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03rd July 2024

bbc.co.uk/accessall

Access All – episode 111

Presented by Emma Tracey

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EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Well now, Tom Skelton from the RNIB is here with his box of tricks. And Tom, I’m hoping that whatever’s in there is going to help me to vote in secret in future elections. What’s in the box, Tom?

TOM-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Well, one accessible voting solution that allows blind people to vote independently and in secret is this: it’s the McGonagle reader. It is one audio tactile device. And you’ve got the integrated audio player on the left. If you want to feel to the left that’s the black box on the left. And then on the right there is a column of sturdy windows or apertures or flaps. These flaps cover the voting boxes for each candidate.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý On the ballot paper?

TOM-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý On the ballot paper. If you feel up to the top for the triangular tactile button that will read an overview of our ballot paper.

VOICE-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Election of councillors to any town city council. There are seven candidates in this election. Their names are: Adedeji Lisa; Beatrice Natalia; Chowdry…

TOM-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý If we were actually in the polling booth now rather than having a big speaker you would have you headphones to listen to the device.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Okay, please to hear it because that’s good. That could be messy.

TOM-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý You vote independently and in secret.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý I’m actually pretty sure what I want and who I want to vote for so I lift the flap.

TOM-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Yeah, lift the flap.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Pull it back?

TOM-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Pull it back and then it presses down to the corresponding button.

VOICE-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Owolabi Bola, 4 The Walk, Anytown, XY9 5JJ, The Raspberry Party.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý The Raspberry Party.

TOM-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý So, then you know – exactly – you know which candidate’s voting box that particular aperture is covering.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Okay. So, I lifted the flap, there was a little box in its place where that was, and this is where I can cast my vote.

TOM-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Yes.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý In secret, on my own. I’ve never been on my own in a polling booth. This is amazing. On my own, stick my pencil in and then it looks like I’ve voted in secret. Boom!

MUSIC-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Theme music.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Hello, this is Access All, the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ’s weekly disability and mental health podcast. I’m Emma Tracey and this episode is the final one relating to the General Election and questions you told us were on your minds. You can find the rest of those episodes plus interviews with six of the seven main UK political parties on ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Sounds. And you can find those party interviews in BSL on the iPlayer as well. Please subscribe to us on ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Sounds, tell your friends about us. And do contact us, I love to hear from you, accessall@bbc.co.uk.

ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý We have gathered together a panel of experts, all returners to Access All, friends of the podcast, which I’m absolutely delighted about. And they’re going to be answering some of the questions that have been on your minds. Today we’re talking about employment, cost of living and Carer’s Allowance. Now, on my panel today we’ve got Rensa Gaunt from Inclusion London. Inclusion London supports over 70 deaf and disabled organisations in the capital. Hi Rensa.

RENSA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Hello.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý It’s lovely to have you. We’ve also got James Taylor from disability charity Scope. He’s the executive director of strategy, impact and social change. And we’ve got the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ’s social affairs correspondent, Michael Buchanan. You’re very welcome Michael.

MICHAEL-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Thanks very much.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Now, Michael, let’s start with employment. And it’s a very big one on disabled people’s minds always, and you’ve been covering it for years. What have disabled people always said to you about the employment situation for them?

MICHAEL-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Well, in broad terms many disabled people that I’ve spoken to over the years have said that they would like a job, but they would like a job essentially that recognises the limitations of whatever their disability is, but at the same time gives them an opportunity to go out and to perhaps socialise and to meet people and to earn their own money. And I think when you look at the party manifestos employment, certainly for the big two parties, Labour and the Conservatives, is a big thing because both these parties are viewing a huge increase in the benefits bill towards the end of the new parliament. So, by 2028/29 the benefits bill for disability benefits is due to be £58 billion. That’s a projection by the Office of Budget Responsibility. And that is approximately £20 billion more than it is this year. So, both Labour and the Conservatives are looking at that big increasing amount of money and thinking what are we going to do about it.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý But what about people who are already in work and who are disabled? Many, many of you have been in touch with us about Access to Work, which is the government scheme set up to help disabled people with their extra costs around being in work. And Chelsea Soden sent us this message:

CHELSEA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý I want to hear more about issues around disability. I’ve been unfit for work before, but now I work full time with many adjustments from a rare supportive employer. And I’m still waiting to hear about my Access to Work application made in February.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Now, James Taylor, Chelsea actually happens to be a colleague of yours. Is Chelsea’s experience familiar to you from what people have been telling Scope about their employment experiences?

