By Leys Geddes
We are in contact with the Communities and Local Government department in central government and the Local Government Authority to find out if this is correct, if there is a specific national policy and what can be done to make sure that this kind of thing never happens again.
Kingston Council are now working on what might turn out to be a pilot policy and implementation plan for other councils, and we are involved in that.
I am attending a public hearing on April 21st in Portcullis House, which is the kind of annexe to the Houses of Parliament. The meeting is part of the Speaker's Conference - http://www.parliament.uk/business/speakers_conference.cfm- which has been set up by the Speaker of the House of Commons to make sure that women, ethnic minorities and people with disability are being included in the political process. We have reported what has happened so far to the organisers, and this has been passed on to all Members of the Conference. Until now, they had not received any statements concerning speech impairment and associated issues.
Some might say that 'disabled' has come to mean mobility disabled: people in wheelchairs - many of whom have no difficulty in either expressing themselves or being accepted as equals by society and officialdom.
It is worth noting that no Member of the UK Parliament has an audible stammer (except for Ed Balls, who almost has his stammer under control) yet there are some 750,000 children and adults in the UK who stammer. As 1% of the population stammers, there should be 6 or 7 stammering MPs.
Are we surprised by any of these numbers?!
About the Author:Leys Geddes is Vice-Chair of the British Stammering Assoociation and campaigner for the rights of people who stammer.
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