4. Professor Debbie Foster

PROFESSOR DEBBIE FOSTER (affirmed).

Questions From Counsel to the Inquiry

Ms Paisley: Could you commence, please, by giving your full name.

Professor Debbie Foster: Yes, Deborah Foster, or Debbie Foster I’m known as.

Counsel Inquiry: Thank you.

Professor Foster, thank you very much for attending today and for assisting the Inquiry. As you give evidence, please remember to keep your voice up, and if you can speak into the microphone as we have a stenographer who’s taking a note for the transcript.

You have kindly provided a witness statement for this module. We don’t need to look at it at the moment, but it can be found under reference INQ000274189. It’s dated 16 January 2024, and can you confirm you signed that statement, please?

Professor Debbie Foster: Yes, I confirm.

Counsel Inquiry: Can you confirm that the contents of that statement are true to the best of your knowledge and belief?

Professor Debbie Foster: Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: Thank you very much.

It’s right that you are a professor of employment relations and diversity at Cardiff Business School, Cardiff University?

Professor Debbie Foster: Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: And you were asked to provide a witness statement to this module of the Inquiry to outline the work you undertook in respect of the report, Locked Out: Liberating Disabled People’s lives and rights in Wales beyond Covid-19.

Professor Debbie Foster: Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: If you’re content, that’s also known as the Locked Out report for short.

Professor Debbie Foster: Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: Can we begin, then, please, with some questions about how the Locked Out report came to be produced.

Now, whilst you were not an attendee, can you help us with this, please: the Welsh Government’s Disability Equality Forum comprises disabled people and representatives from disabled people’s organisations across Wales; is that correct?

Professor Debbie Foster: That’s correct.

Counsel Inquiry: The chair throughout the pandemic was Jane Hutt MS, who is currently the Minister for Social Justice and Chief Whip?

Professor Debbie Foster: Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: Provided to you in advance of giving evidence today were the minutes of a meeting of the forum.

If we could have those on screen, please, it’s INQ000281763.

And we can see this is dated 23 June 2020.

If we can, please, go to page 4, and paragraph 3.7, in the middle of the page, the following is noted:

“The DMCW …”

Which would be Jane Hutt; is that correct?

Professor Debbie Foster: Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: “… thanked members for their comments and agreed there is a need to consider the impact of Covid-19 on disabled people as a whole, bringing together the different sectors, to enhance the work towards recovery. The DMCW suggested issuing a position statement from the Disability Equality Forum in response to the evidence collated by the various organisations across Wales on the impact of Covid-19 on disabled people.”

Then at the end we can see:

“This can be used to support discussions and decision making across Government.”

So in effect, then, is that Jane Hutt announcing that work should commence on the production of what then became the Locked Out report?

Professor Debbie Foster: Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: And it’s right that Jane Hutt asked Rhian Davies, who is chief executive of Disability Wales, and Jon Luxton, who is a special adviser on disability, to consider the practicalities of producing the report?

Professor Debbie Foster: Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: And it was followed that that you were approached by Rhian Davies because you were known to Disability Wales through your academic work and as someone who had previously served on advisory groups?

Professor Debbie Foster: Yeah.

Counsel Inquiry: Is it significant that the decision of who to appoint as chair was deferred by the Welsh Government to Rhian Davies?

Professor Debbie Foster: Yes, I think it is. To allow the forum itself to choose a chair to represent them is quite progressive. It also means that they gave up a certain amount of control. Unlike Professor Ogbonna, who is a colleague of mine at Cardiff Business School, I know that he was approached by the First Minister and the First Minister’s office to produce a report, whereas in my case the choice was given to the forum itself of who they wished to represent them.

Counsel Inquiry: Can we return briefly, please, to the forum itself.

If we could have your witness statement on screen, please, INQ000274189.

And it’s at paragraph 82, which we can see there, and this is in respect of your attendance at the Disability Equality Forum, which we’ve just discussed, and you say:

“On reflection, it appears odd that I wasn’t invited to DEF meetings while authoring the Report and acting as the nominal chair of the SG …”

Just pausing there for a moment, SG is –

Professor Debbie Foster: Steering group, yes.

Counsel Inquiry: Which we’ll come back on to in a moment.

