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Carers and human rights: the parallel struggles of disabled people and carers for equal treatment

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View the page of Luke Clements

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Luke Clements considers the struggle being waged by unpaid carers (sometimesreferred to as ‘caregivers’) for recognition as ‘rights holders’.

Image courtesy of interviewee. March 25, 2024

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The speaker, an experienced lawyer involved in human rights litigation, discusses their journey into writing legislation for carers and addressing issues related to disability rights and the treatment of carers. They trace the evolution of disability rights since the 1970s and draw parallels between the civil rights movements for various disadvantaged groups, highlighting the historical treatment of disabled people and the emergence of a strong narrative advocating for their rights.

The speaker outlines what constitutes a "constitutional moment" for these groups, emphasizing the need for self-identification, recognition of oppression, and a unifying creed. They reference the social model of disability, which argues that societal barriers, rather than individual impairments, are the true obstacles faced by disabled people.

The discussion extends to the recognition of carers as a significant demographic that requires legal rights protection similar to that achieved for disabled individuals. The speaker notes the challenges that carers face, including poor health outcomes and financial issues, and emphasizes that caring roles are often gendered, rendering them invisible.

They argue that there is a growing movement to secure rights for carers, paralleling historical movements for disability rights. The speaker concludes with a cautious optimism regarding recent legal advancements for carers, yet acknowledges the ongoing struggle to achieve a clear legal definition of who qualifies as a carer and to ensure that their rights are adequately protected.

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Here are several articles and topics similar to the video you , which discusses human rights, disability rights, and the treatment of carers:

1. **The Evolution of Disability Rights Law**:
- This article could cover the history of disability rights legislation from the 1970s onward, including key legislative milestones like the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD).

2. **Carers and the Need for Legal Recognition**:
- An exploration of how carers are often overlooked in legal frameworks, with discussions around specific rights that should be afforded to them and how they can be organized to advocate for those rights.

3. **The Social Model of Disability Explained**:
- A detailed examination of the social model of disability, contrasting it with the medical model, and its impact on policy and law regarding disability rights.

4. **Intersectionality in Disability Rights Advocacy**:
- An article highlighting how various social movements (such as race, gender, and class) intersect with disability rights, emphasizing the importance of recognizing diverse experiences in advocacy efforts.

5. **Legal Protections for Caregivers and Family Care**:
- This could focus on existing laws regarding family caregiving, discussing potential reforms needed to ensure caregivers receive adequate support and recognition.

6. **Historical Treatment of Disabled Individuals**:
- A comprehensive account of how society has evolved in its treatment of disabled individuals since the civil rights era, including an analysis of societal attitudes and policies.

7. **The Gendered Nature of Caregiving**:
- Investigating how gender impacts the caregiving role and the specific challenges women face as caregivers, and how these challenges can be addressed through policy changes.

8. **Constitutional Moments in Social Justice Movements**:
- An analysis of what constitutes a constitutional moment in various social justice movements, including the current state of advocacy for disability rights and caregiver recognition.

9. **Challenges in Defining Family Caregivers**:
- An article delving into the complexities and debates surrounding the legal definition of caregivers, discussing implications for policy and care ethics.

10. **Recent Legal Advances for Carers in Various Countries**:
- Coverage of recent developments in laws and policies aimed at supporting caregivers, including case studies from different nations that have made strides in this area.

These articles would align well with the themes and discussions highlighted in the speaker's narrative, providing a broader convideo to the ongoing issues surrounding disability rights and the recognition of carers.

X-TIMESTAMP-MAP:LOCAL=00:00:00.000,MPEGTS=900000

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I suppose I'm a lawyer and I have been very involved in

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human rights litigation for various disadvantaged groups,

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and through sort, sort of serendipity, I ended up,

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being asked to write some legislation for carers,

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got involved in carers,

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and I saw the similarities between that sort

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of embryonic carers movement, 15,

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20 years ago, and the other movements

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that had happened in the second half of the last century.

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And, and I just wrote about it.

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Well, it varies throughout the world.

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Um, looking at the UK in,

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in the law is in in good shape.

