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In this Report
Select Committee Report (5 July 2005)
House of Lords – Science and Technology – Minutes of Evidence
Examination of Witnesses
Q342 Chairman: Fine. I should have reminded you that we are on air. We are not being broadcast at the moment but we might be so your comments may be noted by a wider audience than this one, especially if they are sotto voce as some of them are. Before we move along the table can I press you a little bit on that. We have been getting quite a number of folk who are in the statistics field saying that longevity is increasing but the quality of healthy long life is not increasing at the same rate, which seems to run a little counter to what you are saying, and we would be very interested in the relevant papers you mentioned.
Professor O'Neill: I would be delighted.
Professor Steel: I am Karen Steel. I work at the Welcome Trust Sanger Institute which is near Cambridge, but for 25 years I worked for the MRC Institute of Hearing Research in Nottingham alongside colleagues who were working on clinical aspects of hearing. My particular research interest is in the genetics of deafness. That is why I am at the Sanger Institute and I have been there for about 18 months now. To your question, hearing impairment (which is my main interest) has long been viewed as an inevitable consequence of growing old among not only the medical profession but also the man in the street, and so very often people do not complain about it as much as they should as they are getting older, and indeed there is research that suggests that elderly people are much more reluctant to complain about a set level of hearing impairment compared to younger people. Thus the reporting is not adequate and the seeking of services is not adequate. My personal belief is that hearing impairment with age is not essential and is not necessary, but I have to say that is a belief rather than being based on firm evidence at the moment. This is the concept that drives my own research interests, that one day we will have enough information to be able to develop treatments, not just prosthetic devices which is what we have at the moment, hearing aids or cochlear implants, but one day we will be able to develop real treatments to prevent or slow down the onset of hearing loss with age. So that is my approach to the research in deafness.
Q343 Chairman: Can I ask you about the connection between that, which seems to have to do very much with the physical activity of hearing, and your background in genetics.
Professor Steel: I use genetics as a tool. Genetics is a tool, it gives you clues to the molecules involved in normal hearing processes and molecules that are dysfunctional when people start to lose their hearing. It is not research that is only ever going to be applicable to people who have a single gene defect and are born deaf. That is certainly not true. But a lot of the basic research we are doing at the moment is on those genes because those are very easy to detect, particularly using animal models, and most of this work can only be done with animal models. It is a tool. It has a much broader relevance because it tells you what biochemical pathways are involved in these processes. That information is relevant to everybody who is losing their hearing, which means most of us as we get older. It is not specifically related to single gene defects. We all have genes and those genes affect all of us in different ways. So it is the underlying information that we need to have.
Chairman: That is very helpful.
Q344 Lord Oxburgh: Could I pursue that for one second. My name is Ron Oxburgh. I am not entirely clear whether you are saying that this is a natural process which you anticipate some time in the future we might be able to intervene to remedy, or whether you are actually implying that this is a disease which affects some and not others.
Professor Steel: That is a very interesting question. I think it is a philosophical question rather than a scientific question. I guess it is not natural for most of us to be living as long as we do nowadays. A lot of our daily life is not natural in any respect. So I suppose if you are talking about disease, yes, there are some cases where hearing impairment is clearly part of a disease process and maybe you could distinguish those cases from people who do preserve their hearing until fairly late in their lives, but I think they are just the ends of a spectrum and we should not just sit back and think it is inevitable. That is really the message I want to get over and if people think progressive hearing loss is inevitable then the research will not be done, because the will will not be there and the funding will not be there to do the research to develop treatments. So I do not think we should think of it as inevitable but, as I said, that is an item of faith.
Q345 Lord Oxburgh: I was not making any assumption about inevitability or otherwise, simply the observation that there is a syndrome of characteristics which people seem to acquire with advancing age, and loss of hearing is one of those.