“… and its chosen representative.”

You go on to say:

“In the absence of any formal mechanism for me to raise matters with relevant Officials and Ministers connected to the evidence we were gathering this would have at least been a means for me to raise concerns.”

You then talk about:

“The advantage of this was that no boundaries were imposed, when authoring the Report and, as the chosen representative of disabled people, I was able to build trust and genuinely coproduce it.”

You then say:

“The disadvantage was that I had no formal mechanism through which I could communicate concerns about evidence under consideration with decision-makers in Welsh Government.”

Did you query why you hadn’t been invited to attend the forum, to your recollection?

Professor Debbie Foster: No, I didn’t officially query it. I mean, as I say, in retrospect, you know, it looks odd that I wasn’t included on the forum. I was invited to a meeting to present the findings of the Locked Out report when they were first issued, but it – I think in retrospect it would have been good to have had a mechanism through which I could have raised concerns. If it wasn’t the Disability Equality Forum, then another means of raising a concern. At the moment with the Disability Rights Taskforce, which I know you haven’t come on to yet, I do have a mechanism through which I can raise concerns.

Counsel Inquiry: So did you feel then, when you were producing this report, you didn’t have such a mechanism?

Professor Debbie Foster: Yes, I did feel that, although I was aware that Jon Luxton, because he is the special adviser to the minister, would probably take back any concerns on our behalf. So there was an indirect mechanism.

Counsel Inquiry: Just one final comment about this paragraph, you refer to yourself here as the nominal chair. Could you just explain to us what that means, please.

Professor Debbie Foster: Yes. When I first was approached by Rhian Davies of Disability Wales, she asked me to chair this steering group and author the report, but as we did the meetings – the meetings were conducted online, because it was during the pandemic, and as we did the meetings, it became apparent to me that I needed time to sit and make lots of notes as people were speaking, particularly about their lived experience. Because there was a lot going on in the meetings and they were quite intense, and so chairing the meetings was going to be difficult.

On top of that, I felt that it would be a good thing to redistribute power within the meetings to somebody else, rather than just myself, if we were genuinely going to co-produce something.

Rhian was an obvious person to nominate and she was nominated and elected by the rest of the steering group, because she also knew all the people in – on the steering group by name and where they came from, which organisations they represented, and we were really anxious to get a representation of different impairment groups.

So, you know … so because the pandemic affected different impairment groups in different ways, it was really important that there was some representation within there from those groups, and Rhian would know who to draw on, as we were discussing things. So it worked out a really good partnership.

And when I say co-production, co-production can mean different things in different contexts, and in this context it was we were co-producing a report as a group of disabled people, we weren’t necessarily co-producing it with Welsh Government, although there were two Welsh Government officials helping us to do that by providing evidence.

Counsel Inquiry: Just on the topic, then, of co-production, in terms of your own research expertise and what you seek to bring to the research that you undertake, in your witness statement – and we don’t need to bring it up – you explain:

“Disabled people are regarded as active agents in my” –

Professor Debbie Foster: Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: – “research, in contrast to traditional ‘expert’ approaches where they have often been treated as passive recipients of others’ perceptions and decisions, or as lacking capacity.”

I think that’s something you have just touched on, so can you please expand on how you sought to do that in terms of preparation of the Locked Out report.

Professor Debbie Foster: Yes. I mean, I just saw us all as experts, really, everybody in the room was bringing something to the report in terms of, you know, we were all going through the pandemic and people were experiencing things there and then in terms of their lived experience. So I was an academic who could put people’s words into a format that would be more agreeable, potentially, to politicians, and I would also bring some skills, some research skills, to that job as well, as a mainly qualitative researcher. And I just felt that to co-produce something, you needed to draw not just on quantitative evidence, statistics or even grey literature that was being produced during the pandemic by different organisations and disabled people’s organisations, but you also needed to hear voices of people and maybe their members, if they were representing a group.

And most of the people on the steering group were representing groups like groups with hearing impairments, sight impairments, learning disabilities, for example, and they could then go back to their groups and say “This is what we’re discussing within the steering group, have we got any examples from our membership of things that are happening to people now that need to be brought to the attention of Welsh Government, and we can put those in the report”.