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Um, the UK has been seen as a leader in,

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most countries when they're talking about developing

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their carers legislation, particularly in Europe,

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but in the US and sort of the Anglo-Saxon world

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and to a degree in, in Asian countries.

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They look to the uk. The UK has for just historical

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accident reasons, being at the forefront

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of drafting that legislation.

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So it's very good show. When I wrote this paper,

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2010 on years ago, I think in, in,

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in many practitioners mind, there was, a memory

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of a early BBC program called Does He Take Sugar?

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Um, and that was in 1977 initially,

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and it was at a time when disabled people were

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completely changing their identity from

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compliant cripple people in wheelchairs.

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And the legislation talked about cripples

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and handicap people, into sort of,

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in a way human rights activists.

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Um, and so it had this very provocative title

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of Does he take sugar

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because it, you, you talked about 'em, you didn't talk

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to them because they were incoherent, incapacitated people,

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but they weren't, they were becoming,

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human rights champions effectively.

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And they were saying, we have rights the same, you know,

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we are the discriminated like, racial groups

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and, and sexual groups.

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Uh, and that was building on, the civil rights movement,

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particularly in the US and so on.

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And they, they have, in my opinion,

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all of these, disadvantaged groups have

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what I would call a constitutional moment.

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Very often those moments come out of, massive unhi,

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upheavals war or, or something similar.

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Um, and I frame the argument to say

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that they needed really three issues.

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They needed to, as a group identified.

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Um, so they needed to be identified by the state,

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but also to self-identify.

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They needed to have a narrative of oppression that,

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that they had been treated disadvantage.

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And finally they needed a creed that could crystallize,

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those two factors into a campaign.

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Uh, and of course, disabled people had

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for long been adversely treated by the law.

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They had trouble, I think, forming a group identity,

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but the law had treated them in a, for very many years.

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And in terms of lunatic legislation

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and, dispossessing them of the right

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to make decisions on certain issues, they

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had a strong narrative of oppression

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because of the law was framed in negative terms.

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And for them,

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the constitutional moment was the social model of disability.

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Michael Oliver's idea that people weren't

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handicapped because they lacked the ability to walk.

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They were handicapped because somebody put the polling

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station at the top of a flight of stairs

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and they couldn't vote, not for any innate reason.

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It was an external form of oppression.

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Uh, and that came at a, at a crucial junction history.

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Um, I think the Vietnam War is the sort of motive there,

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a lot of highly educated, scripted people going to Vietnam,

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coming back, disabled people, and being treated adversely,

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and then building a campaign.

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So in, in 19 77, 78, 98, you were,

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this was becoming, concrete.

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And we were then being, you know, there was big arguments.

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They should add disabled people to the list

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of prohibited characteristics and discrimination.

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So we had the race,

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discrimination legislation in the sixties and seventies

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and equal opportunities rec,

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legislation in the seventies,

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sex discrimination legislation.

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It seemed very difficult to argue that disability should be

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a characteristic, because of course, there are lots

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of things to say, well, people certainly can't do

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because of their impairments, which isn't really true

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with sex or race.

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So it was a big pushback. People were very skeptical.

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But of course, in the Americans with Disability,

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acts comes along in 1990 and fairly shortly

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after that, you get a whole raft

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of other countries following suit.

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In the uk we had the Disability Discrimination Act in 95.

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Um, and in a way, the rest is history.

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In 2006, you get a UN declaration, a UN convention,

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the rights of persons with disabilities.

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So I was arguing that,

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the similar constitutional moment was coming for carers.

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It wasn't just he take sugar,

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its does your carer take sugar?

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But in fact, they had the, the raw ingredients for

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a constitutional moment, those three ingredients.

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And well, the Creed for Disabled People was,

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the classic, argument of Michael Oliver,

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the social model of disability.

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Um, and his, his, the front cover of his book,

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the 1990 book was a disabled person in a wheelchair at the

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bottom of a flight of stairs.

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And at the top was a sign saying polling station.

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And his argument was that people are not handicapped

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by their impairment.

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They have handicapped by the, the idiot, basically

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that put a polling station at the top of a flight to sticks.

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And that society had been constructed

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for able-bodied people, and

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therefore needed to be, destructed in a way,

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or reconstructed in a way

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that didn't handicap disabled people.

