Interview with Anne Begg, Member of Parliament, U.K.

Q. What do you think has been the main impact of having you as a person with a disability in an elected position of power? You had your disability before you were elected, is that correct?

A. Yes, that's right. I've been in a wheelchair for 20 years. Since the condition I have is genetic, I was born with it, but my mobility started to be restricted when I was 16. So I've lived with my disability. I think that probably the biggest impact [of my being a MP]is that it breaks the taboo, the taboo that says that if you're blind or deaf, you can't possibly be a Member of Parliament. David Blunkett [Home Secretary] had broken that taboo about blindness, Jack Ashley [Member of the House of Lords] has broken the one about deafness. For me, if you've got a mobility impairment, then the myth is that you can't hold down a very high pressure job. My constituency is over 500 miles away from Westminister so I'm flying up and down every week. So it shows that someone with my kind of physical impairment can still lead an incredibly busy life and do the kind of traveling I do. You know, I'm just the same as anyone else, so there are no great problems. So that's the main impact, I think; more than anything, it shows it can be done and it's up to other people with disabilities to come in and do it too.

How disability experience has shaped her role as an MP

Q. Regarding the disability agenda, I saw that your Web site has references to a draft disability bill and a report on employment for all. Do you feel that your having a disability leads others to give more weight to what you have to say on disability issues?

A. When I was first elected, I was actually quite keen not to be seen as the disabled MP and, if anything, I probably shied away from even talking about disability issues. First of all, I tried to build a reputation for being an effective MP on behalf of my constituents who are not disabled, but who are the people who live in my district in Aberdeen. So the only way I could do it was by not becoming a mouthpiece for disabled people. I've been very keen to avoid that label because disabled people are not a homogeneous group, we've all got different views, different aspirations, different expectations and that often one person can't speak on behalf of all disabled people. However, that having been said, the longer I was an MP, the more I realized that obviously I had an expertise and a knowledge that many others didn't have, and I would be doing a disservice to large numbers of people if I didn't speak out from my own experience.

I do find that, especially when I speak on disability in Parliament, that people do listen and do take what I say more seriously because it's grounded in a personal experience that no one can really challenge, I suppose. And so gradually I have gotten more and more involved in disability issues, and especially in the areas of social policy, particularly getting disabled people into jobs. My interest is in social inclusion anyway, so, I suppose in pursuing that agenda I've made an effort to speak out on behalf of disabled people, to remind people that there are disabled women, for example. The reason I was in the Chamber on Monday was to remind people during the debate on the domestic violence bill that there are disabled women who have particular needs. These needs may not necessarily have been addressed by the agencies involved because they hadn't thought of disabled women as a distinct group that needs specific help, different from the help that other victims of domestic violence might need.

Q. It has been a problem in the U.S., particularly for women in institutions or with developmental disabilities who are quite often the victims of the people who are supposed to be helping them.

A. That's right. And that is the point--it's very hard to get out of that situation when the person who is the perpetrator of the violence is in charge of your care. And the bill that's going through the House of Commons at the moment does talk about vulnerable adults, and that would cover adults who have learning disabilities, but somebody like myself would not be described as a vulnerable adult. Yet there's no reason, if I were married, that I wouldn't necessarily be vulnerable to domestic violence as well. People from all walks of life, who to the outside world might seem very competent, holding down an important job and so forth, may still be victims of domestic violence when they go home. And how does someone in a wheelchair leave a home which has been adapted to her needs? These are the kind of issues I wanted to raise.

How Parliament relates to disabled Members

Q. Are you the first Member of Parliament who has had a disability?

A. No, the former MP, Jack Ashley is deaf. He was elected as an MP and then became deaf, so he was the first deaf MP. He's now in the House of Lords.

Q. But he developed his disability after being elected?

A. I think he was elected first, yes. I'm not sure of the medical background, but I think he must have been hearing at one time because the longest serving MP once said [in a conversation we had] that one of the things he feels most proud of was when Jack developed his deafness and was telling some of his colleagues that he thought he'd have to give up being an MP, others said to him, "No, don't, you owe it to the deaf community to prove that you can do it" so Jack stayed on as an MP until he retired and then was given a place in the House of Lords.

