Just a few weeks ago Nicola Sturgeon was heckled by service users at a homelessness project when she launched yet another initiative to end rough sleeping and homelessness. John Swinney will, in the next few days on 9th December, join thousands of people in a sleep out in Princes Street Gardens organised by Social Bite and aimed at ending homelessness within the next 5 years.International Day of People with a Disability [IDPD] was on 3rd December, just a couple of days ago. In Scotland, the government reports that 20% of the population [over 1 million people] has a disability. Use Google to search for IDPD linked to Scottish Government and you discover that there were no events at which Nicola Sturgeon promised new money or fresh action to end discrimination against disabled people in Scotland. John Swinney appears to have slept in his own bed that day since there was no media coverage of him raising the public's awareness of the discrimination encountered by disabled people and showing how this could be ended. None of the organisations claiming to work for disabled people have launched plans or strategies to end disability discrimination within the next 50 years, never mind the next 5 years.
The only mention I was able to find of IDPD linked to government was on Twitter, where the head of the civil service in Scotland tweeted a picture of St Andrews House.
It might have been more useful if the Permanent Secretary had shone a light - of any colour - on the equality employment data of her own employer, Scottish Government. The most recent 2017 report on employment data from government as an employer shows that just 5.8% of the workforce identifies as disabled, quite some way short of the 20% of the population identifying as disabled. The rest of the public sector has an equally abysmal record when it comes to delivering equality of employment opportunity for disabled people. The NHS in Scotland in 2017 has just 0.85% of its whole workforce identifying as disabled. Scotland's universities report that 3.3% of their collective workforce identifies as disabled. In 2015, Scotland's local authorities were reporting that 1.96% of council employees across Scotland identified as disabled.
At this rate of progress towards delivering equality of opportunity for all disabled people in Scotland, it is more than likely that thousands of Scotland's disabled people will be born, live a life and die before they can claim equality of employment opportunity has arrived for them.