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But getting rid of barriers was the problem.

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The physical barriers, the attitudinal barriers, the,

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the administrative barriers.

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And that was, I mean, it is a brilliant idea.

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It's been obviously refined a lot.

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Um, but it completely turned the argument over.

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And people would say, look, I'm a repressed, not internally,

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I'm externally oppressed

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by the way the state is, is running thing.

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Uh, and the yeah, as I say, I think the rest is history on

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that, changed.

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And, we are now at a stage

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where it's unquestionably accepted

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that disabled people should be a protective status

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and shouldn't be the victims of discrimination

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and have fundamental human rights.

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Uh, which for me as a young lawyer 50 years ago,

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45 years ago, seems strange, but now it's just routine.

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I always find it ex extraordinary.

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I mean, now I'm a pretty well full-time academic,

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and, and I get the students

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to look at the founding documents,

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the Universal Declaration on Human Rights,

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the International Covenant on Human Rights,

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the International Covenant on Social Economic Economics,

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the European Convention on Human Rights.

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Um, and you look at those groups, you know,

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no one should be treated adversely

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because of their sex race, national status,

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birth origins, and so on.

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But workability is not in any of those.

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But now we have a UN convention.

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And if you look at the rights protected, not to be tortured,

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not to be made a slave, be able to express yourself,

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the right to care isn't there.

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There's the right to care is not in any

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international document,

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but it's the most fundamental right that exists.

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None of us would exist if we weren't

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provided with care as babies

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or at other stages, that, that somehow, you know, you have

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to sort of say, well, well, is there a right to care?

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And then you say, well, of course there's a right to care,

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because if we didn't do that, the world wouldn't exist.

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The human world wouldn't exist.

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And yet people are routinely punished for caring.

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They are carers, unpaid carers have some

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of the worst health outcomes, some

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of the worst financial situations,

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un since I've written the paper, has produced

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a document on extreme poverty.

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The Rapporteur saying it's very difficult

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to imagine any human right that isn't fundamentally affected

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by the unpaid and highly gendered caring, roles

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and difficulties that carers have.

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So, so it is ex I think it's very strange,

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and I think that if, if caring wasn't so gendered,

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it probably would've been in some of these

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original documents, but it was just, it's not seen there.

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But when you explain it that way,

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I think people will say, yeah, sure it's right.

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But why do we need to have that as a human? Right?

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Well, because people are treated adversely because of it.

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The thing about caring is so interesting is

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that it's gendered, and that's why it's largely invisible,

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and it's normally done behind closed doors.

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And there's something sort of, yeah, unusual about it,

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even though it's sort of ubiquitous.

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The argument was that there was a sort

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of constitutional moment coming for carers,

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as a group.

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They historically have been identified in legislation a lot.

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The 1601 poor law

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made it a legal obligation on families to care

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for other family members.

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That obligation exists pretty well throughout the world.

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Even in the us the majority of states have

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what we call failure responsibility obligations, common law,

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civil law countries in Europe,

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Europe have that obligation.

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They exported that to South America.

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Confucian countries have those obligations too.

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Curiously, the UK got rid of failure responsibility in 1948,

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when it abolished the libel, the, the poor laws.

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But that sort of cultural norm continues.

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And for very interesting sort of serendipitous re causes.

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The UK had a sort of movement on carers, which

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started in the sort of eighties

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and eventually culminated in a private member's bill called

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the Carers Recognition Act, which was then, copied

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in much of, well, particularly the,

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the Anglo-Saxon world in Europe.

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Uh, so you were beginning to get legal recognition care

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as people that the government didn't wanna upset.

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There's an awful lot of them.

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And, their voting is probably quite important.

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Care has always had a problem self-identifying,

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as the way I think disabled people did

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that the Vietnam veterans didn't wanna

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say, I'm a disabled person.

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They wanted to say, look, I'm a a law lecturer,

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or I'm a mechanic, or I'm something like that.

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So getting identities always been quite a difficult problem

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with some oppressed groups.

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But you, you had this proliferation

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of carers organizations in the 1990s

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and ever since, so there was no problem about it having an

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identity, very much a identity entity,

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a narrative profession.

