All-Party Parliamentary Group on Deafness

Inaugural Meeting - 15th June 2004

Committee Room 9, Committee Corridor, Palace of Westminster

Verbatim Record

The meeting started at 4.15pm

Malcolm Bruce MP: We have been slightly delayed by the division in the chamber, but I want to first of all thank you for coming and thank lots of people who are not here but who have indicated they will be members of the group and that they wish to support it. And also the UK Council for Deafness, represented by Jonathan Isaac, who has given us the support in practical terms to get to this point, they have done a lot of the work to ensure that we meet all the requirements of an All Party Group. I know that we have got an apology from Simon Thomas, is there is anyone else.

Tom Levitt MP: Anne Begg.

Malcolm Bruce MP: And one or two other people who have indicated a willingness to take a role who are not actually here. Just briefly to say that I think, Jonathan, you have drawn up and circulated the Purpose and Activities. Essentially it is to promote the interests of deaf people, to raise issues of public concern, to encourage debate and to just really act as a focus for deaf issues. It is a been made clear to me over the last 12 months there are a lot of issues which are specific to deaf people that we can address as distinct from general disability issues where of course we will work with the All Party Group on Disability and other organisations. We are not setting ourselves up in any way in competition, it is really to complement other groups. In particular, I am really pleased that Lord Ashley has agreed not only to be here, but to accept the appointment of Honorary President of the Group. I don't think any of us need really any introduction to Jack or any explanation as to why that should be the case. He seems to be the natural candidate for such a role. But I am extremely grateful to Jack for agreeing to do that and for coming in person to accept that role and indeed I am going to defer to Jack now for Item 4 the Election of Honorary Officers because I think it will be appropriate if Jack will take the chair for that purpose.

Lord Ashley: Thank you very much, it is a very important group this All Party Group on Deafness and I look forward to working with the other Officers. Malcolm Bruce has been nominated as chairman. Are there any further nominations? I declare Malcolm elected. For Vice Chairman the following have been nominated: Tom Levitt, Tim Loughton, Martin Smyth, James Gray and Baroness Wilkins. Any further nominations? I declare those elected. For Secretary Simon Thomas has been nominated. Are there any further nominations? I declare Simon elected. I hand back now to Malcolm for the appointment of the Secretariat.

Malcolm Bruce MP: Thank you very much Jack. All Party Groups require the support of outside agencies and organisations, and we actually have support from a lot of different organisations. From the UK Council on Deafness, the RNID, the National Deaf Children's Society, the BDA, Hearing Concern and many others. Jonathan Isaac, the Director of UK Council on Deafness, has been working very closely with me in my office over the last few months and essentially what I want your agreement to is that we can continue to work with Jonathan and UK Council on Deafness as the secretariat of the committee; they have kindly offered to do it, not that they have huge resources but they are slightly better than mine in my office, and I just put it to the meeting that we can agree that.

Tom Levitt MP: Yes.

Malcolm Bruce MP: OK, that is excellent. Perhaps Jonathan, you might want to say a word or two on the role of the secretariat, as you see it. Just really how you envisage it working.

Jonathan Isaac: Thank you, and thank you to the group for appointing us as secretariat, we welcome the responsibilities that brings. We are delighted that you have decided between you that there is a need for an All Party Group on Deafness and we look forward to working with you. What we can bring you is the knowledge and expertise of all of our member organisations, 82 organisations who work with deaf people spread across the country. Some of them concentrate their efforts in a particular geographical area, others cover particular specialisms within the spectrum of deafness. Between them they cover the full spectrum of deafness from the profoundly deaf sign language using community, deafened, deafblind and hard of hearing people. The function of secretariat to the group is one that we are very happy to take on and I am hoping that you, or most of you, have moved into the modern age and are able to communicate by email because that will make our lives a lot easier over the coming months. I will be contacting all of the members of the group to find out their preferred means of communication, so that we can arrange that with you. We will create a website for the group, so that you can follow the progress there without having the need to contact us in person. And we hope that we will be able to feed the concerns and interests of our member organisations to you to help you to decide on your agenda for the group. As Malcolm said, we are not a huge organisation and we don't have huge resources, but I am hoping we will be able to cope with the activity for you and we are envisaging that to start with the group will meet formally about 6 times a year. There may be occasions for meeting between that, informally, as matters arise.

