How dysfunctional is Parliament for disabled MPs?

When Liam Conlon was working for the late MP Tessa Jowell, she would remind him there was a time when Parliament had more men called Dave or David than female MPs from all parties combined.

The former minister went on to explain how Parliament had changed during her career to become more inclusive for women.

“I think the last group that’s never really had its day is disabled people and disabled MPs,” says Conlon. “I think that could change in this term.”

Parliament can be tricky enough to get around when you are able-bodied – the Grade I-listed Palace of Westminster covers an area the size of 16 football pitches, with four floors and 65 different levels. For those with disabilities or accessibility needs, however, the challenges multiply, including navigating stairs, dealing with broken lifts, avoiding trip hazards, and moving through an awkward Chamber.

Peers such as Lord Blunkett and former MPs including Robert Halfon have navigated the palace for decades, but how are the new intake of MPs with disabilities finding the adjustment?

After an accident at the age of 13, Conlon was unable to walk for four years. He has since had extensive surgery, including two hip replacements (one during his sixth-form years) that have led to irreversible damage to his hip, knee and spine, and continuing mobility issues.

“The things I find difficult in Parliament are too many stairs and not having enough leg room to stretch my leg out,” he says. “Then also sitting for too long at the wrong angle can cause the pain in my hip and my lower back.”

A common theme mentioned by MPs with mobility issues is the physical toll of sitting around in the Chamber, potentially for hours at a time, in the hope of being called.

“The times I’ve spoken in the Chamber, I’ve been quite fortunate in that I haven’t had to wait for that long. If I was to have to sit there for three or four hours just to get called, that would be an issue,” adds Conlon, an officer of the first Parliamentary Labour Party group for disabled people.

Luke Akehurst, Labour MP for North Durham, faces similar challenges. He has permanent nerve damage following a neurological illness caused by bone marrow cancer, meaning he uses a stick while walking and wears orthotic splints. The nerve damage also means his hands shake when holding notes and speaking.

“I find it’s quite physically difficult for me to speak in the Chamber,” Akehurst says. “It’s easier for me in Westminster Hall, because I can rest on a desk, but I would normally grip a rostrum wherever I speak, and obviously, as a backbencher, I don’t have anything to hold on to, so I’m conscious of that.”

Akehurst has spoken to senior Labour figures about the possibility of taking one of the Chamber’s corner seats, which would allow him to hold on to one of the decorative crowns on the bannisters to stabilise himself.

“There could be a more generous take from whoever’s in the chair of the ability of some Members with disabilities to stay sat through an entire debate if they’re going to get called to speak late,” Akehurst adds, “because sitting for so long is a problem.”

“Either it needs to be taken into account by calling them earlier in the debate, or the chairing needs to not strike them off the list if they have to get up and go and come back.”

The Chamber has proved tricky for Conservative MP Alison Griffiths because of her hearing loss. After contracting bacterial meningitis at university, Griffiths was in a coma for a week and lost 70 per cent of her hearing at the time. She now has no hearing in her left ear and 40 per cent loss in her right ear at different frequencies.

“The frequencies that seem to be trickier are female voices,” Griffiths explains. “In the Chamber with Mr Speaker, I can hear him very clearly – even then I get nervous that I’m not going to hear him – but with the female deputy speakers, right across the board, I really struggle to hear.

“It has been a real issue when I was bobbing, not knowing, being really worried that maybe they said my name, because I could hear a noise, but whether it was my name or someone else, it’s very difficult to tell.”

After talking to the Speaker’s office about her issues, she was supported by staff who made sure the deputy speakers were aware and eventually recommended she try a hearing aid that could loop into the Chamber’s audio sound system.

I’ll always enlist colleagues’ help to make sure I’m not missing anything

“The last time I tried to use a hearing aid was just before Covid, but I found it really distracting and difficult. When I lost my hearing, I couldn’t understand a word anyone was saying. It was literally listening to a foreign language that you don’t know the words to at all. It was really, really difficult, very isolating,” she says.

“Then gradually over time, you learn to use everything at your disposal, so [I’m] always making sure someone’s sitting on my right-hand side, being quite vocal when I can’t hear, making sure that I’m sitting with something behind me so that I haven’t got noise I can’t see, and lots of tricks that you learn to utilise.”