So the creation of the evidence was ongoing, it was almost live, and that was quite unusual, but there were also ethical restrictions during the pandemic on how you could collect data as an academic anyway, and my university was saying we couldn’t go out and interview people formally because there were problems – you know, face-to-face interviews weren’t possible, but even online interviews, it could be disruptive, you could be talking to somebody who had a loved one who was ill at the time and just contacting people at the time was a sensitive issue.

So by bringing a group of people together to do this report who could draw on their own resources, both personal and their groups’ resources, was really useful.

Counsel Inquiry: And you’ve touched there upon the steering group. It’s right that that was set up and chosen – membership was chosen by the Disability Equality Forum –

Professor Debbie Foster: Yes, it was.

Counsel Inquiry: – so there was control over who was in that group –

Professor Debbie Foster: Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: – the Welsh Government didn’t seek to tell you?

Professor Debbie Foster: No.

Counsel Inquiry: And that steering group met for the first time on 6 October 2020. We’ve touched upon the wide membership of that group and co-production. Do you feel you were given the freedom by the Welsh Government to genuinely produce something that had been co-produced?

Professor Debbie Foster: Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: I want to now talk about the report itself, please, but before we bring it up on screen, Jane Hutt made a statement in the – on 1 December 2020.

If we can have that on screen, please, INQ000350691.

This was to mark the International Day of Disabled People. On page 2, please, and at the bottom:

“Since 2002, the Welsh Government has adopted the Social Model of Disability. A model that recognises that people with impairments are in fact disabled by the actions of our society, and not by their impairments.”

So before we look to the report, can you please just explain that model.

Professor Debbie Foster: Yes, there are two sort of dominant models in disability studies and the disability rights movement: there’s the medical model and the social model of disability. And the medical model of disability has tended to dominate in society more generally, but also in things like government discourse, and the medical model defines people by, in a sense, by what’s wrong with them, what’s different about them, but different is often portrayed as a deficit. So it’s quite negative in its approach and it’s also related to a kind of charity model of disability as well. The social model of disability was developed, and it’s sometimes called the individual model of disability, and it says that instead of focusing on somebody’s medical condition or impairment and, by implication, what’s “wrong” with them, we should be focused on the barriers in society, the much wider barriers in society that do not allow people with impairments, ie disabled people, to function as others can and access what everybody else can in society.

So in that respect, you put the onus back onto society and decisions within society as to whether you disable somebody or not. So the idea is that somebody isn’t necessarily disabled by their impairment, they are usually disabled by the inability of society to accommodate that impairment.

Counsel Inquiry: On that note, then, can we please turn to the Locked Out report, INQ000142176, page 18, please, and it’s the last paragraph on that page, and we can see here it says:

“Evidence we present in this report suggests politicians, policy makers and professionals, have hastily reverted to using a discredited medical model of disability.”

So was the finding that the Welsh Government, contrary to what Jane Hutt may have said, that they were not adhering to the social model but had adopted a medical model?

Professor Debbie Foster: Yes. I think that all governments did – in the UK – initially react by adopting a medical model, yes.

Counsel Inquiry: In terms of what that meant for disabled people living in Wales throughout the pandemic, what did it mean for them in terms of how the Welsh Government used this model to make its decisions?

Professor Debbie Foster: Well, I mean, it meant that apart from the Disability Equality Forum that disabled people were not seen as a group that was going to – needed to be consulted.

I mean, one of the things that the Locked Out report continually says is that if we had a society in which disabled people were adequately represented as decision-makers, in all aspects of our lives, including political decision-making, then perhaps some of the problems with the pandemic that disabled people experienced wouldn’t have happened in the first place, because they would have been around the table, they wouldn’t have been seen as a “special” group, they would have been actually integrated into decision-making, and perhaps – we wish – that some of the decisions that had been taken may have been better informed.

This included things like, you know, the wearing of face masks, which disadvantaged people with hearing impairments, the social distancing regulations which were problematic for people with visual impairments, and, you know, the locking up of quite a lot of people with learning disabilities, particularly those who were residential in institutions, and really the removal of their right to independent living and their human rights.

Counsel Inquiry: I want to come on to a number of those topics, but just before we do, since the publication of this report, have you seen a change or did you see a change in the attitude of the Welsh Government?