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Well, as I I've said, the statistics on carer wellbeing,

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they're just truly dreadful.

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Um, women end up with half the pension pots

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of men in general, even in Anglo-Saxon countries, largely

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because of caring, not for children,

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but for, dependents, health-wise,

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over half of all carers have a caring related health

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condition, and so on and so on.

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So the adverse impact of being a carer,

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is profound.

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And the question was, what's the creed going to be?

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Uh, and in my paper, I argued that it was,

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vulnerability theory.

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And I, I talk about somebody I think is amazing,

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Martha Feynman, who argued that, you know,

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there's universal vulnerability.

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Nobody's invulnerable

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and just the state privileges, various groups to be more

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resilient than other groups.

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And, wealthy people, people who can go private,

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who can pay for their children's education,

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who can introduce them to colleagues and so on, networks.

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And that the, the argument was

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that it was the state's obligation,

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responsive state's obligation to compensate

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for the vulnerabilities that people had to

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build up their re resilience effectively and effectively.

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Um, she's a feminist scholar, compensate women for

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the caring role that many people take on gladly,

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but they shouldn't be, financially punished.

13:31.705 --> 13:34.525
So I argued that there was that moment, and

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therefore, carers would become in time one

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of the protected ga categories in discrimination,

13:41.785 --> 13:45.285
and that there was a very strong argument for caring, being

13:45.965 --> 13:48.965
recognized as a human right, for which you like expression.

13:48.965 --> 13:51.125
You shouldn't be treated a adversely

13:51.125 --> 13:54.325
because you express, you know, standard views.

13:55.425 --> 13:57.685
And that was sort of 2013.

13:57.965 --> 14:02.455
I think now on nearly everything,

14:02.725 --> 14:04.695
that I talk about, I'm normally wrong.

14:05.235 --> 14:08.455
Um, I, I just tend to get history wrong.

14:09.115 --> 14:11.095
Uh, I've made these predictions

14:11.395 --> 14:13.775
and, you know, you wind the clock forward

14:13.875 --> 14:15.615
and you think that was not right.

14:15.755 --> 14:18.695
It didn't happen that way. The unusual one about this is it

14:18.695 --> 14:22.055
sort of, even though I've changed my mind a bit about this

14:22.055 --> 14:26.855
issue, it seems that that view has proved to be not,

14:26.875 --> 14:28.055
not completely incorrect.

14:28.595 --> 14:30.215
Um, shortly

14:30.225 --> 14:34.935
after I, I wrote the article, the un, major report on,

14:35.515 --> 14:38.695
the human rights impact of unpaid care.

14:38.695 --> 14:42.615
In, we just recently had a,

14:42.815 --> 14:46.255
a really pivotal decision of the UN Convention on the Rights

14:46.255 --> 14:49.615
of Persons with Disabilities Committee in, a,

14:49.855 --> 14:52.325
a case called Bulia in Italy, where they have said

14:52.355 --> 14:55.205
that carers have rights under the Disabled People's

14:55.205 --> 14:57.525
Convention, and they found a violation in relation

14:57.525 --> 14:58.645
to a female carer.

14:59.375 --> 15:03.205
We've had, a European Court of Human Rights case against

15:04.205 --> 15:07.885
Croatia, largely a discrimination case.

15:08.145 --> 15:12.085
And we've also had the associative discrimination case,

15:12.165 --> 15:14.805
a talk about in, in the case, a case called Coleman

15:15.465 --> 15:19.085
Law in 2018, significantly

15:19.645 --> 15:22.845
expanded in UK law, in 2021.

15:23.465 --> 15:27.765
So indirectly, kiers are now

15:28.315 --> 15:31.765
well protected under bits of discrimination law,

15:31.765 --> 15:34.685
and indirectly their human rights are being

15:35.445 --> 15:37.605
recognized, but not directly.

15:38.145 --> 15:40.805
Um, so we still haven't got to that pivotal moment.

15:41.045 --> 15:42.325
I probably changed my opinion

15:42.325 --> 15:44.525
because I, there was a risk of me being correct,

15:44.945 --> 15:47.125
and so I, I went incorrect.