Professor Steel: Can I make a comment on that. I think that hearing, like many other aspects of our life, is subject to some generic attacks that life throws at us, including everything that we do in life like working in noisy environments and eating and drinking and doing all the things we perhaps should not do quite so much of. I think that is inevitably going to affect not just hearing but other aspects of our ageing process, but I do not think progressive age-related hearing impairment is entirely due to those generic influences on our lives. There are going to be a lot of very specific factors that contribute towards progressive hearing impairment as we get older. Although things like cognitive decline can affect a lot of people (and cognitive decline probably does interact in some way that is not yet determined with hearing impairment) that does not necessarily mean that the two go alongside and at the same rate. The same with all the other senses as well. There are going to be some very specific factors—the variants of genes that we carry, for example, or environmental influences that specifically affect hearing—and other effects that are much more generic and affect lots of other functions as well
Q349 Baroness Hilton of Eggardon: I am Jenny Hilton. I think quite a lot of my question has already been answered on hearing and vision but I wondered whether you could outline specifically the major causes of hearing loss. You have already talked about loss of hair cells, cochlear and so on. I think there is some evidence from heavy industry that exposure to heavy machinery does cause hearing loss. What other major causes of hearing loss are there? Also if I could couple that with loss of visual ability and ask what specifically produces failing sight in elderly people and what treatments are possible at present and in the future?
Professor Steel: Yes, in talking about age-related hearing impairment the true answer is that we know virtually nothing about the causes of hearing impairment as people get older. We know nothing at a molecular level and practically nothing at a cellular level but we do know some things that are important. For example, there are three independent studies now that have demonstrated that age-related hearing impairment has heritability of about 50 per cent. What that means is that about half of the hearing impairment is something to do with the variants of the genes we carry and the remaining half is probably due to environmental factors. Noise is almost inevitably going to be one of those, but we should not forget drugs, we should not forget infections as well because these can also affect hearing, and I suspect that diet may have an effect. So we actually know very little. There is the start of some research going on but it is really very much at its early stages, and there is an awfully long way to go before we will fully understand the causes in an individual. The one other thing I should point out is that deafness, whether you are looking at childhood deafness or age-related hearing impairment, is very heterogeneous. There are lots of different causes. You can have ten people in the room all with the same level of hearing impairment and they can all have completely different reasons for their hearing impairment. So we do need to be very careful about generalising. This also means that diagnosis is critical because you cannot even start to think of treatments before you can diagnose because you may be treating the wrong thing, the wrong part of the inner ear, the wrong part of the process, so diagnostics are really important and there is virtually nothing that is being done at a physiological level of diagnostics. There is a little bit done on genetics but only in childhood deafness at the moment. Shall I move on to treatments?
Q351 Chairman: Professor Steel, did you want to come back in on the treatment side?
Professor Steel: At the moment there are no treatments available. There are two prosthetic approaches. One is cochlear implants which are only suitable for severe or profound hearing impairment, so there is a limited population they will be helpful for. The other is hearing aids, and hearing aids are again limited in their usefulness because it is not just amplification that you need, it is more clarity, and again we know there is a real gap in the research on how to programme hearing aids to take account of the needs of individuals which includes their own specific requirements, how normal people process speech and other sounds that they need to understand, and also the ecology and the requirements of individual people. Hearing aids are very useful but nowhere near as useful as they should be and could be if we knew more about how to programme them. Treatment is something that I am very keen to work towards developing. I am thinking more of medical treatments so it is all fantasy at the moment, whatever you might read in the newspapers. I think that gene therapy in its simplest form is unlikely to be a useful approach for deafness. Approaches to try to trigger either introduced stem cells or native cells that are present within the inner ear to regenerate and reform the sensory epithelium within the inner ear are very useful approaches and those are some of the approaches that we will be using. A third one that is not often talked about is drug treatment. Drugs by definition are designed to get easy access to what is the very inaccessible structure of the inner ear. We could think about whether drugs could be used, for example, to regulate alternative genes that could do jobs that other genes are not doing properly or to trigger regeneration using drugs. These are all ideas but they are only glimmers in people's eyes at the moment. They are not available; there are no treatments available.