Professor Debbie Foster: Yes. I think the thing is that the Welsh Government adopted the social model of disability quite some time ago, but our argument has been that that is not reflected in their legislation, so there are a number of relevant pieces of legislation that have been passed that – I’m trying to remember, Social Services and Care Act? I can’t actually remember the name of it. But there are a number of pieces of legislation that have been passed which did not use social model language, they used medical model language, and they defined disabled people in relation to their medical condition.

In relation to what’s happened since that statement and since the report, we’ve had the Disability Rights Taskforce, and with that Welsh Government implemented something we recommended in the Locked Out report, that participants all undergo social model training and that social model training is contracted out to a disabled people’s organisation, in this case it’s been Disability Wales. And everyone that’s participated in the taskforce, including ministers and officials, have been asked to undertake social model training – or it’s been made available to them. I don’t think it’s compulsory, but it has been made available to them.

Counsel Inquiry: Can we then come back to some of the other points that you’ve just touched on, please. One finding of the report was that there was a poor public understanding that some disabled people would be unable to comply with certain NPIs, and you gave some examples, social distancing and face coverings being just two.

Professor Debbie Foster: Yeah.

Counsel Inquiry: And of course this meant that there were occasions where disabled people were challenged by members of the public, and unfortunately in some cases maybe abused by members of the public.

Did you find any evidence that the Welsh Government had actively considered that might be a consequence of these NPIs?

Professor Debbie Foster: That’s quite difficult to answer because I wasn’t having conversations with officials and ministers at the time, so I – it would all be second hand through, you know, what people in the steering group were saying had happened rather than – because I didn’t have that conduit in terms of having a direct line to discuss this with a specific official or minister.

Counsel Inquiry: Perhaps a question you may be able to help us with is: do you think that there would have been ways to mitigate this? For example, better public health communications.

Professor Debbie Foster: Yes, yes, I do, and I think the Welsh Government did discuss this in the Disability Equality Forum and there were attempts made to address these issues.

I am going to, you know, for the record, say that Jane Hutt was excellent throughout the proceedings. That, from what my experience of her, she does understand the social models. And I think Mark Drakeford also understands the social model of disability. I wouldn’t say that all Welsh Government officials do, and I haven’t really had enough conversations with other ministers to know.

But I think that what worries me is that that means that understanding of some of these really basic issues that should have been understood really quite early on, are down to one or two people. They may have been very influential, and they may have been key politicians, but they couldn’t be everywhere all the time. So I think we’re talking about a whole culture that needs to be changed, and that takes a huge amount of time. It’s something that we’re trying to work on with the Disability Rights Taskforce.

But, you know, if we’re looking forward rather than back, we would hope that some of the work we’ve done subsequently with Welsh Government would mean that these issues would be more to the fore of their minds than they were at the start of this pandemic.

Counsel Inquiry: Can we then move on, and if we can please have INQ000142176 back on the screen, this time at page 22, and a topic considered in the report is the human rights of disabled people. There’s one specific example I wanted to ask you about, which is the last paragraph. You’ll be, I’m sure, very familiar. What was the issue that was being raised here, please?

Professor Debbie Foster: The issue was that – I mean, I’m not an expert on Coronavirus Act 2020 (Commencement No. 1) (Wales) Regulations 2020, but people did bring a number of concerns to the group that there was uneven access to services and – dependent on where you lived in Wales, that there was concern about certain protections being withdrawn and that people were being neglected, particularly people receiving social care in their house on an individual basis, that there was a risk of abuse, and that Disability Wales had raised this with Welsh Government, and we were concerned that there had been a very slow response.

Counsel Inquiry: And as you just acknowledged, Jane Hutt engaged well throughout the pandemic, and indeed you say that this particular issue about the suspension of this provision was raised with Jane Hutt, who committed to resolving the problem. I think you’ve just touched upon this, but was that done quickly enough?

Professor Debbie Foster: I don’t feel I’m very well informed on this, but from what people were telling me, no, it wasn’t. But, you know, I think there are people who are better informed than I am to be able to pass a judgement.

Counsel Inquiry: Thank you.

