Debate contribution: United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities

Debate contribution by Mr Danny Donnelly on 25 November 2024.

MLA

Mr Danny Donnelly

Party at the time

Alliance Party

Date

25 November 2024

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Private Members' Business

Heading

United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4675164

Read the official Assembly record

Text

I beg to move

I rise to propose the motion, which calls for the incorporation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons With Disabilities into Northern Ireland law as an important step towards a more equitable legislative framework for people with disabilities. I am aware of the huge amount of work that has been done over many years by disability rights activists and deaf and disabled people's organisations (DDPOs) in Northern Ireland. The principle of "Nothing about us without us" was at the heart of the UNCRPD when it was forged in 2006 by deaf and disabled people from around the world. I have had the privilege of meeting and discussing disability rights with many of those passionate and driven activists and groups. The UNCRPD is regularly raised as the gold standard of disability-based rights, and its incorporation would have a profoundly positive impact on deaf and disabled people in Northern Ireland. Local disability activist Joanne Sansome stated:

"As a community of people with disabilities, passing this motion will give us all the needed platform of possibility that we need to gain our rights — rights protected from the capacity argument, allowing us to one day feel like we belong as citizens, with our unique potentials recognised in law — and to dream, aspire and achieve a reality and a life with meaningful choice in how we live life and truly belong together in a society, lawfully inclusive. Together, we are all stronger, and this place can become more than a place of birth: a place that feels like home."

In the 2021 census, 463,000 people in Northern Ireland stated that they had a long-term health problem or a disability that limited their day-to-day activities. That is 24·3% of the population of Northern Ireland, and it represents a 25% increase from the 2011 census. To date, the Assembly and the Executive have failed to legislate adequately to improve the lives of people with disabilities, while previous Assemblies did not address the growing gap in equality legislation between Northern Ireland and the rest of these islands. Equality legislation in Northern Ireland is covered by several pieces of legislation, most of which precede the creation of the Assembly. They cover equal pay, sex discrimination, race relations and fair employment, but the most significant of them is the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 (DDA). The Northern Ireland Act 1998 introduced a wider range of protections for specified groups under section 75, which was rightly recognised at the time for its innovative approach to equality policy. We also have the continuation of EU non-discrimination law as a consequence of the Windsor framework, article 2 of which commits that equality laws must not be diminished as a result of the UK's leaving the EU. We have the European Convention on Human Rights, which, despite what some Conservative MPs in Westminster have said, is a fundamental part of our peace process and the Good Friday Agreement. All of those attempts to legislate for disability rights have come from elsewhere, mainly Westminster, Brussels or Strasbourg. The Assembly has failed to maintain parity with the rest of the UK on equality legislation. In Great Britain, the Equality Act 2010 —.

Certainly.

Thank you for that. I absolutely agree with the Member. That it what we are directing the Assembly towards. In Great Britain, the Equality Act 2010 consolidated the previously mentioned Acts in a single framework. That is important, as it allows individuals in GB to bring cases of dual discrimination, whereas cases here can be brought only on individual protected characteristics. The 2010 Act also provides a greater range of protections for individuals, whereas the 1995 Act, which continues to apply in Northern Ireland, is more closely linked to employment rights and reasonable adjustments and is narrower in scope than the 2010 Act. While the new Labour Government have committed to strengthening equality legislation and enacting certain parts of the 2010 Act, including the duty to reduce socio-economic disadvantage, there was no reference to the UNCRPD in Labour's manifesto. That was disappointing. We cannot ask Westminster to consolidate our equality legislation. We in the Assembly should take responsibility for doing that. One way of achieving that would be to incorporate the UNCRPD into domestic law, which Mr Dickson referred to. The UNCRPD is an international agreement that was introduced by the UN in 2006, signed in 2007 and ratified by the UK in 2009. Countries that have signed the convention are required to promote, protect and ensure that people with disabilities enjoy full equality in all aspects of life and full enjoyment of human rights. It is intended to shift the conversation on disability rights to viewing people with disabilities as full and equal members of society. It notably includes a social model of disability that does not seek to define specifically what a disability is, which is appropriate, given that there is a wide range of disabilities, not all of which are physical or visible. The UNCRPD also includes a wide range of civil and political rights, such as the right to independent living, equality before the law and access to justice, and economic and social rights, such as the right to education, the right to health and the right to work and employment on an equal basis with others. The United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) conducts reviews of signatory countries and assesses the extent to which they are following their obligations under the UNCRPD. The most recent review of the UK, which was published in March this year, found that it had failed to make any significant progress on delivering its recommendations. Those were outlined in a previous review in 2017. The review specifically found that Northern Ireland faces huge pressures from the loss of EU funds and the austerity policies pursued by the then Conservative Government. It highlighted how disabled people here are 50% more likely to live in poverty, yet the existing disability benefits often fail to cover the costs of the consequences of disability.