15:47.505 --> 15:50.165
Um, yeah, I have got a paper, I haven't written it,

15:50.165 --> 15:53.685
but I've analyzed all of these decisions from the point

15:53.685 --> 15:55.525
of view about what impact they've had.

15:56.515 --> 15:58.695
Uh, we as lawyers tend to see a decision

15:58.835 --> 16:01.095
and think, that's great, you know, we won the case,

16:01.435 --> 16:04.935
get some photographs, get in the newspaper,

16:04.995 --> 16:06.935
and then get on with the next case.

16:07.395 --> 16:10.015
But winning a case is the beginning, not the end

16:10.015 --> 16:12.255
of the struggle because it's gotta be implemented

16:12.675 --> 16:15.615
and it's got to bring about sort of constitutional change.

16:16.115 --> 16:18.495
And if you look at the history of

16:19.435 --> 16:23.335
discrimination legislation, particularly, it,

16:23.405 --> 16:26.295
it's called sort of Nancy Fraser talks about it

16:26.295 --> 16:28.415
as being progressively neoliberalism.

16:28.755 --> 16:30.415
It, it, it, it talks the talk,

16:31.075 --> 16:32.575
but it still allows the government

16:32.575 --> 16:35.095
to walk the Goldman Sachs walk, basically,

16:35.405 --> 16:38.725
that it doesn't upset the economic basis.

16:38.985 --> 16:42.765
And Sabi Basti wrote an analysis of the impact

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of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990

16:45.665 --> 16:48.845
and said it really hadn't changed the discrimination,

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the adverse position of,

16:50.645 --> 16:52.365
of black people in the US at all.

16:53.065 --> 16:57.965
Um, so we clinging to the non-discrimination rights,

16:57.965 --> 16:59.925
and we think they're great triumphs,

17:00.385 --> 17:02.965
but they do very little to unsettle the universe

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of disadvantage, that we need

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to probably pull other knee levers.

17:08.685 --> 17:10.965
And, and Martha Thyman says that herself,

17:11.505 --> 17:14.445
but she's not really interested in protected categories.

17:15.055 --> 17:18.325
She's interested in attacking privilege.

17:18.825 --> 17:23.085
Um, so maybe I spent too much time with Martha.

17:23.265 --> 17:24.765
She was a colleague here,

17:25.025 --> 17:28.405
and she's not the sort of person I'd like to disagree with,

17:28.425 --> 17:30.965
but actually is somebody I do like to agree with.

17:31.345 --> 17:34.085
So maybe discrimination is, is an easy win.

17:34.315 --> 17:36.245
Curiously, I know it's a big struggle,

17:36.865 --> 17:40.565
but it doesn't necessarily change the position

17:40.745 --> 17:42.805
of those protected groups

17:43.385 --> 17:45.005
to the degree that we'd like to see.

17:45.575 --> 17:48.365
There been some positive legal conclusions to,

17:49.105 --> 17:54.005
Um, the paper comes out in 2013, I think it was.

17:54.765 --> 17:58.285
I was then the expert advisor to parliament,

17:58.465 --> 18:00.765
the joint houses of the Parliament on the Care Act.

18:01.185 --> 18:04.405
And that act gives carers exactly the same rights

18:04.405 --> 18:07.525
effectively in social care in the UK as disabled people.

18:07.635 --> 18:10.485
It's the first piece of legislation in the world to do that.

18:11.305 --> 18:14.445
So carers have really become embedded within the lung,

18:14.825 --> 18:18.605
and there's very positive, as I I've said,

18:18.945 --> 18:22.125
acknowledgements within, international discrimination

18:22.145 --> 18:25.765
and human rights legislation that,

18:25.765 --> 18:27.525
these things have got to be addressed.

18:27.985 --> 18:29.485
Uh, so yeah, I think

18:30.065 --> 18:32.045
the things are moving in the right direction.

18:32.665 --> 18:36.045
The problem remains, always

18:36.755 --> 18:39.485
with the law in how do you define a carer,

18:39.795 --> 18:43.725
because of course, most of us are carers one

18:43.725 --> 18:45.045
or more times in our lives,

18:45.425 --> 18:49.045
but that's not, that's not, so I think, yeah, the line

18:49.045 --> 18:49.725
of travel is.