Q352 Chairman: Can I just follow up on the question of hearing aids. It sounds like a problem of technological research essentially, in which case can you give us some indication of the size of the market, if you like, because very often that is what drives technology?
Professor Steel: Yes, I can. In the UK there are probably getting on for nine million people who have a significant hearing impairment in one ear or the other. At least half of those, say four million, would definitely benefit from using a hearing aid. At the moment about 1.5 million people have a hearing aid but the use of those hearing aids is less than half so half of those people are not using the hearing aid for most of the time, and there is a very good reason for that; they are not much good. For some people they are fine but for others they are not doing the job they need to do so they end up in cupboards and drawers not being used fully. That is a great shame and I think there really is a gap in research, not just on amplifying and amplifying particular frequencies but how can we code the sound that is coming in to give better frequency resolution and particularly better temporal resolution. A lot of our interpretation of sounds and understanding of speech and localising of sounds uses temporal qualities. When I say temporal I mean things that are changing within microseconds, not even milliseconds, and that is something that people normally take for granted. They can resolve microsecond differences in sounds when they come from different parts of the room but when you start to lose your hearing that is something that is lost and that is something that hearing aids at the moment are not reproducing very well, so there is a lot more research that needs to be done. This is basic research because the basic research needs to be done before it can be applied by hearing aid companies to develop the hearing aids to serve these purposes.
Q362 Baroness Walmsley: To what extent does frailty in any of these areas contribute to other health problems that might develop in older people, for example by limiting their activity and their social engagement? I do not know who wants to start on that one.
Mr Brace: I mentioned earlier on I think it is a very significant area. If the level of independence is lost because of either physical problems—for example, in the group I am looking at visual impairment—it may stop them in their lives from doing things they previously have done like walking, like reading, like knitting, a whole range of activities which have kept them in either a degree of physical or mental activity. The consequences of that are very often growing social isolation and therefore growing issues to do with care, to do with perception of the world, to do with potential mental health issues, because basically the rooms are around them all the time and there is no outlet for that. Many visually impaired people for instance, in common with other ageing people, do not want to go out at night so it is then linked to what is available during the daytime, that you have got accessible transport to, that then makes you feel welcome, and that can explain to you what is going on. Even down to joining a yoga class. If you do not know what the yoga exercises are and you need someone to continually show you what to do, that needs a bit of pre-planning which often does not exist so that puts you off and therefore you do not go.
Professor Steel: Can I comment on hearing. There is some research that has been done that suggests that social withdrawal is one of the tactics that people with deteriorating hearing use deliberately to avoid embarrassment, among other things. For about 35 per cent of the people that is their main tactic, and it is probably a lesser tactic for others in this study. So social withdrawal is a very significant consequence of progressive loss of hearing and everything that goes with that—not going out, not exercising so much because that involves going out, all of those social contacts that mean you are still part of the human race, and the psychological and in some cases psychiatric problems that do follow from social withdrawal, so it is an important issue.
Q363 Baroness Walmsley: Can I follow that up and ask is there a stigma attached to hearing impairment and is that one of the reasons why people do not report and do not want to wear a hearing aid because it tells the world that they are hearing impaired?
Professor Steel: I think there still is. Hearing aids are not fashion accessories in the way that glasses have become much more acceptable in every day life. It used to be that people did not like wearing glasses either but hearing aids have not quite got to that level yet and I think there is a still the common deaf and dumb association, which of course is far from the truth. So I think it is part of the people's expectations that they expect to lose their hearing as they get older, they do not complain about it as much as they should, and they do not go out and try to do something about it and get a suitable prosthetic device like a hearing aid. I think there are a lot of social reasons for trying to make it more acceptable.
Q364 Baroness Walmsley: It sounds as if there is am amazing market to make fashionable hearing aids.
Mr Brace: I think some people accept the word old but they less accept the word disabled and therefore it is question of which is the worse stigma—being regarded as old or being regarded as disabled and for many the word disabled is still the worst of the two options.