JAMES-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Yes, it is. I think there are many disabled people who are waiting a long time for adjustments, whether that’s from their employer or from the government scheme Access to Work. The average wait time is around 44 days; but actually lots of people that I’ve spoken to have waited far longer than that to get the equipment that they need. We’ve got 40,000 people at the moment on the Access to Work waiting list, and not having that equipment or adjustment in place can stop people from starting a job. It can also mean that many fall out of work as well. So, when I think political parties are looking at how they’re going to tackle disability unemployment they also need to be looking at how we’re going to keep people in work. And Access to Work has to be one of those things that we look at. Some parties have talked about it. Labour have talked about tackling the backlog; they’ve talked about improving reporting. The Lib Dems have talked about raising awareness of Access to Work and speeding up applications. And other parties haven’t really said anything. But Access to Work if it was better promoted, if there was more funding put into it and if applications were sped up I think we’d see far more disabled people staying in their jobs rather than feeling like they have to leave because they don’t have the support, the equipment, the technology or the adjustments in place.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Rensa, you’re London based, what are the other employment issues for disabled people that you’ve seen come up and that people have been asking your organisation for support with?

RENSA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý So, something that we have asked for as part of the Disabled People’s Manifesto, which is a document written by lots of deaf and disabled people’s organisations across England, is that we want better access to work, as we’ve mentioned, and also equal pay and mandatory reporting. So, currently large organisations do have to give information about the gender pay gap in their organisations. We want to see that across different protected groups like disabled people, including intersectional figures. So, for example if you’re paying disabled women or disabled people of colour lower than everyone else that’s something that we really want to know.

ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý I’m also really worried about some of the rhetoric that’s coming through in some of the party manifestos. If we look at the Conservative and Labour and Reform manifestos they all have scarily similar messaging. So, the Conservative one says, ‘those who can work to support themselves should work’. Labour says ‘people who can work should work’. And Reform says, ‘we will ensure those who can work do work’. So, it’s not about opening up more opportunities for disabled people, that’s not how it reads; it reads like we will force you to get a job. And that’s something that scares a lot of people.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý We asked many of the party representatives around the language around getting disabled people into work, and we asked them various questions around that. James Taylor, what would you like to see happen in terms of disability and employment? Or is there anything you hoped to see in the manifestos that you didn’t see and that you’d like to see brought forward?

JAMES-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Yeah, I think there’s a couple of things. One, the sort of scant mention of disability and employment outside of this huge cost that is projected to come in that Michael has talked about. I think the issue we’ve got is we do have lots of people who are out of work because of a disability. That number is increasing. It seems like the solution across all parties is we’re going to make it harder for you to claim a benefit. What they haven’t explored or explained is actually why there are more sick, unwell, disabled people now than there were ten years ago. And that’s down to actually NHS waiting lists being bigger than they ever have been, limited access to public services – these are the sorts of things that are causing people to be more unwell.

So, what we at Scope want to see is a couple of things: One, really trying to address the root cause, rather than just making it tougher for people to claim an out of work benefit. Two, a real commitment to closing the disability employment gap. Some work we did a few years ago found that if you halve the employment gap, so if you got just over a million more disabled people into work, you’d actually bring £15 billion per year into the Treasury from reduced welfare spend and increased national insurance and tax from those people being in work, which is a huge benefit. And we want to see employment support widened. One in ten out of work disabled people can currently access government employment support; that’s nowhere near big enough. If we widen that support more disabled people would be able to access skills, would be able to access trialling a job. These are the sorts of things we want to see.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý So much there, James, so many things. Michael are any of the other parties saying anything like what James is talking about there, so Plaid Cymru, Greens, Liberal Democrats?

MICHAEL-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Not so much [laughter]. The SNP are saying that their manifesto calls for the scrapping of punitive welfare reforms for the sick and the disabled, which is effectively seen as the SNP saying particularly to the Conservatives that if you were to win power we don’t want you to pursue the policies that you might pursue if we read your manifesto. Plaid Cymru they would like to see an increase in the speed with which people with autism and neurodiverse conditions that they get assessed so they can get the right sort of support. And the Green Party for their part are saying that they would like to see a 5% rise in disabled benefits immediately.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Now, let’s move on to something else that we’ve had so many messages about, and that’s the cost of living crisis. It’s something that has seemed to disproportionately affect disabled people. The Trussell Trust said that seven out of ten people who are referred to their food banks are actually disabled. Now, as I say you’ve been contacting us about this issue in your droves. Jenny Hughes said on X:

JENNY-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý All the social issues, including benefits and healthcare and housing and travel and environments and jobs, affect hashtag disabled people most. We are more likely to live in poverty and substandard housing, be evicted/homeless, be unemployed, suffer mega health inequalities, and die earlier. Exclusion kills.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý And Darren Brooke emailed:

DARREN-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý We’ve all been hit by the cost of living crisis, but I have extra costs due to disability on top of that which, after including PIP, are around £1,000 every month. As a result we’re stuck in a growing cycle of mounting debt. It’s absolutely destroying my mental health, and it’s become impossible to remain positive as there’s no light at the end of the tunnel and no hope from the political parties.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Michael, you’re the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ’s social affairs correspondent, you’ve spoken to many, many, many people, including disabled people, about the cost of living over the last few years. Have any of the parties directly acknowledged it in the manifestos?

