DISABLED PERSONS (EMPLOYMENT) BILL (Hansard, 22 May 1958)

EARL BATHURST
My Lords, this is an enabling Bill. It enables my right honourable friend the Minister of Labour to carry out, so far as legislation is concerned, the recommendations that were laid before your Lordships in the Piercy Report. I know that your Lordships would wish me, at this stage to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Piercy and his Committee on the Report that they gave to my right honourable friends the Minister of Labour and the Minister of Health. The Committee was set up in 1953 and in 1956 reported to my right honourable friends upon the rehabilitation, training and resettlement of disabled persons. That Report received acclaim from your Lordships' House and generally throughout the country.
But legislation alone cannot help to solve the tragedy of the disabled person; what is needed is rather a united effort by every fit member of society to help to find a place for the disabled person. Again, at this stage I would wish to pay tribute to all who help disabled persons in any way. My right honourable friends and their staffs, at all levels in their Departments, the voluntary organisations, the officers and members and the staffs of those organisations, both ex-Service and civil, for both adults and children, all play a tremendous part in the resettlement of disabled people. Finally, let us not forget the relatives and friends, and the countless numbers of ordinary people who, in some way or another, help disabled persons, be it by their own efforts or by subscribing on a flag day to one of the organisations that I have men- 610 tioned. The noble Lord, Lord Piercy, and his Committee pay full due and appreciation to these bodies and these people, and describe their work in great detail in their Report.
Clause 1 of this Bill enables industrial rehabilitation and training under the Disabled Persons (Employment) Act, 1944, to be given to a boy or girl immediately upon leaving school on attaining the minimum school leaving age of fifteen. Previously those courses could be given to the boy or girl only at sixteen. In no way does it affect the school leaving age of a special school, the minimum age of which is left, as at present, at sixteen. Clause 2 (1) makes it a condition for registration that a disability must be expected to last at least one year, instead.of the six months as is at present the case. The reasons for that are fully described in paragraph 161 of the Report of the Committee. Subsection (2) allows a disabled person voluntarily to remove his or her name from the register. That is not the case at present.
Clause 3 and the Schedule are the complicated and possibly wordy part of this short Bill. The Report of the noble Lord, Lord Piercy recommended, in paragraphs 201 and 207, that all provisions regarding registered disabled persons who are gainfully employed should be transferred under the auspices of this Bill to my right honourable friend the Minister of Labour, and, at the same time, that they should be separated from the provisions for disabled persons for whom employment, owing to the nature of their disability, could be only but a welfare occupation or treated as some phase in their recuperation and treatment. The provisions for this latter class of people will continue to be under the National Assistance Act or the National Health Service Acts, and they will continue, as at present, to be the responsibility of my right honourable friend the Minister of Health. When I referred a moment ago to persons "gainfully employed" I meant persons working in a sheltered workshop for disabled persons, or working on their own for gain in their own home and in their own time. In conjunction with the Schedule, Clause 3 puts these recommendations from the Report into effect.
The relevant powers to local authorities under the National Assistance Act, 611 and the National Health Service Act, 1946, are therefore cancelled and transferred to this Bill under the auspices of my right honourable friend the Minister of Labour. All the existing schemes which are carried on by local authorities or other bodies will be carried on in exactly the same way as at present, including the duty which is delegated to local authorities to provide sheltered employment for the blind. Your Lordships have warmly commended the Report of the noble Lord, Lord Piercy, and I think you will agree that Her Majesty's Government, and especially my right honourable friends and their advisers, deserve great credit for so promptly implementing the legislative recommendations that this Report advised. My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be given a Second Reading.

§ THE EARL OF LUCAN
My Lords, we are grateful to the noble Earl for the concise and clear way in which he has explained this Bill, which is in some ways rather abstruse, because the majority of your Lordships are not, I think, deeply acquainted with all the legislation, Reports and investigations that have gone into the treatment of disabled persons. As was pointed out in another place, I think, the mere fact that the word "cripple" is hardly ever heard nowadays—we use the term "disabled person" or "handicapped person" and so on—is an indication of the changed attitude on the part of our society, which we believe to be more or less civilised, and possibly getting more civilised.
The Bill itself and the Report of my noble friend Lord Piercy are evidence of the responsibility that society feels for those who, by some misfortune or other, are physically disabled. I think it should be noted that the Report that was the forerunner of this Bill is entitled, The Rehabilitation, Training and Resettlement of Disabled Persons. We should remember that the ultimate aim is always to rehabilitate such people—in other words, to give them a chance of living as nearly as possible normal lives. It appears from what the noble Earl has told us that the provisions 612 of this Bill implement the remaining recommendations of the Report. I believe that there were forty-six recommendations in the Report, of which forty required no legislative action; therefore, the passing of this Bill will, we hope, see the fulfilment of all the recommendations in the Report. We on this side wholeheartedly support the Bill and should like to be associated with the words of appreciation used by the noble Earl of those concerned with assistance to disabled persons.

§ LORD BURDEN
My Lords, since this Bill is likely to impose additional costs on local authorities, in view of what we believe will be the restrictive character of the block grant. I would ask whether, if and when the block grant comes into operation, consideration will be given to this point. It is not, of course, a matter that we can discuss now, and I mention it only in passing.

§ LORD McCORQUODALE OF NEWTON
My Lords, I wonder if I might take up your Lordships' time for one moment—because I was privileged to be Joint Parliamentary Secretary, with Mr. George Tomlinson, to the Ministry of Labour and National Service in 1944 when the first Bill and the whole scheme was introduced; and it was to Mr. George Tomlinson, above all others, that this country owes its modern conception of the rehabilitation and reinstatement of disabled persons. For it is under the Act passed in 1944 that this work has been carried on for fourteen years, and if Mr. George Tomlinson were here today I am quite sure he would bless these Amendments and improvements in his Act and would hope that the work would continue and prosper even further.

EARL BATHURST
My Lords, I should like to thank the noble and gallant Earl for his kind remarks about this Bill. It was for the very reasons he mentioned that the Piercy Report recommended that rehabilitation should be treated differently from welfare and those cases which could never recover. That is exactly the object of this Bill and I am most pleased that the noble and gallant Earl brought forward that point. It may interest the noble Earl if I give one example of how far rehabilitation is progressing. The Remploy firm, for 613 instance, have 250 men leaving their services every year and going out into industry. I am afraid that that is the only figure I have, but there must be many other similar figures applying to voluntary societies. I want to give the noble Lord, Lord Burden, a hearty assurance that neither block grants nor any other kind of grant will affect the provisions of this Bill. The finance will be carried out in exactly the same manner as at present, except that it will all be done by my right honourable friend the Minister of Labour and National Service.

§ LORD BURDEN
I thank the noble Earl.

EARL BATHURST
I am most grateful to the noble Lord, Lord McCorquodale of Newton, for his kind remarks with regard to Mr. George Tomlinson. I did not feel it was fitting that I should make those remarks—

§ LORD BURDEN
Why not?

EARL BATHURST
—being such a very junior person, but I should like to say that a very near relative of mine was most closely involved with the noble Lord, as he now is, and with Mr. George Tomlinson, with this Act in those days in another place.