No doubt Keir Starmer, the new prime minister, and Stephen Timms, the new minister for social security and disability, know that their government has work to do when it comes to ensuring disabled people (and other groups facing discrimination) have access to meaningful rights. The press may be focusing on winter fuel payment cuts, but disabled people have many other legitimate and systemic concerns that the government should take seriously.

A little-known part of the Brexiteers’ political agenda was the effect of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act (EU(W)A) 2018 in putting disabled people off from using domestic courts to challenge UK law as not compliant with international rights provided by the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD). Previous rights to do that were created by the now-defunct European Communities Act (ECA) 1972, which was primarily concerned with making sure UK law complied with European law. It was, in effect, an international baby being thrown out with the European bathwater.

Even more worrying, the EU(W)A 2018 breached (and continues to breach) UNCRPD article 5(2), under which the UK government has agreed that it shall:

This is not just ‘a lawyer’s point’ but has real consequences. Disabled people’s international rights that UNCRPD allows – and to which the UK government signed up in 1992 – are legion, including:

These are fundamental rights that all disabled people should have.

The UK government is blocking:

Under UNCPRD article 29, participation in political and public life is guaranteed to all disabled people, including, without discrimination and on an equal basis with others:

Why is the UNCRPD so important? An example: Tanni Grey-Thompson is a champion of these rights within the House of Lords, of which she is a member. She was discriminated against by being left high and dry and forced to crawl off a train when the assistance she had booked did not arrive.1Adriana Elgueta, ‘Tanni Grey-Thompson forced to “crawl off” train’, BBC News, 27 August 2024. I do not know what she thinks the motivation for that treatment was, but she would not be the first disabled person to be discriminated against precisely for standing up for the rights of the disabled community. The UNCRPD protects her from discrimination due to that reason; UK law, it seems, doesn’t.

The truth is that such an important document as the UNCRPD is still very much unknown, not only to the British public, but shockingly to lawyers and to judges. What is needed is an Act of Parliament confirming that the UK parliament will respect it the manner that it was respected under the ECA 1972.

But, prior to that, the UK has a duty under UNCRPD article 4(3) that:

Before that proposed Act, representative organisations of disabled people need to be consulted. What form that consultation should take and who needs to be consulted must be considered.

The Labour party has unique experience of doing this: the Labour-led Welsh government consulted with disabled people in 2023.2Consultation on the strategic Equality Plan 2024 to 2028: proposed principles of approach and objectives, Welsh government, 13 November 2023. Disabled people have something to say, so let them say it. Anything less would be immoral and, more to the point, a breach of international law.