MICHAEL-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Well, it’s a difficult issue for the two main parties in particular, because effectively what we’re talking about in many cases is how do you tackle poverty, and in particular, as you were hearing there, the number of people who go to food banks who have got a disability as well. And there is frankly no clear detail as to how the number of people going to food banks will be reduced by either party. The Labour Party have spoken about wanting to end I think they call it the moral scourge of the food bank use. But in terms of how you get from saying that to actually seeing fewer people in food banks it isn’t quite clear at all. The Liberal Democrats they’ve made a big issue throughout their entire campaign of their manifesto being around care in particular. Ed Davey, as you well know, has got a history of caring for his son and caring for his mother before that, so they are very clear that they would like to introduce significant policies that would help people that need care. So, they would like to see things like carers being paid £2 more per hour than the minimum wage to try and attract more people into the system.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Yeah, and we’re going to talk about Carer’s Allowance later on as well, which is kind of related to that. But why are the parties not talking about this increase in food bank use, not talking about the fact that it’s disproportionately affecting disabled people?

MICHAEL-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý I think it’s complicated to solve and it’s expensive to solve. I think that’s basically the analysis that many of people who have spoken to me about it in the last few weeks have said. Essentially if you accept the arguments that Conservatives and Labour have put forward in particular there really is very little money in the system, then essentially if you’re going to tackle poverty you’re going to have to spend money. And the political parties at the moment have made a choice that they would like to spend the money that is available in other areas. And so if you speak to organisations like the Trussell Trust they accept that this can’t be fixed overnight. But the Trussell Trust were telling me a few days ago that they want to see a potential future government coming forward and setting up concrete steps as to how you get from 3.1 million food parcels being handed out in the last financial year, how do you reduce that and how do you reduce the sheer number of food banks that exist in the country at the moment. It’s something that has become normalised in recent years.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý James, you’ve talked to me before about the extra cost of being disabled. What have Scope been hearing from disabled people about the cost of living, about the amount of money that they have and the amount they need?

JAMES-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý I think the main thing to say is the cost of living crisis hasn’t gone away, and many disabled people’s living standards are worse now than they were five, six years ago. We know from work we do that disabled people on average would need an additional £975 a month to have the same standard of living, and that’s because many people are diverting money to costs that non-disabled people don’t have: higher energy bills, having to keep your home warm, having to charge equipment, having to pay for specialist equipment. But we’ve also heard from lots of disabled people who are going days without food, days without showering. These are things, like food bank usage, that are sadly becoming normalised in society. And the main political parties have got very little to say about it, as Michael has said, and what they are saying is actually we want to tighten Personal Independence Payment, the benefit that is designed to offset some of those costs.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Rensa, London is particularly expensive, isn’t it, as a place to live. What are the big costs and the big things that disabled people are coming to Inclusion London asking for support with?

RENSA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý One thing that’s a real issue is the cost of social care. So, even if you are on benefits you are asked to contribute financially to the cost of your social care. So, it might be deemed that you need a certain amount, the council allocates you a certain amount of care, but they can take up to 45% of your benefits away to pay for that care. And, as James has said, some people are living with huge additional costs: they might be getting extra medication that doesn’t come on the NHS; they might be having to pay for private treatment, private physio – anything that is not provided by the NHS and is necessary for their condition essentially. And those are people who have already got much higher costs than everyone, and then we’re saying the benefits that you’re getting, which are already really low, we’re taking that away and you’re having to choose between getting the care that it’s been shown that you need, or people are getting into serious debt. And that’s really, really worrying.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý You know what, when you work in London sometimes you get something on your wages called London weighting, because London is a particular expensive place to live so you get some extra money because you live there. What are the biggest expenses specific for Londoners? And is there a London weighting on benefits, Rensa?