00:00 - I suppose I'm a lawyer and I have been very involved in human rights litigation for various disadvantaged groups, and through sort, sort of serendipity, I ended up, being asked to write some legislation for carers, got involved in carers, and I saw the similarities between that sort

00:20 - of embryonic carers movement, 15, 20 years ago, and the other movements that had happened in the second half of the last century. And, and I just wrote about it. Well, it varies throughout the world. looking at the UK in, in the law is in in good shape. the UK has been seen as a leader in, most countries when they're talking about developing their carers legislation, particularly in Europe,

00:52 - but in the US and sort of the Anglo-Saxon world and to a degree in, in Asian countries. They look to the uk. The UK has for just historical accident reasons, being at the forefront of drafting that legislation. So it's very good show. When I wrote this paper, 2010 on years ago, I think in, in, in many practitioners mind, there was, a memory of a early BBC program called Does He Take Sugar? and that was in 1977 initially,

01:29 - and it was at a time when disabled people were completely changing their identity from compliant cripple people in wheelchairs. And the legislation talked about cripples and handicap people, into sort of, in a way human rights activists. and so it had this very provocative title of Does he take sugar because it, you, you talked about 'em, you didn't talk to them because they were incoherent, incapacitated people,

01:57 - but they weren't, they were becoming, human rights champions effectively. And they were saying, we have rights the same, you know, we are the discriminated like, racial groups and, and sexual groups. and that was building on, the civil rights movement, particularly in the US and so on. And they, they have, in my opinion, all of these, disadvantaged groups have what I would call a constitutional moment.

02:28 - Very often those moments come out of, massive unhi, upheavals war or, or something similar. and I frame the argument to say that they needed really three issues. They needed to, as a group identified. so they needed to be identified by the state, but also to self-identify. They needed to have a narrative of oppression that, that they had been treated disadvantage. And finally they needed a creed that could crystallize,

03:02 - those two factors into a campaign. and of course, disabled people had for long been adversely treated by the law. They had trouble, I think, forming a group identity, but the law had treated them in a, for very many years. And in terms of lunatic legislation and, dispossessing them of the right to make decisions on certain issues, they had a strong narrative of oppression because of the law was framed in negative terms.

03:33 - And for them, the constitutional moment was the social model of disability. Michael Oliver's idea that people weren't handicapped because they lacked the ability to walk. They were handicapped because somebody put the polling station at the top of a flight of stairs and they couldn't vote, not for any innate reason. It was an external form of oppression. and that came at a, at a crucial junction history. I think the Vietnam War is the sort of motive there,

04:07 - a lot of highly educated, scripted people going to Vietnam, coming back, disabled people, and being treated adversely, and then building a campaign. So in, in 19 77, 78, 98, you were, this was becoming, concrete. And we were then being, you know, there was big arguments. They should add disabled people to the list of prohibited characteristics and discrimination. So we had the race, discrimination legislation in the sixties and seventies

04:43 - and equal opportunities rec, legislation in the seventies, sex discrimination legislation. It seemed very difficult to argue that disability should be a characteristic, because of course, there are lots of things to say, well, people certainly can't do because of their impairments, which isn't really true with sex or race. So it was a big pushback. People were very skeptical. But of course, in the Americans with Disability,

05:09 - acts comes along in 1990 and fairly shortly after that, you get a whole raft of other countries following suit. In the uk we had the Disability Discrimination Act in 95. and in a way, the rest is history. In 2006, you get a UN declaration, a UN convention, the rights of persons with disabilities. So I was arguing that, the similar constitutional moment was coming for carers. It wasn't just he take sugar,

05:39 - its does your carer take sugar? But in fact, they had the, the raw ingredients for a constitutional moment, those three ingredients. And well, the Creed for Disabled People was, the classic, argument of Michael Oliver, the social model of disability. and his, his, the front cover of his book, the 1990 book was a disabled person in a wheelchair at the bottom of a flight of stairs. And at the top was a sign saying polling station.

