Equality and Human Rights Commission

As well as raising awareness there are several ways that you can use the Convention to influence individual cases or to change services and policies – including the way that a public authority makes decisions, for example about social care charges or road infrastructure.

Write a letter, go to a meeting (Article 29 of the Convention says that you should be given a voice in public affairs), talk to the press, or you could put together a report and publish it. Whatever you do, make sure that you know what the Convention says and have evidence of how disabled people’s human rights are affected.

Influencing local services

In this part we set out how you can use the Convention to influence local services. Even though the Convention is not legally binding on local authorities, they have a duty to act in line with the Human Rights Act and disability discrimination including the Equality Duty. The Convention can be used to interpret these laws. The Human Rights Act has been used by disabled people to challenge injustice both through legal cases and outside the courtroom in their negotiations with public services. For examples, see www.ourhumanrightsstories.org.uk.

The Convention can be very powerful for individual advocacy as it sets clear benchmarks for the way that public authorities should treat you, especially where there is no equivalent  right in the Human Rights Act, for example, the right to health.

Finally, the Convention is an internationally agreed and accepted set of standards to respect, protect and promote the human rights of disabled people. For these reasons, local authorities should pay full attention to the Convention.

This is how you can use the Convention:

• If you are frustrated about local services, whether it is not having enough disabled parking spaces, staff attitudes or long waiting times for treatments to help with mental health conditions, you can use the Convention to promote positive changes. Work out which article or articles of the Convention are relevant. Set out how local services fall short of the standards promised in the Convention and what practical changes public bodies could make to resolve the problem.
• Ask the officer or elected member responsible for equalities at your local council and health body to come and talk to your local disability group about what they are doing to implement the Human Rights Act, and how they use the Convention. You may have to give them information about the Convention first!
• Write or talk to your MP, MSP and/ or Welsh Assembly member – they are there to represent you.
• Remember it is not acceptable – under the Convention – for countries to cut back on essential support for disabled people.  If you are facing the prospect of cuts to local services don’t forget to make that point strongly. Get advice from one of the organisations listed in Part 4 about how you can use the Convention together with the Human Rights Act and the Equality Duty to challenge service cuts.
• You can ask the council to adopt the Convention – write to the chief executive’s department.

Influencing national or UK policy

Whether you are an individual or a small or large disability organisation, you can use the Convention to influence national or UK policy. However, you could try to join up with others – because the more there are of you, the stronger your voice will be.

• If you are responding to a government consultation, use the relevant parts of the Convention to back up your points.
• If you are campaigning for a change in the law to get a better deal for disabled people, check what the Convention has to say about the issue.  Talk about what the Convention says in your briefings for parliamentarians and use it to strengthen your argument for change.
• Draw attention to the implications of Bills for disabled people’s Convention rights when you are writing a submission to a Select Committee Inquiry or to a Public Bill Committee. There are also Scottish Parliamentary Committees which call for evidence to scrutinise Bills and as part of Committee Inquiries.
• The Scottish Human Rights Commission and the Equality and Human Rights Commission in Scotland give advice to the Scottish Parliament. Brief them about issues of concern that the Scottish Parliament needs to address.

Example: The Convention in Parliament

Cross-bench peer Baroness Campbell of Surbiton used the Convention in her successful campaign to make the proposed new right to free personal care in England ‘portable’.  If the new policy is implemented people who qualify for free personal care will be able to move from one local authority to another without any disruption to their free personal care funding or services. She argued that government must do this to respect disabled people’s rights under the Convention, namely their rights to choose where they live on an equal basis with others, to work and participate in their communities and to be free from exploitation, violence and abuse.  All these rights could be at risk, she argued, if people could not be certain of having continuity of support.