Policy paper

National Disability Strategy, Part 2: disabled people's everyday experience at the heart of government policy making and service delivery

Updated 2 December 2022

This was published under the 2019 to 2022 Johnson Conservative government

Presented to Parliament by the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions by Command of Her Majesty, July 2021
Command paper number: CP 512
ISBN: 978-1-5286-2841-9
© Crown copyright 2021

The National Disability Strategy sets out the actions the government will take to improve the everyday lives of all disabled people. It has 4 sections:

• Introduction including forewords and executive summary
• Part 1: immediate commitments to improving disabled people’s lives
• Part 2 (this section)
• Part 3: summary of actions each government department will take

See the main publication page for alternative formats.

Disabled people at the heart of government policy making and service delivery

This strategy recognises that how the UK government works is as important as what it does. Changing this will require sustained effort.

The commitments in this chapter will be led by the Cabinet Office and the Disability Unit and are intended to drive change in all departments. The delivery of the commitments will be underpinned by 5 areas that will guide our approach to disability:

1. Ensure fairness and equality – we will empower disabled people by promoting fairness and equality in opportunities, outcomes and experiences, including work
2. Consider disability from the start – we will embed inclusive and accessible approaches and services to avoid creating disabling experiences from the outset
3. Support independent living – we will actively encourage initiatives that support all disabled people to have choice and control in life
4. Increase participation – we will enable greater inclusion of a diverse disabled population in the development and delivery of services, products and policies
5. Deliver joined up responses – we will work across organisational boundaries and improve data and evidence to better understand and respond to complex issues that affect disabled people

Transforming evidence and data

We will build a more complete, authoritative and transparent evidence base about the needs of disabled people, including everyday experience as a key element.

We will draw directly on insights from disabled people, foregrounding disabled people’s everyday experiences as we do this. We will also work with disabled people’s organisations, disability charities and academics, among others.

The Disability Unit will lead a multi-year programme to improve the availability, quality, relevance and comparability of government disability data, coordinated through:

• a cross-government group responsible for overseeing and implementing data improvement plans
• a panel of experts on the lived experience of disabled people to assess findings from research and to provide advice on data improvement projects.

By January 2022, the Disability Unit will begin regular disability surveys and monitor public perceptions of disabled people and policies through the Office of National Statistics.

By summer 2022, the Disability Unit will publish the first in a series of cross-government harmonised disability data. We will encourage wider use of the harmonised standards for disability and impairment set out by the Government Statistical Service (GSS). This will allow us to better compare data collected by different government departments.

This work will be complemented by commitments from other government departments and agencies to develop their evidence base and harmonise their data.

Reforming government procurement to drive better outcomes for disabled people

Central government spends around £49 billion a year on goods and services.

We are committed to leveraging this huge government procurement spend to drive improved outcomes for disabled people.

The new Social Value Model of public procurement came into force in January 2021. Commercial teams across government use the model to assess and evaluate the social value offered in tenders, and to manage and measure the social value delivered in contracts.

Priority outcomes include reducing the disability employment gap, promoting equality of opportunity, and supporting physical and mental health in the contract workforce.

This year (2021), the Cabinet Office will create a Disability Commissioning Taskforce of disabled people’s user-led organisations to improve disability organisations’ access to government contracts.

The Taskforce will be chaired by the Champion of the Social Value Act, Claire Dove CBE.

We will go further and appoint the first Disability Crown Representative.

Crown Representatives help the government to act as a single customer. They work across departments to ensure that a coherent, strategic view of the government’s needs is communicated to potential suppliers.

Appointing a Disability Crown Representative will help to ensure that the case for inclusion is more strongly and consistently conveyed to businesses, so that they invest in - and realise the commercial benefits of - inclusive business.

Cabinet Office will appoint a Disability Crown Representative to help unlock the innovation and economic benefits of disability inclusion through the government’s commercial activities by March 2022.

Enhancing our engagement with disabled people

We want to build on the best models of engagement and to ensure we are engaging with a diverse group of disabled people.

To improve the way we engage:

By December 2021, the Disability Unit will review the way the UK government engages with disabled people, in discussion with disabled people, disabled people’s organisations and charities.

We will be mindful in our review of our responsibilities under the UNCRPD.

Ensuring that our communications are accessible

We will continue to build on the principles outlined by the Government Communication Service to ensure that all government information is as accessible and inclusive as possible. This includes ensuring that our language is inclusive and that we are mindful of how we portray disability. We will use a range of communication channels to reach disabled people and a range of accessible formats where appropriate including British Sign Language, Braille and EasyRead.

We will continue consultation with disabled people and disabled people led organisations when we consider how best to do this.

We will build on the work we have done as part of the COVID-19 communications hub. The Cabinet Office communications team worked closely with disability stakeholders to create a Disability Communications Working Group, to ensure that the government’s COVID-19 messages and information reached disabled people and those with accessibility needs.

The Cabinet Office continues to work with other departments and local authorities to make sure that core COVID-19 announcements are available in accessible formats and that these formats are available as soon as possible after announcements. This includes BSL video and audio, EasyRead and large text formats. Lessons learnt from COVID-19 communications will inform future communication strategies and campaigns.

