'No targets' as disability rights plan is criticised

CAMPAIGNERS warned it will be “impossible” to hold the Welsh Government to account on progress against its disabled people’s rights plan due to a lack of concrete targets.

- CHRIS HAINES

Mark Isherwood, who chairs the Senedd’s cross-party group on disability, raised concerns that many of the long-term objectives in the draft 10-year plan lack firm commitments.

He said Natasha Hirst, who was part of ministers’ disability rights taskforce, pointed to a lack of funding to implement the plan as well as a scarcity of clear, robust targets.

Mr Isherwood also quoted Joe Powell, chief executive of All Wales People First, who said: “For this plan to succeed, we need the appropriate investment into the infrastructure and services to make this aspiration a reality.

“We need clear targets about how we are going to achieve this. Without these, it is very difficult to see how the plan will make a difference to disabled people in Wales.”

The Conservative told the Senedd: “Damian Bridgeman, who chaired the disability rights taskforce’s housing and community working group, said the draft document was a smoke-screen rather than a plan.

“He pointed to the absence of new money and a mechanism to track delivery of the action plan further, adding that, ‘disabled people have been reviewed to death, what we need is action - and there's none of that here.”