Malcolm Bruce MP: Thank you very much. At this point the meeting does not need to continue very much longer but I thought that having got people together we ought to have a quick discussion on what the future agenda might or should be. I have 2 or 3 suggestions, I am happy to consider other suggestions that we can take away and look at. One suggestion is that we should invite Maria Eagle to meet the group, particularly in relation to the issue of sign language. Our understanding is that the British Government have agreed to host a conference of sign language users on behalf of the Council of Europe, but we haven't heard anything about it. Also because she is the Minister for Disabled People any other aspect of deafness that she wants to raise with us. Maria is very committed and has worked very hard on these issues, so one suggestion is we should ask for an early meeting with her. The other suggestion is that we should seek a meeting with OFCOM on the issue of cinema subtitling and subtitling on TV because they are 2 very live issues. They have the advantage of affecting a wide cross section of deaf and hard of hearing people, not just sign language users and there are some serious problems there which we would like to address. And James has suggested that the group might be interested in visiting a school for the deaf, maybe James you would like to say something.

James Gray MP: Two suggestions. One is that as my wife is the chairman of governors of Oak Lodge in Wandsworth and has been a governor for many years she would happily arrange a visit if people were interested in the educational aspect. The second suggestion for the agenda is something I have been involved in recently, the issue of hearing dogs and equality of access for hearing dogs with guide dogs for the blind. In restaurants for example, where guide dogs for the blind are welcome, hearing dogs do not appear to be so welcome, and I think there is some work that needs to be done there.

Malcolm Bruce MP: That is an interesting issue. What are people's views about these proposals and any other suggestions?

Lord Ashley: On the question of OFCOM, I think you should invite them and press them on the various issues. We had them to the All Party Disability Group because even though the government is committed to expanding subtitling, OFCOM brought forward some suggestions, one of them was to end subtitling of live TV. To end it. And the other one was to end subtitling for parliamentary coverage of TV. And I raised this in a letter with the Chief Executive. When he came to the All Party Disability Group he withdrew both suggestions, said they had made a mistake and apologised. But then he said that they were not prepared to change the refusal to have annual upgrading of subtitles, which I think is a disaster, because the ITC do that at present. The second thing is he said that they were only prepared to certify 50 channels out of 200, which meant 150 TV channels have no responsibility for subtitling. Now I'm in correspondence with them again and they are reflecting on it and considering. But I think if the group was to insist on meeting him, or one of his colleagues, it would be very valuable indeed, we could have a very good discussion on those issues and others.

Malcolm Bruce MP: Thank you Jack. I certainly would agree with that, and think it ought to be sooner rather than later, because they are developing policy now.

Tom Levitt MP: It is not about OFCOM, it is another suggestion for what we might do, that is to look at the implications of the extension of the DDA in October and the extension of disabled people's access to goods and services, as to how that will affect deaf people. In particular, we might do an up to date audit of facilities within the Houses of Parliament itself. I know the situation in respect of loop systems is a lot better than it used to be but I still don't think there is a system whereby a sign language interpreter or a lipspeaker would be provided to people who visit the Palace, and also of course MPs in their own constituencies are affected by the October regulations, and so therefore it might be an opportunity to update them about access to lipspeakers, sign language interpreters, Typetalk, Minicoms and other facilities within their own constituencies under their obligations under the Act.

Malcolm Bruce MP: Would that be a useful topic of discussion with Maria Eagle? Well, that is actually very helpful. That gives us enough things to keep us going.

Clive Betts MP: At some stage in the future, the issue of provision of sports facilities and competitions for deaf people. Very often there is a tendency for sports bodies to assume that either deaf people just play sports along with people who haven't any hearing difficulties, or they get lumped in with people with disabilities. In fact, there are very real differences and there are a whole host of competitions now for deaf people. There are issues about the organisation of sports competition. And facilities as well. It is simple things like they don't hear the referees whistle or the start in athletics. There has been a development of separate competitions and it is something we can have a discussion about what we can do to help.