Can we then please turn to page 29, and it’s the second to last paragraph, and a statistic I think we’ve already heard a number of times so far in this Inquiry, but equally alarming every time, is that:

“Data published in September 2020 … shows that in the period March to July … 68%, or almost 7 in every

Professor Debbie Foster: Yeah.

Counsel Inquiry: As far as you are concerned, was there ever a feeling amongst the group and those that you spoke to that the Welsh Government had seen this as inevitable?

Professor Debbie Foster: Oh, that’s a difficult question. (Pause)

No, but – but I want to caveat that in that I think that there was more of a culture of inevitability coming down from the UK Government around the whole discourse of people with – who were vulnerable because they had pre-existing health conditions. There was a feeling amongst the group that disabled people were generally seen throughout Covid as dispensable, that it was almost inevitable that because they had pre-existing health conditions they would be more vulnerable to Covid and therefore they would die.

And I know when this statistic came out it was really quite shocking, and I remember the meeting that it was brought to, the statistician from Welsh Government brought the statistic to the meeting, and there was a lot of discussion about why might it be so high, and latterly we learnt that it was particularly high in Wales. And I think that that has a lot to do with the historical and socioeconomic profile in Wales, of poverty and deprivation, and, you know, I … I mean, COVID related deaths in Wales were disabled people.” I just feel that what we wanted to convey in the Locked Out report was a really clear message that it was not inevitable that disabled people were necessarily going to die in larger numbers than other groups of the population. There were things that could and should be done, and there were lessons to be learnt for the future.

Counsel Inquiry: Perhaps on that same topic, page 34 of the report, if we could have that, please, and it’s the top paragraph:

“Concerns have been raised about the access of long-term users of NHS services for non-Covid-related health conditions in Wales …” So perhaps directly relevant to what we were just talking about.

Professor Debbie Foster: Mm.

Counsel Inquiry: Whilst suffering from the direct harm of the virus itself, disabled people were also suffering as a result of reduced access to non-Covid services. In your view, is that something that was avoidable?

Professor Debbie Foster: I mean, I’m not a medic and I wasn’t working in the health service at the time, but I think that a decision should have been taken about the maintenance of some non-Covid services, particularly rehabilitation services, that were completely shut down from what we could gather.

This example here is Fight for Sight, and there was Andrea, who came along from … I was going to say “blind dogs”, because she always calls it “blind dogs”.

Lady Hallett: Guide Dogs for the blind?

Professor Debbie Foster: Guide Dogs for the blind. She always calls it “blind dogs”, so that’s kind of stuck in my head. And she’s sight impaired and she continually brought up the issue of people not being allowed to go to rehabilitative appointments and the fact that a number of people that she was aware of had actually lost their sight completely as a consequence of that.

So these were essential appointments and essential medical interventions, but they were not about Covid. Yeah.

Ms Paisley: Finally, then, on the report, please, can we please look at page 27 and the fourth paragraph from the bottom. This is in respect of equality impact assessments, more of which to come, but:

“The use of Equality Impact Assessments … as an available tool during the pandemic have been conspicuously absent. We call on the Welsh Government to ensure that EIAs are properly used and are not just consultation exercises, but opportunities to genuinely co-produce action plans and evaluations with people and people with other protected characteristics.”

So first of all you say they were absent in the report.

Professor Debbie Foster: Mm-hm.

Counsel Inquiry: What’s the importance of those impact assessments being undertaken?

Professor Debbie Foster: Well, I think had they been undertaken, some of the issues that we raised in the report would have been discovered and they would have been apparent.

The whole point of equality impact assessments is to ensure that you consult with the groups with protected characteristics that the Equality Act specifies, and I think that increasingly equality impact assessments over time have just become a bit of a tick box exercise. And there has been evidence of this. Even the Equality and Human Rights Commission I think have reported that equality impact assessments have lost some of their – their importance. And I think that they shouldn’t just be consultation exercises, but originally – because I remember taking part in the very first equality impact assessments in the public sector as a disabled people person within the university, and originally there were some really, you know, in-depth consultation exercises with staff and key personnel with protected characteristics, but they’d become much more diluted in recent years.

Counsel Inquiry: Can we then please move on to the publication of the report, and it’s right that a meeting took place between members of the steering group with the First Minister, Mark Drakeford, on 18 March 2021. Can you recall, is that the first time that the group had met with the First Minister in respect of the reports?