Professor Steel: Walkmans are very common amongst the young and if we could get industry to develop one which looked just like a Walkman so that people looked as if they were using a Walkman.
Baroness Walmsley: Or a Bluetooth mobile phone.
Q365 Chairman: We look for the first diamond-studded hearing aid!
Professor Kenny: In the context of falls, one of the earliest consequences is fear of falling particularly if falls are unexplained, and that of course leads to isolation, loss of independence, and that leads to depression, and all of those feed in ultimately to this frailty cascade and an increase in fall rates.
Professor O'Neill: There are a number of studies now to show older people who have retired from driving are more prone to depression and feel socially isolated. I think this is important.
Q366 Chairman: I also have the next question which really follows on from that which is to what extent are the problems associated with frailty the result more of an inadequate environment than that of intrinsic deterioration? If the environment were suitably improved, could the problems be significantly reduced or delayed? Is there any reliable evidence about this?
Professor Steel: Yes, I think there is quite a lot that can be done to the environment. One of the main problems that people who are starting to lose their hearing have is understanding speech when there is a lot of background noise so there is quite a lot that can be done to reduce background noise. If that is traffic then double glazing helps. Having rooms which are designed with good acoustics (which often they are not and they have a lot of reverberation) reducing that reverberation by having lots of soft furnishings, for example, all of that helps. Also having bright lighting helps because a lot of people who are losing their hearing get a great deal of benefit from lip reading. They do not know they are doing it necessarily but they do get a lot from lip reading. You need bright light to be able to see people's lips and body language as well. There are a lot of things that people can do when they are in a listening situation either with a hearing impaired person or as a hearing impaired person themselves. There are a lot of tactics they can use. For example, introducing subjects so that people have an idea of the context before they start talking about a subject helps a lot. Speaking very clearly and facing the person, making sure you are in bright light, there are lots of strategies that can be used. There is a hearing tactics programme that the MRC Institute of Hearing Research developed a few years ago that was distributed quite widely. It has some very useful tips. Some of those tips are to do with environment so there is a lot that can be done.
Chairman: This is naughty but I cannot help it. Remembering the famous Granita Restaurant (or is it infamous?) where the great discussion took place between two senior politicians, it has terrible acoustics and there is not a piece of soft furnishing in the place, so perhaps the whole future of our political debate has been thus determined. I should not say things like that and I will pass back to Baroness Walmsley to be sensible
Q378 Lord Drayson: I am Paul Drayson. I am interested in the way in which industry is or is not meeting the challenge that you have described. You have mentioned some very exciting opportunities for products to be improved, for example hearing aids, and research to improve the way information technology is going and so forth. Can you tell us how well you think industry is responding to this opportunity in areas such a sensory loss and frailty?
Professor Steel: The hearing aid industry is quite active. They obviously have a large market and they want to serve that community better but I think they are very dependent on the fundamental research which is still being funded by a lot of organisations, particularly by charities, some from the Medical Research Council, some from places like the Scottish Office, RNID and Defeating Deafness. So I think fundamental research is something funders shy away from but the applied side they are much more interested in. I mentioned earlier that the importance is not just of supplying a hearing aid that can be programmed, but actually the whole process of choosing the right hearing aid and fitting it appropriately, and that is something that is very difficult, and that is what we do not know the rules for yet. Then there is also the follow-up to train the person to use it and make sure they have frequent follow-ups and are not just left to it because that is when they end up in the cupboard and not on the ear. That is not something that industry seems so interested in doing. They want to sell the hearing aid and that is fine. It is not just industry that needs to be involved in this; it is the National Health Service and the research community and funding for research that all needs to be in place in order to deliver a system that works, as best as a hearing aid ever can work.