Nigel Waterson MP: I am patron of the LINK Centre for Deafened People based in Eastbourne. It does some marvellous work with adults who are either recently deafened or losing their hearing, and I am sure they would like to come and give a presentation, not only on the work they do but also some of the real problems they have about funding, not least because of the PCTs around the country.

Malcolm Bruce MP: That is extremely helpful. That is enough suggestions to keep us fairly busy for quite a while. What I would suggest is that the 2 things which seem to me the most urgent are OFCOM and Maria Eagle. Obviously the Minister has a full diary, but we can ask for a meeting. I'm sure she will speak to us, I have no doubt she will want to speak to us. I would suggest that we try to set those up if possible either or both of them before the summer recess, but obviously as early as possible afterwards. I think OFCOM particularly, as they are a public body of some responsibility, I think we should press them and ask Maria for a meeting at her earliest opportunity. We have taken a note of other things. I think we need to progress them when we come back in the autumn, whether briefing or visits or raising the issues. If we have a meeting with Maria Eagle we can at least establish what the government is or isn't doing on those issues and then whether we want to take them forward ourselves. So, are people comfortable with the idea that we have about 6 meetings a year? Subject to there being things to meet about. I know that members can't attend all of them. How many members of both Houses indicated their willingness to join the group?

Jonathan Isaac: At the last count, 165.

Malcolm Bruce MP: That is quite a substantial response. So we have 165 members of both Houses, they may not be here but have expressed an interest in the group. So I think we will have enough issues of interest to take these matters forward and I hope we will be able to apply constructive pressure.

Baroness Wilkins: I was wondering to what extent a lot of the basic information on deafness is available. I am thinking particularly the number of people who are going to be deaf or en route to be deaf, given the extra aging that we are all going to be experiencing. Some disabilities are disabilities, and they are right through life; some hearing disabilities are. But there is a great area which is tied to age; do we know about that? Do we know for example if the digital hearing aids for those who can get some benefit, what the projection is of the need for those people who can benefit? Are the figures there?

Malcolm Bruce MP: Jonathan can answer that, but clearly organisations do keep tabs of those kind of things, so what you are saying is it might be quite useful to prepare a brief for members of the group on the sort of current issues. That might be a useful thing to do. Just drawing together that kind of thing, how many people are born deaf, how many people acquire deafness, what is the need in terms of technical support. I would have thought......Jonathan is indicating he can do a briefing on that. In fact it might be a good way to launch the group, by giving the members an indication of the issues we are going to raise and the meetings we are trying to set up. Well I have to say thank you all very much for the support you have given, the support you have expressed. We will progress OFCOM and Maria Eagle immediately. We have taken a note of all the other issues to be on the programme to follow up, and we will obviously be in touch as soon as we have any information on possible dates. I think the first 2 meetings will be in the House here, and then we can consider outside visits. Is there any other business anyone wants to raise? Well, can I thank the outside organisations who have come along to support us, and obviously I would like to say we are here to support you really, this is in a sense our service to you. For colleagues I should make it clear we should be embarrassed, because the Welsh Assembly and Scottish Parliament have both established all party groups on deafness and this is the first time we have had one here in Westminster but all of the organisations have been extremely supportive and I am very grateful to those who are here. I know we will continue to work together. As to my parliamentary colleagues, I know it is difficult to get people to join and attend All Party Groups but I think we have identified a need for this very particular area of interest. Thank you for giving me the honour of being the first Chair, I take it very seriously indeed. And for those of you who agreed to serve as Officers I want to thank you for your support. I won't make it too onerous but I will try to convene a meeting of the Officers occasionally because I think we will need to move the programme forward and make sure we keep active. And we will be in touch very shortly with a summary of this meeting, the office bearers, the information that has been requested and progress on the meetings we have undertaken to try and arrange. So thank you very much indeed all of you for attending.

The meeting ended at 4.45pm

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