RENSA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Things like PIP no, even though obviously things do cost differently in London. It’s I think one-third of deaf and disabled people live in poverty, and two-thirds of people in poverty either are disabled or live with somebody who’s disabled. And that’s only even more keenly felt in the capital. We have a big shortage of accessible housing for example, which means that people are living in conditions that are really poor, but you cannot afford to get something that meets your needs. And so you’re really having to think okay, do I move out of area and lose my support network, what am I going to have to compromise on. And that’s really keenly felt by a lot of disabled people in London.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý James, what’s your sense of London and being disabled in London? Should there be a difference in benefits depending on where you are?

JAMES-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Well, I hadn’t really thought about it, but I think we could be. I mean, we do it with wages so I don’t see why you couldn’t. I would argue that benefits rates are way out of line and whack with people’s actual lived experience of costs. And I think there’s a whole case to be made about reforming PIP and the assessment and what costs it’s capturing, and maybe location could be part of that. But for me, if you can’t get on the Tube because not every Tube station is accessible, I live in Walthamstow, it has a lift but it’s out of action probably four days out of five; you then might be forced to take a taxi, so that’s a cost. And those sorts of things can add up. And when it’s rush hour and you need to get to work that’s going to be more expensive. It’s great that there are disabled people’s railcards and travelcards, but they are off-peak. If you work, you know [laughs] you’ve got no chance.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Yeah. There is the Freedom Pass in London.

JAMES-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý There’s the Freedom Pass.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý But I know Rensa I’m sure you might be about to jump in and say a lot of the infrastructure and the transport network isn’t accessible, so even with the Freedom Pass you end up having to take a taxi or do parking. What do you think, Rensa?

RENSA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Transport costs in the capital are wild. If you think that there are so many parts of the network that are step free. But for example the mobility aid that I use will fall down the side of a lot of the trains. So, even though it is ostensibly step free there are certain routes that I can’t safely use.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý So, is that like a walking mobility aid?

RENSA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý No, it’s a power chair, but it’s a really lightweight one, and that means that the power behind it it can’t get across some of the gaps.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý I’m going to move on now to the Carer’s Allowance. Now, before the election was announced there was a lot in the news about Carer’s Allowance. Unpaid carers get an allowance if they care for over 35 hours a week. If they work a certain number of hours their allowance reduces or is stopped. Many people started working and they didn’t know that their allowance was supposed to reduce. DWP didn’t fill them in on it; they were overpaid Carer’s Allowance, and then some people ended up being taken to court to have to pay back massive amounts of money. The SNP’s Marion Fellows equated it to the Post Office scandal when I was talking to her. Now, listen to this message from Michael Hunt:

MICHAEL-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý As the carer of a loved one I contribute hugely to the economy and the social needs of this country. ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ carers have been deliberately isolated by successive governments so they can remain unrecognised for their unrivalled contribution. ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ carers can’t change jobs, get promotion, go home after their shift. They can’t retire until they or those they love die. Invisible. Perhaps if 10,000 carers took their loved ones into Parliament Square and left them there we might get the help that we need.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Gosh, that’s a really strong message there from Michael. And we actually have had messages from disabled people themselves about the Carer’s Allowance as well. James Taylor from Scope, have any of the parties referred to Carer’s Allowance in their manifestos or how they would reform it?

JAMES-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý From my reading there’s just one, and that’s Liberal Democrats who’ve said they would increase Carer’s Allowance by £20 a week from the £81 it is now to £101. The other parties have talked about social care and I think probably social care has been a bit more prominent in this election than previous ones. But only the Liberal Democrats have talked specifically about Carer’s Allowance. None have talked about the arcane rules that you’ve just been highlighting.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Michael, broadly speaking, what are the differences between the parties on this issue?

MICHAEL-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Well, if I call it a conspiracy of silence on the particular overpayments and how to deal with them. I mean, I think Labour, to be fair to them, would like a review into what has happened and understand, get to the bottom of the problem. But I think a review is as far as they would go at the moment. The Conservatives broadly believe that the system is working and that the people who have been prosecuted by and large broke the rules and therefore were apt to be prosecuted. I think the Liberal Democrats they have made a big issue of care within their entire manifesto. As I say, they would like to pay carers £2 an hour above the minimum wage as well. And they say that this whole thing would cost about £3.7 billion annually, which they say they could fund by a variety of plans that they have laid out.

ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý The other thing to bear in mind with broader social care is next year there’s meant to be the cap on personal care costs. That’s due to come in, it’s due to be £86,000. Now, one of the problems has been that to get to that system requires money to be invested in local authorities, and that money has already been spent. And so it would require a new financial commitment by whoever the government is in order to make that cap limit a reality.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Rensa, you listened to that message, we’ve had messages from disabled people as well about Carer’s Allowance, what would Inclusion London like to see happen there?

