John Hayes

There is no doubt that the way disability is regarded in Britain has changed for the better. People with disabilities now enjoy legal protections that 25 years ago were absent. Yet for all the progress, there remains a glaring omission: a shameful contradiction in the legal framework that gives life to disability equality. Since 1990, we have differentiated between those diagnosed with disabilities and their non-disabled contemporaries by allowing people with disabilities to be aborted right up to birth, whereas there is a time limit of 24 weeks for the non-disabled. You might think we would have addressed this by now, given the increasingly positive shared view of disability.

This speech by John Hayes, the transport minister, was first delivered on October 31 Politicians speak a lot and sometimes they speak sense. Too rarely they challenge orthodox assumptions and more rarely still take action to turn back tides. This evening I will challenge an orthodoxy, and give notice to the determinist doubters and defenders of the indefensible that, during my time as Minister of State for Transport, in respect of the built environment, I will turn the tide. My case is bold, controversial, and, to some, provocative. Yet the view I will articulate here is widely shared; sometimes falteringly, even guiltily. But shared nonetheless. For me the core of my case is startlingly obvious. Yet it is rarely put and, when put, often derided.