For now, Griffiths sits on the furthest left of the Conservative green benches as she can: “If someone’s already got that seat, then so be it. But that’s why you’ll always see me, if I get a half shot, being as far over on the aisles as I can be. And I’ll always enlist colleagues’ help to make sure I’m not missing anything.”

She has also started using another trick in her Business and Trade Committee sessions.

“The other thing that we’ve done in select committees is to have an iPad and my laptop out so that I can have the subtitles through Teams transcription of what’s being said in the committee room,” Griffiths adds.

Steve Darling has Stargardt disease, which makes his eyesight “a bit like looking through frosted glass”. When he was a councillor, he became used to standing up and making speeches, often listening to nudge notes on a laptop that, after pressing a cursor, would take him on to the next part of his script.

But in the Commons, which is “somewhat more pressured” and where you can’t use a laptop, he has been forced to rethink: “I can’t use written notes. I kind of know braille, but it’d be a nightmare to do that, particularly when you have sweaty fingers and are stressed.”

Darling has been seeing a speech coach, who is visually impaired himself, once a month over three months through the help of parliamentary authorities “to see how we can enhance my memory and impactfulness for speeches”.

In the Commons, when speeches become time-limited, as Darling can’t keep an eye on the time he has the on-duty whip tap him on the knee to flag if he is getting down to the last 30 seconds of available time.

One thing he struggles with is Charles Bonnet syndrome, where “you slightly hallucinate without the need for drugs” and sometimes see things that aren’t there. This is where his guide dog Jennie, a golden retriever he has had for two years, comes in useful.

“She thinks that Parliament is a place where everybody comes to love her, and she thinks the front bench are all sat there to stroke her.”

One benefit is that she has been “a massive bridge between many MPs” from across the political spectrum.

The Labour MP for Thurrock, Jen Craft, has hidden disabilities related to mental health conditions.

“You can imagine this place is not set up to be the most conducive to mental wellbeing,” she says with a laugh. “I was joking that if you’ve ever had depression or anxiety, you think you’re the worst person ever. And if you’re an MP, people email me, they contact you on social media, to tell me and I’m like, ‘I was right. I am the worst person’.”

Craft adds: “I did a lot of work to get myself into a mentally healthy place where you can consider going near this place.”

The Labour MP sometimes has trouble when in the Chamber for extended periods of time, often discreetly using a fidget toy to help focus, which she compares to people clicking their pens, and sometimes needing to go out for a breath of fresh air.

“I was waiting three or four hours in the Chamber recently to speak. It should be OK to leave the Chamber for a quick nip outside to collect yourself, breathe and then go back in without having to explain yourself,” Craft adds.

Both Conlon and Akehurst think you could look to the Upper Chamber for solutions.

“The Lords in a five-hour debate stop after two and a half hours, and they have a food break, which sounds very sensible,” Akehurst says.

“In the House of Lords, you get a calling order in the Chamber... so there are things that they could do that wouldn’t alter the atmosphere and culture of Parliament too much, but just make it more accessible,” Conlon adds.

I think the last group that’s never really had its day is disabled people and disabled MPs

Accommodation whip Mark Tami worked with Conlon to make sure he would be in an office that was step-free from the entrance.

For Akehurst, it was a toss-up between a step-free office and one close to the Chamber so he could get there in time for a division.

“I can’t break into a run when a vote is called, so I need an office that’s near. The problem with a nearby office is that it’s in an old building, and there might be the steps, so the trade-off was that I went nearer to the Chamber, so that I could get there if there was a division while I was working or in a meeting, but recognising that meant there would be some steps to navigate… There are very few offices that are close with step-free access,” Akehurst explains.

“There’s a number of MPs along this section who have health issues or mobility issues,” Darling says of his office, because there is a lift leading to his corridor. “With a good wind behind you, it sometimes takes two minutes to get to the Chamber.”

Disabled access often has a habit of not working on the estate. Darling has found the disabled entrance at Carriage Gates broken for periods of six weeks and instead has been entering through the Lords and walking the length of Parliament internally.

“For a week there was a doorman there just to open the gate for me, which I found, personally, somewhat embarrassing that one of our door keepers was having to do this because the entrance keeps breaking,” he says.

Signage, too, creates trouble where Darling can’t see the numbers on committee corridor because they are all up so high. It is the same with bathrooms and he says “there must be others who have a form of official impairment that struggle with signage”.