RENSA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý I think the Lib Dems and the Greens have said that increasing Carer’s Allowance is really important, and the Lib Dems have also said that expanding eligibility is important. Because at the moment you can get £81 a week, but only if you earn less than £151 doing any other work. And it’s only for one person as well; so many disabled people do need more than one person looking after them. The Lib Dems and the Greens have said that they would increase benefits and also end the five-week wait for Universal Credit. And the overlap between disabled people receiving care and people claiming Universal Credit is quite high. So, those are things that could potentially mitigate the low Carer’s Allowance. But really we just want to see it brought up to a level where people can have a decent standard of living. The Conservatives have said in their manifesto that they hugely value the work that unpaid carers do supporting their loved ones, and as a way to show that they’d give employees who are also unpaid carers an entitlement to a period of unpaid leave, so basically to say thank you, you can have unpaid time off work to do more caring. To me that’s not a good reflection of the value. I think we should be making it so that people can also have a decent standard of living and not just saying, you won’t get fired for taking time off work to do the thing you need to do.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý So, you’ve all been through the manifestos in one way or another. What about Plaid Cymru and disabled people? We had Liz Saville Roberts on. What did they say that came to your attention?

MICHAEL-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý The key thing that they would like to do is to increase the speed with which people with conditions like neurodiversity, autism, ADHD, the speed with which they get assessments and therefore get access to the right level of support. They’ve also, being the party of Wales as they style themselves, they also want to see more funding sent into Wales. One other point we should point out is we haven’t really spoken about Reform UK at all in the discussion, and I think part of the reason for that is that they haven’t really said very much in their manifesto on disability issues at all or on the benefits system. They have said the benefit system is broken; well, okay, but they haven’t laid out what that means or how they might reform it. Bearing in mind as well they want to pay the first £20,000 of anybody’s earned income, they want that to be tax free, so that might lead to more people being able to keep more of their money. But there is very little detail from Reform UK – so a manifesto is a contract, isn’t it – on what they would do with the benefits system and disabled people in particular.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Well, thanks everyone for your amazing insights into all of our big questions today. I do just have one more question. Now, Rensa you are in Manchester and you’re about to take part in a disability hustings, what will you be doing on election night?

RENSA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Well, as many disabled people do, I vote by post, so I already voted quite a long time ago. I will just be watching on election night and the day after to see what happens.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Rensa will be watching. James, what will you be doing on election night?

JAMES-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý [Laughs] on election night, well I’ll try and stay up for as long as possible. But as a father of two tiny children I think trying to get some sleep is a good idea.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý It doesn’t get going till 3am, you might be up then anyway.

JAMES-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý I’ll be up then anyway yeah [laughs]. I think really waiting to see what whoever’s in power will say about disability. There are 60 million disabled people in the UK, one of the biggest minorities.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý And we’ll be interested to see how many disabled MPs there are after election night as well. Michael, where will you be on election night?

MICHAEL-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý My oldest daughter turned 18 about two months ago and she likes her politics, so she’s really, really excited to go and vote for the first time on election day. And then she wants us to sit up and watch it as long as we possibly can, so I suspect that’s what we will be doing.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý So, you won’t be out there in the middle of it?

MICHAEL-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý I’ve done a few of them in the past and it’s hit or miss as to whether the count that you end up actually matters. I remember one where two of the main candidates ended up in a punch-up at 5 o’clock in the morning, and the returning officer had to abandon the whole count and it was started again at 10 o’clock the following morning. That was a good one.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Well, it’s all going to be very civilised here on Access All, I can tell you that much.

ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Thank you so much to my panel of experts: Rensa Gaunt from Inclusion London, James Taylor from Scope, and Michael Buchanan, the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ’s social affairs correspondent. Now, you can hear all our election panel episodes plus our interviews with six out of the seven main UK political parties on ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Sounds. And you can see the party interviews in BSL on iPlayer as well. You can get in touch with us accessall@bbc.co.uk. Please subscribe to us on ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Sounds, and tell your friends about us. There’s so much election related stuff for them to listen to between now and Thursday. Have a very merry General Election. Bye.

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ADAM-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Hello, it’s Adam Fleming here. If you’re listening to this it means you’ve made it to the end of this episode, which means you might like episodes of our podcast, Newscast, where at the moment we’re focusing on the UK General Election. With the help of my broadcasting best buddies, Laura Kuenssberg and Chris Mason, we pick apart the big stories of the General Election campaign each day, and we try and work out what’s really, really going on. We publish episodes every day, sometimes more than one, and that means that you are guaranteed to be up to date. Listen any time on ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Sounds or wherever you get your podcasts.

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