In some cases, that can lead to disabled people being targets for financial exploitation and illegal lending, as happened during the recent economic crisis. That reiterates the urgent need for legislative action to protect people with disabilities in Northern Ireland. Dermot Devlin from My Way Access told me:

"I was in the UN headquarters in Geneva to witness the United Nations slam the UK Government on their failures to implement the UNCRPD, which is a breach of human rights. The unstable Government in Northern Ireland has failed disabled people here".

With the Executive now restored, bringing forward, in conjunction with DDPOs, a disability strategy that addresses the UNCRPD recommendations must be an absolute priority. Without the Equality Act 2010, disabled people in Northern Ireland have no legal protections. As Dermot highlighted, the inquiry report highlights the point that political instability, especially the absence of decision-making when the Assembly was not functioning for five out of the past eight years, has a disproportionate impact on people with disabilities. That is a strong reminder that institutional reform is needed to prevent the Assembly from collapsing ever again because of one party's withdrawal. In 2022, the Equality Commission and Disability Action published a report titled 'Progress Towards the Implementation of the UNCRPD in Northern Ireland'. The authors were Nuala Toman, Tony O'Reilly, Michael McConway, Andrew Hamilton and Emma O'Neill. The report is remarkably detailed and provides strong examples of how Northern Ireland policy and legislation are out of touch with the UNCRPD and each of its substantive articles. I do not have time to discuss every section, but I will highlight a few examples and encourage all Members to read the report. Concerns raised by people with disabilities in response to the report included the regression of rights, including the continued impact of welfare reform; reductions in social care funding; the closure of the independent living fund to new applicants; the continued lack of accessible transport and public services; the impact of Brexit; the impact of COVID-19, including the collapse of services, inappropriate use of do not resuscitate notices and withdrawal of medical treatment; the reduction of public finance budgets and impact of austerity on public service delivery; and the under-resourcing of disabled people's organisations. Some of those could and should be addressed without direct reference to the UNCRPD. However, as we have seen in the rest of the UK, it is more appropriate to address the inequalities faced by people with disabilities in a single equality Bill. A Bill seeking to incorporate the UNCRPD into our domestic law would be a positive step in that respect. I welcome the progress that we have seen to date on the development of a disability strategy, and I look forward to the hearing the comments of the Minister for Communities. I am hopeful that the strategy and its next steps are a key priority for him and the Department. In particular, I hope that, as part of that work, consideration is given to the benefits of incorporating the UNCRPD into legislation here in Northern Ireland. Just recently, we saw the Scottish Parliament take the lead on another important human rights treaty, the United Nation Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), and incorporate it into its domestic law. It is possible for devolved legislatures to seek to legally incorporate treaties to which the UK is party. Christine McClements, who has been campaigning for years for the provision of changing places and bathrooms in public spaces across Northern Ireland, stated:

"My amazing 16-year-old severely disabled daughter, Lilia, and all other disabled people need to have properly enforceable rights that respect and protect their full and equal citizenship, that place them at the heart of their communities and of decision-making for the provision of public services. Too often, disabled children and adults are left out or left behind when their essential access" —

Sorry?

I am sorry, Deputy Speaker. I did not see the clock.

OK.

"Too often, disabled children and adults are left behind and left out when their essential access and inclusion needs are viewed as an optional extra, subject to separate costings or levels of scrutiny".

1,703 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

Not flagged

Jev’s structured answers

Assessed 21 October 2026 at 11:40 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

Disagree with this assessment?

Classifications can be challenged. A person reads every challenge, and any change is recorded publicly above with its reason.

Challenge this classification