Q. So you're probably the first person [in the U.K.] who had a disability beforehand and then was elected to office?

A. Yes, I'm the first person to have been a full-time wheelchair user before being elected. Now obviously, MPs can get quite old, and some have acquired disabilities through aging, but I'm the first really full-time user of a wheelchair that's been elected to the House of Commons. There are three with previously existing disabilities in the House of Lords, but, of course, the Lords aren't elected. So I'm the first that actually had to face an election and that was another taboo that was broken because people said, "Oh, they won't elect someone who's got a disability." Well, I had no problem being elected. I've still got a very marginal seat, and yet I have to say I think my disability is more likely to keep me in my seat. It's been a positive advantage rather than any kind of disadvantage. The people know me; they recognize me. I've got a nice short name as well, which helps. And so I get publicity. We have a government with a huge majority, you know, so all of our MPs are struggling to get any kind of recognition. But it's been really easy for me; I haven't had to work very hard at all at getting publicity.

Reducing physical barriers in Parliament

Q. When you were elected, did they have to make any physical changes to the Chamber? Was any of that a problem?

A. There wasn't a big problem. They had been gradually upgrading the building over a number of years, I think, so by the time I was elected there already was access to most of the main areas. One of the glories of the building at Westminster is the terrace along the river, and that had already been ramped. I think the fact that there were people in wheelchairs in the House of Lords also helped. Our House of Commons doesn't have a sunken area; it's flat, and I just sit in the front row, so that wasn't a problem. But I'm now a chairperson, I'm a member of something called the Chairman's Panel, and we're appointed by the Speaker to act as Deputy Speakers on committees and things, and they of course have platforms that the chairman has to get up on, so that was a bit of a scramble because they had to come up with some ramps for me, but they've managed to do it. They've got portable ramps that have managed to get me onto all of the platforms in the various committee rooms. It's actually turned out to be easier to get onto the ramps for chairmen than it sometimes was to get into the main part of the committee seating areas, because our committee rooms have a lot of fixed furniture and clearances weren't quite wide enough. It was okay when I was pushing myself around in my old self-propelled wheelchair, but now I've got a big electric one that the House of Commons provided after the last general election.

The other thing that happened was that the present Speaker of the House of Commons, before the 1997 general election, was then chairman of the Ways and Means Committee and, as such, was responsible for the physical aspects of the building. We met at a conference in March of 1997, two months before the election, and he said, "How're you doing? Is it likely that you are going to win? I said, "It's looking really good." And he said, "Well, at the moment we can't do anything because there's a sitting Member there but as soon as we have a better idea, will you write to me with a list of what you think you might need, just so we can be forewarned before you're elected?" I had no idea what I would need but I guessed I'd need an office quite close to the Chamber and close to an accessible toilet. I also knew I would need a comfortable chair that I could get my feet up in (I have an electric chair that I sit in to do my work). So I put as many of these things as I could down on a sheet of paper. The first day I arrived after the general election, I got shown around into this wonderful, huge office that most MPs only dream about. So I was lucky in that respect.

Participation in Parliamentary committees

Q. Do you get to choose the committees you serve on, or are you appointed? And in either case, do any of them reflect your interest in disability issues?

A. It's a bit of both. You actually get appointed. If you've been very disloyal and such, then you're probably not necessarily going to get on the committee of your choice. But I wanted to be on the Work and Pensions Select Committee, which deals with the Department for Work and Pensions (where the Minister for Disabled People is located), and so that was my choice and I got it. With regard to bills going through the House, it's sort of common practice that if you want to sit on the committee dealing with a certain bill, you just let the folks know that you're interested. There's no guarantee that you'll get on it, but any time that I've expressed an interest in a bill with regard to disability, I've always been appointed to the committee. And there's a group of us in the House of Commons that have a particular interest in disability, so there's a group of us you'll often find on the same committees.

Interaction with non-disabled colleagues

Q. What impact has having a disability had on your non-disabled colleagues in Parliament? Do they come to you for advice on those specific issues?

