The future: in whose hands?

The future: in whose hands?

One in five UK adults has a disability - meaning the disabled voice is becoming ever more varied. But are policy-makers listening?

Disabled people in Britain are members of an ever more diverse community - pretty much like the wider UK society. More than 11 million disabled adults in the UK have protection under the Disability Discrimination Act - one in five of the total adult population. And they are not just more diverse but also increasingly visible, vocal and high-profile - even our prime minister has a visual impairment.

Many of these groups are growing. The number of disabled children in the UK has risen by more than half since 1981, from 500,000 to 770,000, according to the government's 2005 Life Chances report.

Diagnoses of people on the autistic spectrum and of those experiencing mental distress are also on the rise; and we live in a society with an ageing population, where limited improvements in healthy life expectancy point towards an increase in age-related impairment and disability.

The Alzheimer's Society estimates there will be more than a million people with dementia in the UK by 2025, while the World Health Organisation suggests that depression will be the second most common form of ill-health by 2020.

But it is not all doom and gloom. We are developing services and understanding that can help individuals - and society as a whole - manage changing needs. Technology, for example, has an increasing role and impact, from helping people to live more independently to medical intervention and screening.

But it brings tensions and contradictions with it. Doctors are able to save the lives of children born very prematurely - and thus more at risk of disability, from a very early age - but also offer terminations to pregnant mothers who do not want their babies to be born disabled.

Tom Shakespeare, who is both disabled and a bioethicist, is the author of Disability Rights and Wrongs. Previously a research fellow at the University of Newcastle, writing widely on disability and bioethics, Shakespeare accepts it is \"paradoxical\" that medicine both prevents and saves the lives of people with impairments. \"My own view is that it is right [and ethical] to prevent impairment where possible. But equally, doctors should make every effort to save the lives of premature newborns and, indeed, disabled people at all stages of life.\"

And how will protection for disabled people change to cater for the growing and disparate population? Until 2007, this job was done by the Disability Rights Commission (DRC) but this has since been replaced by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), a new \"super\" commission that has also assumed the duties of the Commission for Racial Equality and the Equal Opportunities Commission.

Joining forces

Many mourned the DRC's passing, fearing the new body would relegate disability issues to the bottom of the equality hierarchy. But there was also acknowledgement that the agenda was changing and it was time to move on; some argued that the disability movement had to join with other groups facing discrimination, such as older people.

Sir Bert Massie, previously chairman of the DRC and now commissioner with the new EHRC, accepts that the EHRC is a different entity.

\"It was inevitable that the EHRC would fail to serve disabled people in the same way as the DRC, but it has supported a number of disabled people bringing legal cases. I expect that in the future there will be more emphasis on the human rights of disabled people. Equality law provides equal treatment but human rights set a standard below which no one should fall.\"

The growth in the numbers of older people remains the biggest test. According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), men born in 2006 have an average life expectancy of 88 years. The ONS also calculates the number of people aged 65 and over is expected to rise by more than 60% in the next 25 years, to nearly 16 million in 2031.

For many, these figures underline the importance of enshrining independent living - and all it entails - as a right.

Veteran disability campaigner Lord Ashley of Stoke has been leading the parliamentary battle to get his Independent Living Bill on the statute books. The bill has received wide support from the House of Lords, as well as disabled people, but has yet to get support from the government.

\"This bill will allow disabled people to choose for themselves what they want and where they want to live, rather than having to accept the diktat of authority,\" he says. \"The progress made so far is an indication that disability legislation has come in out of the cold. It will transform the lives of millions of disabled people and put disability on a par with all other important subjects in parliament.\"

Whatever the law-makers decide, the challenge remains to provide services, support and empowerment to those who need it. Disability will touch most of our lives in one form or other, and have an impact on individuals, their families and their communities.

From www.guardian.co.uk/beyondboundarieslive/the-future