Professor O'Neill: In the driving area there is a somewhat complex situation. I think in general companies have not woken up to the fact that there has been a change in the profile of their consumers. I remember running my first international conference on older drivers and one of the automobile manufacturers gave me a grant towards it but said, "Don't mention we are supporting an older drivers' conference." That was 10 years ago. I think that, unfortunately changes in safety for example, seem to be driven by lawsuits. Air bags and children in North America is an example of that. However, for those who research in this area to have better and smarter safety provisions for older people, when that class action lawsuit does come along there is an opportunity and I think it is important in terms of automotive science that people are working on areas of safety features that are more age specific. Also around the design of the fronts of cars and crumple zones for pedestrians. Again, unfortunately, the industry is not taking notice here and sadly it is only by way of class action lawsuit that this will happen. Ford have been mentioning a crash test dummy which is adapted towards ageing but in fact it is adapted more towards disability than ageing, so I think there is a huge opportunity for those involved in automotive design in the United Kingdom and there is a great potential to do better.
Mr Brace: I think I would probably put it into two areas really. I would call the first one proactive, and that is people thinking around the inclusive design programme, design for all, that then has particular application as you are getting older but you can still use things. Big button telephones, et cetera, were reintroduced because basically thousands upon thousands of people need that type of easily useable and seeable phones and dials. I think industry is very poor at the moment in waking up to the billions of pounds out there where potentially people will choose their product, and if it is ergonomically useable by them it means that it is a thing that they will treasure and use all the time. I think the reactive market is really the specialist groupings that have now tried to fill that gap, tried to invent more and more screen readers that you can plug into your telly that you can then use to run over your tin of peas to see the sell-by date or, indeed, whether it is peas at all. Lots of places are looking at that and are trying to make them at a level that is both useable and cost effective. The biggest problem with that is really cost. The development of some of the new technologies in terms of the numbers that are sold really does prohibit it from being within the reach of many thousands of people and that will increasingly be the older people's groups. If you are 55 now and are used to using your computer and then you want to have a screen reader fitted to your computer, which is something I use, you are talking between £800 and £1,000 just to get the additional software to enable you to carry on using your computer. That is a lot of money for something very basic and very simple that would enhance people's ability to continue a bit longer doing the things they are interested in.
Q383 Chairman: I am conscious that we ought to be stopping in a minute but I just wanted to try to amplify this point that has come up in the last ten or 15 minutes. I speak in ignorance and that may be the problem, but if you are thinking about hearing aids I know there is some magnificent research going on in speech recognition technology which I cannot but believe must be relevant to the sophistication of the machine that you put in your ear. There is the other side to it that you, Professor Steel, have properly stressed about what is happening in there and how much or how little we know about that. I wondered if there was a conversation between either the funding bodies or the researchers from these very different corners because of the sophistication of what they are doing this for, be it for security reasons or be it to stop us talking to other human beings and talking to machines instead, is there room for that bringing together and is it happening?
Professor Steel: There is always room for talking to each other but that is a very different thing. This is the sort of thing that happens at scientific meetings and this is why coming to scientific meetings is absolutely crucial so that you do keep in touch with other people. I should say speaking from the hearing research community, I was really talking about the international hearing research community. We have a lot of colleagues in the United States. I think it is true to say I know every team leader who is working in genetic deafness in the world personally and I have collaborated with many of them myself. It is a very small field. We also have very good links with the main charities that support hearing research—Defeating Deafness and RNID—in this country. There are very good communications amongst the UK hearing researchers. So, yes, there is always room for bringing all of these people together in the same room and letting them talk to each other. That is rather different to central control and saying these are the areas that must be researched and you are the one.
Lords Hansard (6 Jul 2005)
Disability Bill
Certain groups of disabled people have become isolated. Certain groups within the deaf community have decided that they do not need input from the outside world. That can lead to isolation, particularly of children. I hope that the Minister will comment on how that problem is being addressed. This is a probing amendment in the true sense of trying to find out what the Government are doing about this matter. The matter has always worried me. It should not be possible for an adult to deny his child the right to use hearing equipment, for example. That is the one example with which I am familiar; I am not saying that it is the only one. You should not be allowed to say, "Thou shalt not hear. Thou shalt not undergo surgery which could be of help". I doubt whether the amendment is perfect, but I should be interested to know the Government's thinking on the matter as it might inform not only this but future debates. I hope that these amendments will be accepted as they would bring disability more into the centre of the Bill.
