“The cabbage has a brain,” is, it’s safe to say, not the response that Jane Campbell’s prospective employers expected when they commented on her encyclopedic knowledge of social care during an interview for a new job.
That job, as founding executive chair of the Social Care Institute for Excellence in 2001, is just one of many high profile roles the 56-year-old cross bench peer (Baroness Jane Campbell of Surbiton, to give her the full title) has had in a career spanning some of the most pivotal moments in disability rights.
Campbell is one of the most influential figures in UK disability rights but there is still more than a hint of origins as a grassroots activist about her, as I explain in an interview for today’s Guardian.
For example, she recently resisted the temptation, she says, to join a protest she spotted against the government’s closure of the independent living fund (ILF) on her way into the House of Lords. The £320m programme that funds 18,000 disabled people’s community-based care was axed last month; Campbell, who campaigned for its creation 30 years ago, had spearheaded the fight to save it.
She is a determined speaker on how austerity measures and welfare reforms adversely affect disabled people. As she told the Lords in response to the recent Queen’s speech, “it doesn’t feel like a great time to be disabled”.
Those who are already the most marginalised in our communities risk being further left behind. This false economy, as Campbell last year suggested, means the government “risks sleepwalking towards the status of a systematic violator of these same rights”.
This is why, as Campbell told me, it is vital that disability be seen as a human rights issue: “If I can do anything in my life, it is to bring disability out of the medical model and dump it where it should be – right back in society.”
One recent success was to bring a private members bill to ensure that people with disabilities who are supported by councils will still get that support if they move to another local authority.
The full interview is here but, just for the record, this potted version of Campbell’s CV reflects why she has been awarded not one, but two, lifetime achievement awards (from human rights organization Liberty in 2009 and this week’s one from social justice thinktank Bevan Foundation), an MBE, a DBE and two honorary degrees:
June 2015-present: member, post-legislative scrutiny select committee, Equality Act 2010, disability provisions
2007-present: independent crossbench peer, House of Lords
2006-09: chair, disability committee, and commissioner, Equality and Human Rights Commission
2008-2014: co-chair, All Party Parliamentary Disability Group
2008-2013: member, House of Lords appointments commission
2010-2012: member, House of Lords joint committee on human rights
2009-2011: chair, Independent Living Scrutiny Group, Office for Disability Issues (ODI), DWP
2008-2012: chair, Advisory Group on Right to Control, ODI
2008-2009: member, standing commission on Carers
2006-2009: chair, Disability Committee, and commissioner, Equality and Human Rights Commission
2006-2007: chair of the Independent Living Review Expert Panel, ODI
2001-2005: executive chair, Social Care Institute for Excellence
2000-2007: commissioner, Disability Rights Commission
1996-2012: co-director (to 2000), then trustee, National Centre for Independent Living
1994-1996: independent consultant on direct payments
1991-1995: co-chair British Council of Disabled People
1988-1994: director of training, London Boroughs Disability Resource Team
1987-1988: principal disability advisor, London Borough of Hounslow
1986-1987: disability training development officer, London Boroughs Disability Resource Team
1984-1986: equal opportunities liaison officer, Greater London Council