“WHAT makes you think I’m not disabled?” As the Minister for Disabled People, Anne McGuire frequently has to contend with the accusation that she doesn’t fully understand the needs of those she represents. “Disabled people often say: ‘You politicians don’t know anything about disability’,” she says. As one put it bluntly in a recent webchat: “Isn’t it about time we had a disabled minister?”

But the tendency of many people – journalists included – to presume that they know what disability looks like feeds dangerous stereotypes, she says. McGuire is a diabetic, a fact not often publicised. “Changing attitudes has to be our top priority,” she says. “There is a whole range of disabilities that are not obvious but that impact on individuals’ lives.”

Mental health conditions and learning disabilities are often overlooked. “There is an increasing awareness of disability, but it is still confined to mobility and sensory impairment,” she says. Only 7 per cent of disabled people are wheelchair-users, while up to one in five of us can be officially defined as disabled. This was broadened to include cancer, HIV and multiple sclerosis under the Disability Discrimination Act 2005. McGuire considers this a victory. People with these illnesses or conditions “could have been treated in a discriminatory fashion. Now, if [they] are discriminated against they have rights,” she says.

Workplace prejudice is commonplace. About half of disabled people are unemployed, compared with about 20 per cent of nondisabled people, but many employers simply lack confidence over supporting disabled employees, McGuire says. She tells the story of a bakery worker with diabetes who was sacked because her employer presumed that she would fall into a coma. However, there has been progress. “More and more employers are recognising the need to make reasonable adjustments.” Role models are growing in number. “[We see] disabled people in all walks of life participating at the highest level in business, in politics, in the voluntary sector.”

McGuire regards the Improving the Life Chances of Disabled People report, published in 2005, as a landmark moment. “For the first time the Government, working with disabled people, had identified the . . . route map to independence and equality.” The UN Convention on the Rights of Disabled Persons last year was a big step forward, she says, but she wants more pan-European collaboration. “Colleagues from across different countries met to discuss fisheries [and] health issues, but nobody met to discuss disability issues.” Her suggestion that the EU holds regular meetings on disability issues has been picked up by the German and French presidencies.

Involving service users is the crux of independent living, she says. “Disabled people have been on the receiving end of decisions as opposed to being totally engaged in them.” Individual budgets are the Government’s flagship for service user control. She gives the example of a woman with breathing difficulties who spent some of her allowance to install air-conditioning in one room in her home. “It meant that she didn’t need to go to hospital and greatly enhanced her quality of life. Under the previous [arrangement] it could not have happened.” She vigorously rejects any suggestion of cost-cutting. “It [is] not about cutting back on resources. It is about how you use resources.”

Independent living is not policy gloss, she argues, but a psychological shift. The semantics go beyond political correctness; McGuire’s speech is peppered with can dos. Employ ability is one major campaign; bright posters show a physiotherapist with dyslexia and a copywriter who cannot speak. A fellow minister at the Department for Work and Pensions recently suggested replacing sick notes with fit notes.

“I want to see the cultural change [whereby] society sees disabled people for the contribution that they can make as opposed to the disabling impairment that they have,” she says. Some disability campaigners now regard the word carer as unacceptable. “Most disabled people I know talk about their support worker. None of us can manage without support.”

It’s impossible to spin the facts: disabled people are twice as likely to live in poverty and almost half have no savings. One in four has no qualifications. “Let me state very clearly, I am not complacent. There is still a long way to go,” she says. The Life Chances ‘route map’ gives the Government until 2025 to realise the vision. “Not everything in the garden is rosy,” she says. “But this is a generational change.”

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