06:12 - And his argument was that people are not handicapped by their impairment. They have handicapped by the, the idiot, basically that put a polling station at the top of a flight to sticks. And that society had been constructed for able-bodied people, and therefore needed to be, destructed in a way, or reconstructed in a way that didn't handicap disabled people. But getting rid of barriers was the problem.

06:41 - The physical barriers, the attitudinal barriers, the, the administrative barriers. And that was, I mean, it is a brilliant idea. It's been obviously refined a lot. but it completely turned the argument over. And people would say, look, I'm a repressed, not internally, I'm externally oppressed by the way the state is, is running thing. and the yeah, as I say, I think the rest is history on that, changed.

07:09 - And, we are now at a stage where it's unquestionably accepted that disabled people should be a protective status and shouldn't be the victims of discrimination and have fundamental human rights. which for me as a young lawyer 50 years ago, 45 years ago, seems strange, but now it's just routine. I always find it ex extraordinary. I mean, now I'm a pretty well full-time academic, and, and I get the students

07:40 - to look at the founding documents, the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, the International Covenant on Human Rights, the International Covenant on Social Economic Economics, the European Convention on Human Rights. and you look at those groups, you know, no one should be treated adversely because of their sex race, national status, birth origins, and so on. But workability is not in any of those.

08:04 - But now we have a UN convention. And if you look at the rights protected, not to be tortured, not to be made a slave, be able to express yourself, the right to care isn't there. There's the right to care is not in any international document, but it's the most fundamental right that exists. None of us would exist if we weren't provided with care as babies or at other stages, that, that somehow, you know, you have

08:31 - to sort of say, well, well, is there a right to care? And then you say, well, of course there's a right to care, because if we didn't do that, the world wouldn't exist. The human world wouldn't exist. And yet people are routinely punished for caring. They are carers, unpaid carers have some of the worst health outcomes, some of the worst financial situations, un since I've written the paper, has produced a document on extreme poverty.

09:00 - The Rapporteur saying it's very difficult to imagine any human right that isn't fundamentally affected by the unpaid and highly gendered caring, roles and difficulties that carers have. So, so it is ex I think it's very strange, and I think that if, if caring wasn't so gendered, it probably would've been in some of these original documents, but it was just, it's not seen there. But when you explain it that way, I think people will say, yeah, sure it's right.

09:28 - But why do we need to have that as a human? Right? Well, because people are treated adversely because of it. The thing about caring is so interesting is that it's gendered, and that's why it's largely invisible, and it's normally done behind closed doors. And there's something sort of, yeah, unusual about it, even though it's sort of ubiquitous. The argument was that there was a sort of constitutional moment coming for carers, as a group.

09:55 - They historically have been identified in legislation a lot. The 1601 poor law made it a legal obligation on families to care for other family members. That obligation exists pretty well throughout the world. Even in the us the majority of states have what we call failure responsibility obligations, common law, civil law countries in Europe, Europe have that obligation. They exported that to South America.

10:25 - Confucian countries have those obligations too. Curiously, the UK got rid of failure responsibility in 1948, when it abolished the libel, the, the poor laws. But that sort of cultural norm continues. And for very interesting sort of serendipitous re causes. The UK had a sort of movement on carers, which started in the sort of eighties and eventually culminated in a private member's bill called the Carers Recognition Act, which was then, copied in much of, well, particularly the,

11:07 - the Anglo-Saxon world in Europe. so you were beginning to get legal recognition care as people that the government didn't wanna upset. There's an awful lot of them. And, their voting is probably quite important. Care has always had a problem self-identifying, as the way I think disabled people did that the Vietnam veterans didn't wanna say, I'm a disabled person. They wanted to say, look, I'm a a law lecturer,

11:33 - or I'm a mechanic, or I'm something like that. So getting identities always been quite a difficult problem with some oppressed groups. But you, you had this proliferation of carers organizations in the 1990s and ever since, so there was no problem about it having an identity, very much a identity entity, a narrative profession. Well, as I I've said, the statistics on carer wellbeing, they're just truly dreadful.