Commons Written Answers (6 Jul 2005)
Sign Language
Mr. Dodds: To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland what his policy is on the use of sign language in schools in Northern Ireland.
Angela E. Smith: The general aim of local deaf education is to teach deaf and hearing impaired children to speak wherever possible. This happens with hearing impaired children in mainstream schools and special education units for the hearing impaired, attached to those schools. Occasionally, a child attending a unit needs to be taught, at least partly, through the medium of sign language and this would be provided by the teacher and classroom assistant, where appropriate.
The only local school to use sign language on a regular basis is Jordanstown Special School, which employs "Total Communication" methods ie a mixture of speech, lip reading and signing.
The Council for the Curriculum, Examinations and Assessment, addresses deafness as a disability in a number of ways in the revised curriculum. It will be more holistic and flexible, with greater emphasis on real-world skills, such as communication, and a specific element of Learning for Life and Work. Legislation will be in place by September 2006 and the revised curriculum will be introduced on a phased basis stretching to 2009/10.
Mr. Dodds: To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland what resources have been allocated to help schools and colleges in Northern Ireland employ tutors in the use of sign language.
Angela E. Smith: The Department provides £1 million under the Additional Support Fund in further education which, among other things, can be used to provide assistance towards the cost of sign language interpreters. It is impossible, however, to disaggregate the actual amount spent specifically for this facility.
Commons Written Answers (18 Jul 2005)
Miners' Compensation
John Mann (Bassetlaw):To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, what the average settlement (a) to the claimant and (b) in solicitors' and medical fees was for coal health claims relating to deafness settled by his Department in the last year for which figures are available
Malcolm Wicks [holding answer 11 July 2005]: Noise Induced Hearing Loss Claims are not handled under a specific scheme. There are two types of claim, one settled under the Iron Trade Tariff and the other through Common Law. The average settlement under the Iron Trade Tariff for claimants is approximately £1,500 with costs and disbursements ranging from £485 to £800 +VAT. Claims under Common Law have an average settlement of between £3,000 and £3,500. Costs paid are negotiated and can range from £2,000 to £4,000.
Commons Written Answers (19 Jul 2005)
Sign Language
Mr. Hanson: The following resources have been made available to support sign language in Northern Ireland in each year since 2001.
|
Amount (£) |
2001-02 |
122,326.13 |
2002-03 |
149,681.67 |
2003-04 |
187,389.72 |
2004-05 |
202,608.71 |
2005-06 (Estimated) |
150,822.00 |
The cost of further education provision on sign language and of grants provided to a range of organisations to support disabilities including hearing impairment is not included in the above table. It is not possible to isolate expenditure on sign language from the overall expenditure in these areas.
Since 23 January 2004, several Departments have been working in partnership with representatives of the deaf community, to develop ideas for improving access to public services for sign language users. It is not possible to detail the exact sum provided for the cost of staff resources engaged in this exercise.
Select Committee Report (19 July 2005)
House of Commons – Work and Pensions – First Special Report
18. The Committee recommends that the Department soon carries out an urgent and fundamental re-consideration of:
a) its plan to address the language needs of clients;
b) the services it offers to assist clients needing language support; and
c) its plan to improve awareness amongst senior management.
On Recommendation (18) i), see the response to Recommendation (17) above.
