which I believe are necessary if disabled people are ever to achieve full human and civil rights. Starting points From its earliest years, the disabled people’s movement has argued for a welfare state which would include user controlled, pro-active services, delivered within a framework of rights and entitlements and where there are meaningful rights of redress (see, for example, European Network on Independent Living, 1989). As Mike Oliver says: [the welfare state remains] an essential ingredient for the development of a truly inclusionary society. That is to say, a society in which both disabled and non-disabled people can participate and realise their full potential and where the notion of disability and all its associated deprivations are little more than a dim and distant memory. (Oliver and Barnes, 2009) This statement is predicated on the social model of disability, on the distinction made between ‘impairment’ and ‘disability’ and the contention that it is the disabling barriers of discriminatory attitudes, inaccessible environments, and lack of enabling supports which should be the focus of social policy. ‘Disability’ is the oppression and inequality that people with impairments experience as a result of these barriers, and it is possible to envisage a society in which these barriers are overcome. Linked to this is the argument that investing in the provision of support for disabled people will benefit society as a whole. Two of the key ways in which this vision was articulated during the late 1980s and 1990s are to be found in the various debates and campaigns around anti-disability discrimination legislation, and for independent living. The campaign for the Disability Discrimination Act, passed in 1995, brought about a shift away from a refusal by Parliament to even recognise that discrimination by employers and service providers existed, to an acceptance of the need for legislation to both outlaw discrimination and require the provision of adjustments to overcome barriers to equal access. This Act, and its successor passed in 2005, has the disadvantage of requiring a person to first establish that the nature and severity of their impairment comes within the definition of ‘disabled person’ laid down in the legislation and, in this respect, it is based on the medical model of disability. However, the requirement to make adjustments to the workplace or service provision in order to overcome the barriers experienced by people with impairments reflects a social model approach, although the requirement is limited by a definition of ‘reasonable’ which can include a judgement that an adjustment is too costly. A social model approach is also implicit in one part of the benefits system, the Disability Living Allowance (DLA) – a cash payment in recognition of the additional costs that are incurred as a result of impairment. The key feature of DLA (like the Attendance Allowance and Mobility Allowance which it replaced in 1992 for people of working age) is that it is not means-tested and as such is the only aspect of the benefit system which is implicitly based on creating a ‘level playing field’ for disabled people – in the same way that child benefit is intended to compensate for the additional costs of bringing up children