Why are there still so few disabled people in the House of Parliament?

by Ivano Abbadessa - 2013.02.25

Have you ever wondered how many disabled people there are in Parliament? Probably a few people, a very few people and things will not even change after today’s election results. However, this does not only concern our country. In the UK, for instance, even if 1 out of 6 people have disabilities, only a handful of them sit in Parliament.



Despite the success of policy makers like Jack Ashley and David Blunkett, actually, the representation of people with disabilities has not terribly improved in the last few years. Expecting that 1/6 MPs have disabilities is maybe too much, but UK citizens are now asking themselves whether it wouldn’t be positive if their Chamber of Commons looked a bit more like their society. In this way, many petitions encouraged by organizations for disabled people protection may find a different treatment and have a voice in the matter.



The British government is aware of the problem. Last year, it launched a program that offers bursaries to disabled people interested in standing for parliament. The fund, called Access to Elected Office for Disabled People, has £2.6 million and interested people can ask up to £20,000. The government said that they should ‘level the playground’ for people with disabilities, rather than give them a disloyal advantage. Money, in fact, can be used to pay additional transportation costs for people with reduced mobility or to hire sign language interpreters for deaf aspirants. However, only £34,000 were allocated to 6 applicants until February 2013; 6 other applications are now being evaluated. If this trend continues – hopefully not – only a fraction of the fund will be spent before summer 2014, when the government program will come to an end.



In the UK, other initiatives support the access of people with disabilities to politics. In this respect, the so-called Disability Politics UK proposed to approve a law that allows MPs to job share. According to the association, which developed a targeted raising-awareness campaign, sharing job would allow a higher number of people with disabilities to get into the Chamber.