A. Well, sometimes. A lot of them will have their own expertise as well. I think it's more for quick advice that they'll come to me because they know I'll know the answer off the top of my head. That's probably maybe more true of my Aberdeen colleagues because all the constituency staff, we're all in the same office, so they'll nip through and say, "Well how does the DLA (Disability Living Allowance) work?" because I'm more likely to know that kind of information off the top of my head. But I would approach them in the same way concerning any area of expertise they might have. I'm not conscious that many of my colleagues come to me specifically with disability issues. They have to deal with their own constituents because we have a practice that if it's a problem being faced by one constituent, then the constituent's MP has to deal with that. They can't fob them off onto someone else. That protects us all, and that's actually quite useful because people do write to me thinking that I'm the Minister for Disabled People and say, "I've got a problem getting my car parked outside my house, what am I going to do about it?" Those kinds of issues I pass back to their own MP because it's up to them to deal with it.

Weighing in on broader issues

Q. What about broad based issues, you know, transportation across the board for all of the UK? Is there a thought that they should come to you and have you weigh in from your perspective?

A. Sometimes, but not too often. I think that depends on the issues. As I mentioned earlier, I was speaking on domestic violence the other day. Now that's not an issue I'd been involved with at all until one of my colleagues suggested we address the problem with regard to disabled women. But I hadn't even thought about it. And so she passed on the information she had and then I got my Member staff to do some more research on my behalf. So I was involved in that debate at the suggestion of one of my colleagues because she knew that my speaking on that particular subject would give it a bit more weight. So that does happen.

But a lot of the briefings and the help we get comes from various charities and lobbyists. Well, we don't have lobbyists the same way that you do in the States, but for example, take Bert Massie, the Chairman of the Disability Rights Commission; his office will always provide us with briefings on these kinds of issues. Their Parliamentary Officers will write to me and a number of others because they know we're interested if they're looking to get someone to put down an amendment or a motion or whatever. There are a number of organizations that know that I'm a sympathetic MP with regard to getting issues addressed, and that helps me as well because that gives me a source of Parliamentary work, too, so, it's mutual support. But, professional lobbyists, no. We're really very unprofessional lobbyists in this country, it's organizations or charities who will have their Parliamentary Officers and things like that. They are a very useful source of information for us because they know, they can give us case examples and they're extremely useful in keeping us well informed. Part of the way our democracy works is that any one of my constituents can come down to Westminster and lobby me. That's the way it's meant to work and unfortunately because there's big business and the paid lobbies have got in the way, it's become a bit sullied. But it still works in the way it's meant to work with the organizations and the charities.

Major areas of impact

Q. Do you feel that there's been quantifiable progress in certain areas of concern, such as employment or education, for people with disabilities? Can you point to achievements in that respect?

A. Yes, it might be useful if you've got access to the Internet to go on to the House of Commons Parliamentary Record (www.parliament.uk), the Hansard, for last Thursday, that's the 10 th of June (go to "Comments" section, first two hours not on disabled issues, but after that all discussion is on disability). There's a whole debate about disability and you get the whole history of what's happened with regard to Parliament and disability, and I contributed to it...Our first disability law was enacted by the last government with a notable lack of enthusiasm, and it had all sorts of deficiencies, such as a lack of any enforcement mechanism. So the first thing we did was set up the Disability Rights Commission so that we could actually enforce the rights that the 1995 Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) created. But there were all sorts of areas that were left out: Education was one. We plugged that gap with the Special Education and Disability Act, I think, in 2000, that basically brought education under the DDA and it also set up how we would deal with people with special educational needs, as well. That provision only applied in England and Wales, but not in Scotland, which has recently been granted more autonomy in the area of education. The other provision (bringing education under the DDA) applied throughout the UK (although the Scottish parliament is still responsible for deciding how that mandate will be carried out in Scotland).

Goal for immediate future: more focus on employment

Q. As far as your personal goals are concerned, what do you want to do to achieve those goals, particularly your goal of improving the quality of life for people with disabilities?

A. At the moment, we're expecting a general election next year [in 2005], and getting reelected is one of my personal goals, so, because I have a marginal seat, I have to keep working on that. Currently I'm putting a lot of effort into getting disabled people into employment and trying to lower the barriers that are keeping people out of work, as well as making sure that workers who become disabled are either given another position by their former employer or helped to find an appropriate job elsewhere instead of automatically being told, "Sorry, you're not well enough to do this job so go off and live on benefits for the rest of your life." I find that totally unacceptable. So it's about rehabilitation, occupational help as well as getting people who have perhaps worked in the past but who have been sitting on incapacity benefits for years and years. You know they might have had a bad back 15 years ago, and now their back is alright but they're clinically depressed because they haven't worked for 15 years. So it's about trying to build up their confidence and getting them as much support as we can to get them back into the job market.

