The Coronavirus Act 2020 Is Extremely Dangerous For Disabled People Like Me
As a disabled person, with multiple, complex, rare diseases, I am not only particularly vulnerable to Covid-19, I am also dependent on social care. So I have been watching the government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic with rapt attention. But for all Boris Johnson’s talk that his government will “do whatever it takes” because “we are all in this together”, when the Coronavirus Act 2020 was passed into law last week, it became clear that, as per usual, disabled people are excluded from this sense of ‘togetherness’.
Buried in the vast Act is a clause that will increase the risk of those who are already most vulnerable. This clause removes local councils’ duties to provide care for disabled people unless it is a breach of their human rights. Under normal circumstances, this would have disastrous consequences for many people, but at a time when a large number of the 1.5 million of us will be self-isolating and shielding for months on end — to protect not only ourselves but also the functioning of our extremely precious NHS — this could be potentially devastating.
While the clause does specify that human rights must not be breached, this is an extremely low bar. Disability equality organisation Inclusion London has been advised by a leading barrister that in order to reach the threshold of breaching human rights, the situation would have to be extremely severe or life threatening. In practice, this means that in their day-to-day life, disabled people (even those with very high needs) will be left with minimal support at best, and without any support at worst, placing their wellbeing in real danger.
What can possibly underpin the thinking that in this time of crisis it is ethical or in any way appropriate for the government to severely limit the fundamental rights of those who are in most need of support?
But then this decision is hardly out of step with the government’s record over a decade of austerity. The policies over the last 10 years...