The Greens have voted at their party conference in Manchester for a range of measures to tackle ableism in areas such as housing, transport, education and economic empowerment.
These include measures to:
- Incorporate the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disability into Welsh and English law
- Establish a Disabled People’s Commissioner of Wales and a Disabled Commissioner of England to ensure the enforcement of laws related to disabled people.
- Tackle the disability employment gap by introducing a legal requirement for employers to have Access to Work recommendations, report pay inequality towards disabled employees and mandate that specific leave for disability be recorded separately from sick leave.
- Expand the existing apprenticeship scheme and improve access to higher education for disabled people. As well as ensuring all teachers receive SEND (Special Educational Needs and Disabilities) training.
- Invest in improving accessibility on public transport, as well as fairer and more accessible form of transport costs, including more flexible journey ticket prices and part-time hours.
- Invest in adapting homes to meet the needs of disabled people as well as stronger protections for disabled renters.
Deputy Leader of the Green Party Zack Polanski said: “All disabled people, including those with profound learning disabilities, deserve to have a healthy life worth living.
Tragically, austerity had a terrible impact on the lives on disabled people in Britain, with research showing that disabled people were four times worse off because of welfare benefit changes [1] compared to non-disabled people. This culminated in the Covid pandemic, where shockingly in the first wave 6 out of 10 of those who died were disabled [2].
These changes would mean that the rights of disabled people would have to be considered when enacting every law in the Senedd and in Westminster. They would re-organise society in a way that would remove the barriers to disabled people participating fully in mainstream society.”