Professor Debbie Foster: Yes, it was.

Counsel Inquiry: Was that quickly enough?

Professor Debbie Foster: No, well, we waited some time before the meeting and we had a period of time in which we – to be quite honest, we thought perhaps we’d been forgotten completely. Either that or the report was too honest and too hard hitting that Welsh Government didn’t know what to do with it. Now, both of those are speculations, because we have no idea what was going on behind the scenes. But it didn’t feel quick enough, no.

Counsel Inquiry: But in terms of the publication, there was a delay?

Professor Debbie Foster: Yes, there was a delay.

Counsel Inquiry: Do you feel you’ve ever been offered a reason for that?

Professor Debbie Foster: Not a proper explanation, no.

Counsel Inquiry: The Welsh Government on the same day that they published the report, which was 2 July 2021, they also published their response to the report, which I won’t ask you to look at now, but it’s right that one of the things the First Minister committed to was establishing a taskforce. If we can turn then, please, to the Disability Rights Taskforce. To what extent did the steering group who had been involved throughout production of the report influence the approach that would be taken by the taskforce?

Professor Debbie Foster: Yes. Well, originally we thought we were being asked to put forward some terms of reference for the taskforce, and we did have discussions as a steering group about that, and we did make some suggestions. But after a number of meetings we felt that the vision that we had was a little bit more developed and possibly more ambitious than the vision that Welsh Government had, and there was a little bit of conflict backwards and forwards as to what they saw this Disability Rights Taskforce wanting to achieve.

I felt that the steering group had a very clear vision of what it wanted to achieve, which was that it wanted to take the recommendations from the Locked Out report and the chapters within the Locked Out report and really interrogate those in much greater depth. And any other issues that we weren’t able to cover. Because the original report was written in quite a short period of time, I think it was about three or four months, and so we were also aware that we hadn’t covered some issues, for example education, children and young people, justice, in any great depth.

Counsel Inquiry: So were there any tensions between the Welsh Government and the steering group that you can recall?

Professor Debbie Foster: Yes, there were, and there were a lot of conversations amongst the steering group. We had a number of online meetings saying “Where do we go from here? What do we do? What if they don’t publish it? We’ve done all this work and will anyone ever see it?” This kind of thing. And I think there was a feeling within the steering group also that if Welsh Government didn’t publish it then we would publish it independently.

Counsel Inquiry: So the taskforce was formally constituted in November 2020 –

Lady Hallett: Ms Paisley, I’m sorry to interrupt. Are you going on to slightly different topic?

Ms Paisley: My Lady, I have one final question on this topic and then it might be a convenient moment.

Lady Hallett: Are you okay to come back to this afternoon?

The Witness: Yes.

Lady Hallett: I’m sorry, it’s just that something has arisen that we need to sort out over lunch, so if Ms Paisley can just deal with this last matter and then …

Ms Paisley: Okay.

Just in respect, then, of the taskforce being constituted in November 2021, it’s right you were the co-chair –

Professor Debbie Foster: Yes, I am.

Counsel Inquiry: – of the taskforce, and just generally speaking do you believe engagement with Welsh Government officials on the taskforce has been open and constructive?

Professor Debbie Foster: It’s been really good, yes, it’s been excellent.

Ms Paisley: My Lady, I would then be moving on to a new topic.

Lady Hallett: I shouldn’t have interrupted when I did, should I?

Thank you very much, if you could be back for 1.45, please.

The Witness: Ah, okay.

Lady Hallett: Thank you.

(12.45 pm)

(The short adjournment)

(1.45 pm)

Lady Hallett: Ms Paisley.

Ms Paisley: Thank you for returning, Professor.

Just before I move on to my final two topics, just two questions that have arisen, please.

Firstly, you say prior to completion of the report you had an indirect mechanism for raising concerns when we were talking about whether you were an attendee of the equality forum, and you say that you could raise matters through a special adviser. Did you ever have the need to raise any concerns, and if so were they acted upon?