In response to Recommendation (18) ii), the Department's policy is that wherever it is necessary to interview a customer who does not speak English, or, in Wales, English or Welsh, and the customer does not wish to use their own interpreter, an interpreter will be arranged and paid for by the Department. To reinforce guidance for staff on implementing the policy, the Department has just completed the production of new guidance for field staff. Staff can access this guidance using the Department's internal intranet website. This change has been made in consultation with the Ethnic Minority Working Party. In addition, Jobcentre Plus has recently reviewed its arrangements for interpreting provision. As a result it will: review its guidance; raise awareness and publicise internally what options are available for interpreters and translation; review how Jobcentre Plus Direct interacts with non-English speakers; and monitor the usage of, and expenditure on, interpretation and translation services. It will be in a position to report on progress by April 2006. British Sign Language (BSL) is also a recognised language and DWP has provided guidance to its staff to ensure that where it is reasonable to do so, this language is used in videos and in face to face communications with BSL users.
In response to Recommendation (18) iii), the Department's senior management has access to the same diversity and equality training that is available to all staff, and which is built into all aspects of the Department's approach to learning and development
Commons Written Answers (20 Jul 2005)
Armed Forces Compensation Scheme
Mr. Hancock: To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what recent representations he has received on the Armed Forces Compensation Scheme as it applies to servicemen and women who have experienced hearing loss.
Mr. Touhig: I have recently replied to a letter from Dr. John Low, Chief Executive of the Royal National Institute for the Deaf(RNID) and the Department has also responded to a letter from Mr. Chris Underwood who is the RNID's Campaign Manager. Both raised concerns about the 50dB threshold used to determine eligibility for awards under the Armed Forces Compensation Scheme where bilateral noise induced sensorineural hearing loss has resulted from military service. I have offered to meet Dr. Low to discuss his concerns
Commons Hansard (21 Jul 2005 )
London Olympics Bill
Harry Cohen: That is a good point, well made. But we want Hackney to do even more. We also do not want any more road routes sprung on us at a late stage, for instance over the environmentally important marshes. We do, however, want public transport to be improved as quickly as possible. Reopening of the Hall farm curve in Waltham Forest would provide a north-south rail link through the borough and, crucially, to Stratford, the main station for the Olympics. That project should move to the top of the agenda.
The Royal National Institute for the Blind makes some interesting points. It says that the Olympic delivery authority should be
"subject to the same safeguard in terms of promoting disabled access as local authorities when acting as planning authorities."
Disabled people want to enjoy the spectacle of the Olympics, as well as the Paralympics, and they should be able to do so. The RNIB also says that all buses in London should be subject to a requirement for "visual and audible announcements" for deaf and blind people, including
"the many tourists visiting London for the Olympics".
There is no commitment to that so far, and I think that there should be.
Commons Written Answers (21 Jul 2005)
Sign Language and Lip-speakers
Malcolm Bruce: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions how many (a) sign language interpreters and (b) lip-speakers were (i) in training, (ii) employed and (iii) unemployed in the UK in each year since 1997.
Mrs. McGuire: Information on the number of sign language interpreters who were employed and unemployed in each year since 1997 is not available. Employment statistics are drawn from the Labour Force Survey. However, there is no question in the survey that relates to whether or not respondents can lip read, or are sign language interpreters.
I understand from the Department for Education and Skills that the information on the respective numbers in training could be calculated only at disproportionate cost.
Malcolm Bruce: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions if he will take steps to implement the Council of Europe's Parliamentary Assembly's recommendation on the protection of sign languages.
Mrs. McGuire: The Government recognised British Sign Language (BSL) as a language in its own right and committed additional funding for initiatives to increase training opportunities for BSL tutors and raise awareness of the language in 2003 before the Council of Europe's Parliamentary Assembly's recommendation was made. These steps are consistent with action that recommendation 1598 (2003) encourages member states to take.
The Council's Committee of Ministers has responsibility on behalf of member states for steering action in response to Parliamentary Assembly recommendation 1598(2003) on the protection of sign languages. The Committee's reply to the Parliamentary Assembly of 5 July 2004 said that a study of the needs of sign language users should inform the decision on any future instrument on the rights of sign language users and that it would update the Assembly on further developments including a possible international conference on sign languages.
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