Initially people in the disabled community were very suspicious (of efforts to get people back to work). They thought it was just about government trying to get people off of benefits in order to cut costs. But they've been generally won over, provided there's no coercion and it's done in a sensitive way and the support is there. That is happening and more and more people are getting jobs; people themselves are the best indication of whether the system is working or failing. I've been to a number of conferences and seminars to persuade employers to take on people who are presently on incapacity benefits, and the most poignant stories have been from people themselves who have benefited by getting back into the workplace. They describe the feeling of wellbeing that they get from again being back and part of society. So, it's still got a long way to go, but we're not running away from it.

I've been in Holland looking at the things they've been doing and they've got a big problem in the numbers that they have. They almost are putting their heads in the sand and pretending it doesn't exist. But I think there's a huge social cost in just leaving people on incapacity benefit just because they can't do the job that they were in before. We had very high unemployment; over three million, and it was easy for the government to massage the unemployment figures by shifting people off of unemployment benefits and onto incapacity benefits.

So the numbers of people on incapacity benefits at that time went through the roof and the numbers of unemployed did come down by a lot. It was quite a cynical political ploy. That group of people are still sitting on incapacity benefits and I say, true, they might not be fit to be a miner or a shipyard worker anymore, but there were plenty of other jobs they could have done had they been encouraged to at the time, but now they're clinically depressed. So, it's not that they're not ill, or that they're not disabled, they most certainly are, but because they've been out of work for such a long time, it's far, far harder to even persuade them that there are employers who might want to take them on. They [disabled persons] ...have gotten used to living on a very low income and not doing any work. But they could be doing all sorts of other things. So it's about saying, "Yes, there's something you can do" but, at the same time, not appearing to coerce people, because otherwise the headline is "Sick and Disabled People Forced to Work." It's not the kind of headlines the government wants, but sometimes, it's about getting the balance right. You sometimes have to coerce people a wee bit more to build up their confidence and say, "Well, why don't you try it?" But, as I say, there's still a long way to go, but at least we're moving in the right direction.

But we've probably gotten more generous with our welfare system anyway. But we've also changed it; we've given people a year's leeway. In other words, people can get back on benefits at the same level they left if their attempt to work falls flat. We've also got something called the Disabled Person's Tax Credit, the "working tax credit" that ensures that people are better off in work. Part of the problem for disabled people particularly is the benefits trap. The level of our benefits was high enough that if people went to work and lost all of the benefits, they were actually worse off, so we're trying to deal with that. We are piloting 40 pounds a week that we are giving to people for the first year in work to try to get them to try again, get them over that poverty trap and make sure that if they are going into work they are actually better off. But some disabled people have very complex care and benefits packages that they build up and they don't want to rock the boat. If they fall out of the system at the other end, it takes them three months to get the housing benefit back, for example, and that can be really worrisome for them.

Mental illness is actually becoming the disability area of most concern. We've actually gotten quite good about getting people with physical disabilities, and even people with learning disabilities, into work, but I don't think we're well equipped to serve the needs of those with mental health problems; the solutions needed by somebody with a mental health problem are totally different from those needed by a person who's got a physical impairment. I think this issue is going to become more serious as the number of claimants of incapacity benefits who have mental health problems continues to rise. But it's something we're going to have to face in the next 10-15 years.

Building expectations of a society for all

Q. What are your thoughts on how to make government more attractive to individuals with disabilities and how to promote the need to create a society for all?

A. I think if there was an easy answer to that, more people would be doing it. I think it's becoming easier simply because people with disabilities are now accessing mainstream education, they're growing up in mainstream society, they have expectations of getting a job. So, it's just a matter of time when more disabled people have expectations that are the same as other people who want to be politicians. I'm not against affirmative action, but I think it's important that people get involved who really want to get involved, rather than being forced into it; I don't think that that would work.

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