Professor Debbie Foster: When I say I had an indirect, he didn’t put himself in the position of – he didn’t explicitly say “You can raise concerns with me”. I think, yeah – I mean, if concerns came up from the group, yes, we raised them with him and asked him to convey them back to Jane Hutt, but I didn’t – I don’t recall ever having specifically asked him to raise something on my behalf.

Counsel Inquiry: Then the second question: you’ve told us it’s important to hear not just data and figures but also hear the lived experiences of people. Do you feel that that evidence was obtained and passed to the Welsh Government, and as far as you are concerned, did they take it on board and act upon it?

Professor Debbie Foster: Yes, I do feel that that was the case, and it’s been quite an experiment, I think, for Welsh Government, but it’s been one that I’d like to see repeated elsewhere because I think it’s been very, very productive.

Counsel Inquiry: The final topics then I want to ask you about are the actions taken since the report.

If we can, please, go to the Welsh Government’s response, which is INQ000282168, and on page 5, please.

There’s a list of bullet points there, and I wonder if you can help us. Have those actions been taken or committed to, as far as you can help us with that?

Professor Debbie Foster: Well, some of them have been already taken, and some of them are commitments.

So establishing a taskforce, yes, we’ve got that.

Introducing the socioeconomic duty, that came into force in March 2021. And that also says:

“… tackling inequality at the heart of decision-making. The guidance stresses the need for public bodies to consider lived experience when making strategic decisions.”

I think one of the issues that I want to stress here is that a lot of people came to the steering group and expressed their opinions through the steering group that Welsh Government did respond to a number of concerns that they raised, but the problems were much lower down, at the service provision level. So local authorities, health boards, really the delivery of services was more of a problem than Welsh Government itself. So there’s something that we keep referring to during the taskforce and the Locked Out report which was the implementation gap. And Jane Hutt has taken that on board and often does refer to the implementation gap, and the need for us to think about how some of the changes that are taking place within Welsh Government at that level are being cascaded much further down to public service providers. That’s – that’s the area we’re really worried about, that the message possibly doesn’t get down to those people providing services on a day-to-day basis, face-to-face, with disabled people and their organisations.

So, you know, I know that we’re having an Inquiry about the actions of the Welsh Government, but that communication between Welsh Government and other agencies it funds and it also has some regulatory powers over, I think are just as important here to consider.

Counsel Inquiry: And as far as you are concerned that is something you think is being addressed?

Professor Debbie Foster: I don’t have evidence for that, to be quite honest. I have evidence much more at a strategic level that disabled people are being involved in the taskforce, in decision-making, in policymaking and policy ideas. I don’t see evidence that all this is cascading down. I mean, okay, we’ve taken part in some social model training with inspectorates, the care inspectorate, for example, in Wales, and I’ve taken part in that, which is a really good initiative, but I do worry about this implementation gap and the implementation gap is where most disabled people on a day-to-day basis experience public services. You know, whether – whether it’s easy to access them, easy to get information, easy to get people to advocate on their behalf when they use public services, because a lot of disabled people won’t use them directly but they may need somebody to intervene on their behalf in using them. All that sort of nitty gritty day – you know, day in, day out grinding people down is what we often hear back as feedback, that there’s a lot of good policies, there’s a lot of good speak on the websites and, you know, people saying the right things, but is it the experience on a day-to-day level that people are getting what they need to live a life that is fulfilling and without the barriers that they shouldn’t really be encountering.

Counsel Inquiry: I think if we can take that extract down, and I don’t propose to take you to it, but some higher level points that are recommended that the Welsh Government can take. The first is, to further protect and enhance the rights of disabled people, the government has committed to incorporation of the United Nations convention on the rights of disabled people into Welsh law during the current Senedd term.

Can you help us with whether that’s happened?

Professor Debbie Foster: Well, no, it hasn’t happened, because I think it would be a very lengthy process, but they have set up a committee to look into the feasibility of it happening, and the problems that might be related to incorporating that into Welsh law.

I think the concern around that is the time that that’s taking, and it is a very complex situation, it’s a complex thing to do if they do incorporate it into Welsh law, but I think that the fear has been that a lot of the things that we thought maybe would be resolved within this Senedd term may not be, and we are also losing a First Minister that was very dedicated to the setting up of the taskforce and some of the provisions that went within it.