Harry Gable, a Labour senior researcher, can relate to Darling’s issues even getting on and off the estate.

Being a wheelchair user in a Palace where only 12 per cent is step-free, he regularly has issues moving around Parliament and for the first 10 months of working for an MP, Gable had to be escorted to lunch or even the bathroom because of the four sets of unautomated double doors blocking the way to his office from Portcullis House. House authorities eventually took action, but Gable found it difficult to be heard.

“If a complaint comes from a staffer there is a much greater culture of, well, that can be not treated as seriously... to be frank it kind of only moves forward when something direct comes from my MP,” he says. “It’s almost as if me going, ‘Hey, I’m in a wheelchair and I can’t get to my office,’ doesn’t ring alarm bells already. What it needs is for my MP to use their platform to go via the speaker, who then kicks it all off... my voice should be enough on its own.”

Practical issues still exist around more general access: “If Portcullis is shut, the Derby Gate out-of-hours entrance has no wheelchair accessibility. If I needed to, as part of my job, get onto the estate on the weekend, or out of hours, I physically couldn’t actually get into the estate.”

It could mean, if he worked late or attended an evening event, Gable could effectively be trapped on the estate. He adds: “It’s the principle. That it is considered acceptable for everybody else to be able to enter the estate whenever they want, but nobody’s doing anything about the fact that wheelchair users or physically disabled people can’t do that.”

He understands that in a crumbling Palace there will be issues that cannot always be fixed, but “what you can fix is the way that you culturally respond to them” and create a more inclusive environment.

“They talk a really good game on equalities, diversity and inclusion. I came into Parliament on the Speaker’s scheme five years ago, which was explicitly aimed at getting under-represented groups into Parliament as staffers.

“In that application, it said explicitly that disabled people were under-represented and particularly encouraged to apply. Then I got there and it’s almost as if they’re like, ‘Oh, great, we’ve given you a job now, but there’s no support to go alongside that’... Too often Parliament hasn’t been able to join those dots.”

Divisions alone have been providing issues for those MPs with disabilities.

“The night when we had 10 lots of divisions on the Budget, I was actually in a lot of discomfort,” Akehurst says. “The whips noticed and were like, ‘Are you going to be OK? This is a lot of standing.’ I said at the time that I’d be fine, but actually I went home and I was in a lot of discomfort.”

For Craft, the difficulties come in a slightly different manner, she says: “A few neurodiverse members, I would say some people might find it quite overwhelming in the voting lobby, especially if it comes at the end of the long day. It can be quite taxing.”

Another area that sparks a similar response is Portcullis House, Craft adds: “People find PCH difficult because it’s very intense, lots of noise bouncing off everywhere and lots of people with loads of interaction.”

It has been difficult to decide what about her conditions she makes public knowledge. “I’m not entirely open about what goes on with me, because it’s quite hard to have those conversations with people. They make some unfair assumptions, I think, about what your capabilities are,” Craft says. “People expect you to be fairly genuine and open as an MP and how much you give of yourself to people is a hard line to find.”

All are similarly complimentary of the help from parliamentary services. Akehurst highlights that “the doorkeepers are excellent” and help reserve places for MPs with disabilities. “They keep a seat for me whenever the big set pieces come.”

A House of Commons spokesperson said: “A range of measures are regularly used for those who require adjustments when in the Chamber. Members are encouraged to engage with the Speaker’s office and the clerks to ensure that whoever is in the chair is aware of any issues.”

Responding to the comments from staffer Harry Gable, a UK Parliament spokesperson added: “It is vital that Parliament is accessible to all. We understand that there is more to be done to ensure that disabled people do not face unnecessary difficulties when working in or visiting Parliament. We are committed to making further essential adjustments and ensuring that all our staff are trained in disability awareness.”

Conlon had his Parliament training session the Saturday after the general election took place. One of the first teams he was introduced to was the “superb” accessibility team based in Richmond House, which immediately supplied him with the appropriate desk and chair.

But Conlon believes things could still be better, “not just for MPs but for MPs’ staff”. He says: “This place has passed legislation on employment rights, disability rights and discrimination that it doesn’t always uphold itself. I think just getting in line with some of the stuff it expects others to do would be great.”

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