At 2021 Labour Party conference, I moved a ‘reference back’ of the National Policy Forum report, due to its failure to include any policy on neurodiversity, despite a detailed submission being made to the policy forum process. This is what I said in the one minute allocated. Delegates passed the reference back.
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Janine Booth, Lewes CLP and Chair of Neurodivergent Labour.
Millions of people are autistic, dyslexic, dyscalculic, dyspraxic, have ADHD, Tourette’s or are otherwise neurodivergent. We experience discrimination, prejudice, social isolation and economic exclusion, especially under Tory austerity.
Labour is the party of working-class and oppressed people. That includes neurodivergent people – but this report does not. There is not a word in this hundred-plus page report about neurodiversity.
I know that some poeple don’t like references back because they think they waste time. This one ceertainly does not do that.
Some people don’t like references back because they say we should have raised the issue earalier in the NPF process – but we did, submitting a comprehensive set of radical, practical policies drawn up after wide consultation with the labour and neurodiversity movements. We were ignored.
Over two hundred members from around a hundred CLPs around the country have signed a statement supporting this reference back. Don’t let them down. Don’t let neurodivergent people down.
Tell the NPF to reconsider this.
