§ 20. Mr. Ashleyasked the Secretary of State for Social Services if he will make a statement on progress in implementing the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act.
§ Mr. Alfred MorrisThe latest information available to me indicates that there has been further substantial progress in the past year. The provisional total number of people registered as permanently and substantially handicapped in England on 31st March 1976 was 854,000, representing a net increase of 88,000 over the previous year. The figure of 854,000 on the registers on 31st March 1976 compares with 405,000 when the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Bill received the Royal Assent in 1970. The estimated number of households helped under Section 2 of the Act was 300,000 last year, an increase of 67,000 over the previous year.
These returns do not, of course, represent the only criteria for measuring progress in implementing the Act. As my hon. Friend knows, the Act is very wideranging in its concern with the rights and needs of disabled people. The general improvement that there has been in public attitudes to disabled people since the Act became law is also reflected in, for example, the fact that the number of younger disabled people unsuitably accommodated in institutions has fallen significantly during the past few years. Another example is the much increased attention now given to solving the problems for disabled people of gaining access to public and social buildings of all kinds. 93W The considerable change in public attitudes to the disabled in the past few years is enabling more and more disabled people to participate in those aspects of social life which able-bodied people take for granted.