12:01 - women end up with half the pension pots of men in general, even in Anglo-Saxon countries, largely because of caring, not for children, but for, dependents, health-wise, over half of all carers have a caring related health condition, and so on and so on. So the adverse impact of being a carer, is profound. And the question was, what's the creed going to be? and in my paper, I argued that it was,

12:35 - vulnerability theory. And I, I talk about somebody I think is amazing, Martha Feynman, who argued that, you know, there's universal vulnerability. Nobody's invulnerable and just the state privileges, various groups to be more resilient than other groups. And, wealthy people, people who can go private, who can pay for their children's education, who can introduce them to colleagues and so on, networks.

13:03 - And that the, the argument was that it was the state's obligation, responsive state's obligation to compensate for the vulnerabilities that people had to build up their re resilience effectively and effectively. she's a feminist scholar, compensate women for the caring role that many people take on gladly, but they shouldn't be, financially punished. So I argued that there was that moment, and therefore, carers would become in time one

13:38 - of the protected ga categories in discrimination, and that there was a very strong argument for caring, being recognized as a human right, for which you like expression. You shouldn't be treated a adversely because you express, you know, standard views. And that was sort of 2013. I think now on nearly everything, that I talk about, I'm normally wrong. I, I just tend to get history wrong. I've made these predictions

14:11 - and, you know, you wind the clock forward and you think that was not right. It didn't happen that way. The unusual one about this is it sort of, even though I've changed my mind a bit about this issue, it seems that that view has proved to be not, not completely incorrect. shortly after I, I wrote the article, the un, major report on, the human rights impact of unpaid care. In, we just recently had a,

14:42 - a really pivotal decision of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Committee in, a, a case called Bulia in Italy, where they have said that carers have rights under the Disabled People's Convention, and they found a violation in relation to a female carer. We've had, a European Court of Human Rights case against Croatia, largely a discrimination case. And we've also had the associative discrimination case, a talk about in, in the case, a case called Coleman

15:15 - Law in 2018, significantly expanded in UK law, in 2021. So indirectly, kiers are now well protected under bits of discrimination law, and indirectly their human rights are being recognized, but not directly. so we still haven't got to that pivotal moment. I probably changed my opinion because I, there was a risk of me being correct, and so I, I went incorrect.

15:47 - yeah, I have got a paper, I haven't written it, but I've analyzed all of these decisions from the point of view about what impact they've had. we as lawyers tend to see a decision and think, that's great, you know, we won the case, get some photographs, get in the newspaper, and then get on with the next case. But winning a case is the beginning, not the end of the struggle because it's gotta be implemented and it's got to bring about sort of constitutional change.

16:16 - And if you look at the history of discrimination legislation, particularly, it, it's called sort of Nancy Fraser talks about it as being progressively neoliberalism. It, it, it, it talks the talk, but it still allows the government to walk the Goldman Sachs walk, basically, that it doesn't upset the economic basis. And Sabi Basti wrote an analysis of the impact of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990

16:45 - and said it really hadn't changed the discrimination, the adverse position of, of black people in the US at all. so we clinging to the non-discrimination rights, and we think they're great triumphs, but they do very little to unsettle the universe of disadvantage, that we need to probably pull other knee levers. And, and Martha Thyman says that herself, but she's not really interested in protected categories.

17:15 - She's interested in attacking privilege. so maybe I spent too much time with Martha. She was a colleague here, and she's not the sort of person I'd like to disagree with, but actually is somebody I do like to agree with. So maybe discrimination is, is an easy win. Curiously, I know it's a big struggle, but it doesn't necessarily change the position of those protected groups to the degree that we'd like to see.

17:45 - There been some positive legal conclusions to, the paper comes out in 2013, I think it was. I was then the expert advisor to parliament, the joint houses of the Parliament on the Care Act. And that act gives carers exactly the same rights effectively in social care in the UK as disabled people. It's the first piece of legislation in the world to do that. So carers have really become embedded within the lung, and there's very positive, as I I've said, acknowledgements within, international discrimination

18:22 - and human rights legislation that, these things have got to be addressed. so yeah, I think the things are moving in the right direction. The problem remains, always with the law in how do you define a carer, because of course, most of us are carers one or more times in our lives, but that's not, that's not, so I think, yeah, the line of travel is.

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