I mean, Welsh Labour committed to that incorporation of the –

Lady Hallett: I think we need to be careful here: (a) I think we may be straying beyond the pandemic, and (b) we need to be careful because I know what’s going on in Welsh politics at the moment and I think we need to be very careful.

Professor Debbie Foster: Okay.

Lady Hallett: But, I’m sorry, I appreciate it’s a really important topic, and you’re an excellent advocate for it if I may say so, but we need to stick with the pandemic, I’m afraid.

Professor Debbie Foster: Okay, my Lady.

Ms Paisley: Another recommendation, and if we can focus on how this would have assisted over the pandemic perhaps, is the appointment of a minister for disabled people.

Professor Debbie Foster: Yeah.

Counsel Inquiry: How would that have helped over the pandemic?

Professor Debbie Foster: I think, as I said previously, having people round the table who are representing – either representing disabled people but, more preferably, disabled people themselves as key decision-makers. I mean, if a post were created as a Minister for Disabled People, it wouldn’t necessarily be a disabled person, but one would hope that they would be in touch with all the organisations much more regularly than the Disability Equality Forum of Welsh Government because, you know, they’re quite infrequent meetings really. I think the argument would be that having somebody dedicated to that role, a bit like the Older People’s Commissioner – I mean, if it was a minister or a commissioner, you know, it could be one or the other. The Older People’s Commissioner, Children’s Commissioner we have in Wales, and they have the opportunity to be much more proactive rather than reactive to what’s required of that particular population. And I think what was lacking in the pandemic was the proactivity. There was a lot of reactivity, but not as much proactive decision-making.

Counsel Inquiry: Moving then on, finally, you discuss in your statement some of the lessons that could be learned for a future pandemic, and I think we’ve probably just touched upon a few there. So, firstly, that consultation with disabled people was too infrequent and reactive. Is there an easy way that that could have been solved?

Professor Debbie Foster: Well, if there was a minister or commissioner, that might have been one reason for doing that. I think – I think the Disability Equality Forum has strengths. It didn’t meet regularly enough. Its strength is that it’s made up of disabled people and their organisations, so you’ve got, you know, a good deal of representation there. But you’ve got a very enthusiastic minister with that portfolio in Jane Hutt. You don’t know – I mean, what worries me about the whole edifice of the Disability Rights Taskforce is, you know, if there isn’t a Jane Hutt and there isn’t a Mark Drakeford, does that then continue and does it have the same impact as was intended when it was first set up? I’m afraid I’ve strayed into politics a little bit.

Lady Hallett: I think we have to stop this –

Professor Debbie Foster: Yes, okay, thank you.

Lady Hallett: – I really have to be extremely careful. I’m sorry.

Ms Paisley: Thank you.

One final point, then, you talked about medical evidence was significant, of course over the pandemic, but you say that social scientists also have a role to play, and should be consulted. Can you explain briefly how that would have assisted, had there been more consultation with social scientists, please.

Professor Debbie Foster: Yes, I think that, I mean, it’s almost inevitable that if there’s a virus it’s seen as a medical problem, and obviously we didn’t know anything about the virus and we needed that kind of evidence. But there are other types of evidence I think we could have drawn on, including, you know, social scientists and behaviourists, particularly in recommending a whole – whole array of different restrictions, social restrictions on people which, you know, were brought in to stop a virus but nobody really thought out what the consequences might be in terms of people’s behaviour, in the limitations on their ability to live independently. You know, in the – in relation to disabled people, for example, you know, the social distancing and not being able to use public transport without being accompanied by somebody was going to be a problem for quite a large proportion of that population, not all but some disabled people, and I think that we would have had more of a multidimensional approach of thinking through these issues rather than reducing everything to a medical model. We would have had much more of a holistic social model of – well, going back to the social model of disability, and full circle really.

Ms Paisley: Thank you very much, Professor. I don’t have any further questions for you, and thank you for giving evidence today.

Lady Hallett: Thank you very much for your help, Professor, I’m very grateful to you, and I’m sorry we kept you over lunch.

The Witness: Okay. Thank you.

(The witness withdrew)

Lady Hallett: Ms Hitchman.

Ms Hitchman: My Lady, may I call Helena Herklots CBE.