7. Statement by the Leader of the House and Chief Whip: Action on Disability: The Right to Independent Living

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:37 pm on 16 October 2018.

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Photo of Julie James Julie James Labour 4:37, 16 October 2018

The Minister's hearing very clearly, I think, the message, and I think that that last point there was very well made. Yes, absolutely, in terms of the public transport points, I also think they were very well made, Mike Hedges. We've had many discussions between us about various bus services in your constituency that cross into mine, and I couldn't agree more around the announcements, the visual aids and accessibility. I've had several helpful conversations with my colleague the Cabinet Secretary for Economy and Transport along those lines. We will be looking to make sure that the framework takes those into account.

In terms of the active encouragement to employers, I had the great privilege to speak at the Disability Confident conference in his own constituency a couple of weeks ago. That was exactly that—we were talking around what we could do to incentivise employers. The UK Government's target of 1 million people across the UK is about 55,000 for Wales. We want to work very closely with them to get that up to the 70,000 that he identified, ensuring that Welsh money and UK Government money dovetail together to give people the best incentive, and that will be looking to see what incentivises employers, in terms of changing their attitudes. Often, it is attitudinal—it's not really a physical barrier. The conference highlighted that with a number of issues that employers there were very surprised to find were easily available and inexpensive.

I am looking as well at a scheme that many disability charities and our own Disability Wales people have asked me to look into, which is a sort of scores-on-the-doors system that shows accessibility for particular businesses. There's no reason that we couldn't extend that to employers as well.