Labour MP for Oxford East
Twenty years ago this month, a law to ban discrimination against disabled people was passed by Parliament.
I voted for the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 (DDA) to pass the first anti-discrimination legislation for disabled people in Britain.
Even so, the DDA fell short of the far-reaching civil rights law that many of us wanted to see.
The DDA left disabled people with less clout than victims of sex or racial discrimination, as disabled people lacked a strong disability commission to investigate and pursue discrimination cases.
It was up to individual disabled people to enforce the law, but many simply could not afford to do so.
After being elected to office in 1997, the then Labour Government moved as quickly as possible to set up a strong disability rights commission.
As a minister in that Government, I created a three-part strategy for ensuring that disabled people could use their rights.
Bits of the DDA which had been bypassed were implemented, an expert disability rights task force was set up to draw on the experiences and views of the key disabled campaigners for civil rights, and a well-funded and properly staffed Disability Rights Commission was established.
The establishment of the Disability Rights Commission significantly improved the DDA, and was a tribute to the tireless campaigning of thousands of disabled members of voluntary organisations, including many in Oxford.
The DDA was still not the civil rights bill that so many disabled campaigners were handcuffing themselves to buses and throwing themselves from wheelchairs to achieve.
But the DDA and, later, the Disability Rights Commission and key legislation, would not have happened without the persistence and passion of those campaigners.
It is timely and right that the disability charity Scope is marking the inspiring disability rights campaign by sharing the exciting memories of some of these campaigners, via film and blog.
I well remember my meetings with disabled campaigners at the time of the vote for a law and our later work in Government.
I was hugely struck by the fight for rights and equality, and the steadfast refusal to be treated like second-class citizens.
This fight for equality goes on today, but the challenges are huge.
Too many disabled people are out of the workplace, although they want the same chances to work as everyone else.
This Government made an election manifesto pledge to halve the disability employment gap.
The Prime Minister also promised not to cut working tax credits.
However, last week the House of Lords had to deal a major blow to the Government by voting to delay cuts to working tax credits.
These working tax credits especially support disabled people into work, and go a long way to affecting the disability employment gap.
In Oxford, the employment rate for disabled people of working age is 62 per cent compared with an employment rate of 80 per cent for non-disabled people of working age. Disabled people make up eight per cent of the overall population yet struggle under 29 per cent of announced spending cuts.
Twenty years on from the Disability Discrimination Act and the improvements added by the last Labour Government, so many disabled people in Oxford and around the country should not be struggling to live independently and equally.
So there is lots more to do.
* For more information, see scope.org.uk/dda20
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