The Cabinet Office will:

• ensure a nominated senior civil servant continues to champion accessible communications across government
• seek regular feedback from different groups of stakeholders to ensure we are able to communicate effectively with people with different disabilities • identify and seek collaborative ways to co-create communications and continue sharing accessible formats

A world-leading Centre for Assistive and Accessible Technology

The COVID-19 pandemic has increased the importance of assistive and accessible technology for many disabled people and reminded us that access to the right technology is key to unlocking greater inclusion.

Some progress has been made: many Jobcentres now have computers with assistive technology to be used by DWP customers. However, examples of good practice have not yet become commonplace, leading to a patchwork of services, often not designed around disabled peoples’ needs and involving avoidable inefficiencies. For example, someone may use assistive technology at a Jobcentre to apply for a job but then find they are unable to use this technology at home to prepare for the interview because their social care assessment focuses on technology for daily living.

The Disability Unit will invest up to £1 million in 2021 to 2022 to develop a new Centre for Assistive and Accessible Technology, reporting on progress by summer 2022.

We would like to make the UK the most accessible place in the world to live and work with technology.

The Disability Unit will assess the assistive and accessible technology needs of disabled people in England, to establish where these are being met and where improvements can and should be made.

The aims of the Centre will be developed further over the coming months in dialogue with disabled people, business and the public sector, but could include:

• acting as a central source of evidence and expertise that supports local assistive and accessible technology services to better assess and meet peoples’ needs and keep pace with technological innovations
• piloting and helping to scale new models of delivering technology in a more joined-up, cost-effective and user-friendly way, including exploring a ‘lifelong’ provision model
• ensuring more effective awareness raising, training and support for disabled people to use the technology, to maximise its potential to improve lives
• encouraging the technology sector to work with disabled people when developing new products, improving design and usability for all consumers

Leading internationally

The UK has long championed disabled people on the international stage.

The UK was instrumental in the development of the UNCRPD and our academics, together with academics in the US, have been at the forefront of new developments in disability theory and practice. The 1970 Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act was the first piece of legislation in the world to recognise and give rights to disabled people, and we appointed the first Minister for Disabled People in the world in 1974. More recently, in 2018 the UK co-hosted the Global Disability Summit, a landmark moment for global disability rights which led to a set of 170 commitments being made by national governments, multilaterals, the private sector and civil society. We have set standards that others have followed.

We will continue this global leadership. We will share lessons and progress on our strategy commitments through engagement on the international stage including the UNCRPD reporting process led by the Disability Unit.

The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) will continue its global leadership on disability rights and commits to:

• launching the enhanced FCDO Disability Inclusion Strategy and embedding disability rights in the new International Development Strategy in 2021
• making the UK’s Official Development Assistance spend - £10 billion in financial year 2021 to 2022 - disability inclusive
• establishing a new FCDO External Disability Board, first meeting to take place by December 2021, to inform our international work on disability rights and inclusion

Tracking progress

We have set out the immediate action government departments will take to improve disabled people’s everyday lives.

We will publish an annual report which summarises the progress we have made in implementing the strategy. To ensure that the immediate actions we have committed to in this strategy are taken forward in a timely manner, we will publish the first of these annual reports by summer 2022. This report will:

• detail progress made on the departmental actions outlined
• assess progress on delivery of the 5 elements across government
• update on the additional action we will take on crime, social participation, and accessible products and services

We want disabled people across the UK to experience the same positive outcomes as non-disabled people. We will continue to track progress in a range of areas:

• employment – around half of disabled people aged 16 to 64 years in the UK were in employment compared with around 8 in 10 for non-disabled people^{[footnote 1]}
• education – 23% of disabled people aged 21 to 64 years in the UK had a degree as their highest qualification compared with 39% of non-disabled people^{[footnote 2]}
• loneliness and well-being – the proportion of disabled people who reported feeling lonely “often or always” is almost 4 times that of non-disabled people^{[footnote 3]}
• victims of crime – around 1 in 7 disabled people aged 16 to 59 years in England and Wales experienced domestic abuse in the last 12 months, compared with about 1 in 20 non-disabled people^{[footnote 4]}

We recognise that these measures, which we regularly report on through the Office for National Statistics, do not tell the full story. These measures do not necessarily reflect disabled people’s everyday experience, and they do not reflect the experience of disabled children and their families.

For that reason, we will also be co-developing new indicators with disabled people to track progress in implementing this strategy. The true measure of this strategy’s success will be whether disabled people feel their lives have improved.

By summer 2022 the Disability Unit will publish, following engagement with disabled people, a set of indicators and a dashboard to track the impact of the National Disability Strategy.

Ministerial Disability Champions have committed to personally drive the implementation of their department’s commitments in the strategy.

The Minister for Disabled People will chair a quarterly meeting of the Ministerial Disability Champions to drive progress.

1. Outcomes for disabled people, UK: 2020 ↩

2. Outcomes for disabled people, UK: 2020 ↩

3. Outcomes for disabled people, UK: 2020 ↩

4. Outcomes for disabled people, UK: 2020 ↩