At a rally for the disabled just days before the general elections, a series of election candidates were caught falsifying party policies in front of an audience of disabled people.
The event in Bristol was organised by five disability organisations* who wanted to enable disabled people to question candidates standing in Bristol’s different constituencies in next week’s election.
The Conservatives, Green Party, Liberal Democrats and Reform UK all fielded candidates in one of Bristol’s five constituencies, while Labour only fielded city councillor Kelvin Blake.
Mr Blake explained to the audience of voters that none of Labour’s five election candidates were able to attend because they were “obviously very busy campaigning to get people’s votes”.
Following the incident, there was widespread dissatisfaction and concern that the five leaders had made statements that were not in line with their respective party manifestos or policies.
Mr Blake twice said a Labour government would put the right to independent living into law, telling the audience “we will change the law, we will put independent living into law”, before saying Labour would “basically put independent living into law”.
This is not a policy set out in the Labour manifesto, which simply promises that the new National Care Service will be “home-first, delivered locally, supporting people to live independently for as long as possible”.
Labour has in fact abandoned its previous commitment to introduce the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD), including the right to live independently, into UK law.
Rose Hulse, the Conservative candidate for Bristol North East, has said she wants to enshrine the entire Convention into UK law, a policy her party opposes.
She was responding to a question about a report released in April by the UN Committee on the Rights of People with Disabilities, which concluded the Conservative government had made no “significant progress” in the seven years since it was found guilty of “serious and systematic” breaches of the treaty.
But Hulse told the audience, “UN policy… is not currently part of the law. It should be part of the law. It needs to be codified in law.”
This is not Conservative policy and it is not in the Conservative manifesto.
Tony Sutcliffe, the Liberal Democrat candidate for Bristol East, spoke about his experience working in residential care and called for partial nationalisation of care homes.
He told the audience: “It’s absolutely critical that we try to bring all of this back into some kind of ownership, perhaps public ownership or a public-private ownership model.”
“But we need to do it in a way that takes the profit motive out of business and actually delivers housing where people can live, work and have a life worth living.”
There is no mention of such a policy in the Liberal Democrats’ manifesto.
Speaking in Bristol Central, Reform UK MP Robert Clarke said he believed disabled people should not have to “jump through hoops” to get benefits, saying the current system was “an absolute Kafkaesque nightmare and I know authorities and governments love it because it means they can pay as little as possible”.
But his own party’s manifesto says all assessments should be done face-to-face and that a reformist government would “make independent medical assessments mandatory to prove benefit entitlement” as well as save £15 billion a year by “putting more than a million people back to work”.
Green candidate Jay Breitnauer, the most well-informed of the five panelists, still appeared to be exaggerating promises about barrier-free housing in his party’s manifesto.
She told the audience that her party wants to build 150,000 new social housing units a year.
She said: “They will be affordable housing. They will be well-accessible, they will have good transport links.”
But the Greens manifesto does not promise that all this new housing will be accessible, only that the party will “ensure that the needs of older people, families with children, disabled people or those who require support through sheltered housing are properly met”.
Rick Burgess, from the Greater Manchester Coalition for Disabled People (GMCDP), said after the event that much of the information from the panellists did not reflect the parties’ manifestos.
“Nobody was happy with the level of information that the candidates generally provided,” he said.
“I don’t think any of them fully reflect the national manifesto.
“The political system has let us down. If it hasn’t been great, it’s the fault of the candidates who ran for office.”
The GMCDP is also supporting the National Disability Election Campaign, which is taking place in Manchester next week, two days before the general election.
One disability campaigner who attended the event, but asked not to be named, said: “It wasn’t useful information. Candidates were allowed to make up whatever they thought would please the audience without being told it lacked facts or didn’t resemble their party’s manifesto.”
“This wasn’t a way to hold anyone accountable (and in any case I think that’s a very naive campaign goal) because no one who came had any chance of winning.”
Alex Johnston, from the West of England Centre for Inclusive Living (WECIL), who chaired the event, said he “expected more from the audience” and wished that “slightly more challenging” questions had been asked.
He also criticised his own conduct as chairman of the event.
“Looking back, I could have done better, I could have understood each party’s manifesto more deeply and pressed the candidates harder on their policies,” he said.
But he added: “The lesson for me is that all these political parties would do well to read the Disability Manifesto.”
*Bristol: Regaining IndependenceWest of England Inclusive Living Centre, Disability Rights UK, Inclusion London, Greater Manchester Disability Alliance
Pictured: (left to right) Tony Sutcliffe, Rose Hulse, Robert Clarke
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