Access to Democracy: Member’s Priorities for the UK General Election

With all the political parties beginning to set out their stall for the next United Kingdom (UK) general election, Disability Equality Scotland (DES) want to make sure that the priorities of disabled people help to shape the debate.

In February 2024, we carried out a members question asking you to tell us the top 10 issues for disabled people when it comes to voting at the forthcoming general election.

We have analysed the results and can reveal that the DES members top 10 election priorities are:

1. Health and Social Care
2. Accessible Transport
3. Energy Bills
4. Tackling Poverty and Inequality
5. Accessible Parking
6. Tackling the Climate Crisis
7. Personal Independence Payment
8. Brexit
9. Social Security
10. Access to Courts and Justice

 

As a member-led orgnisation, your priorities are our priorities. While we do not know when the election is going to be held, DES will continue to build on our previous work of bringing pressure to bear on politicians and policy makers to deliver a fairre, more accessible and more inclusive society for everyone.

Our next step is to do a review of our existing research, so that where required we can update our findings to reflect the current circumstances facing disabled people across Scotland. This will likely mean carrying out some members questions on your priorities and seeing what changes – if any – have taken place since the last general election.

Once we have carried out this work, we will inform all political parties what you told us. But more importantly we will tell them what steps our members think need to be taken so that Scotland can become fairer and fully inclusive of the needs of disabled people.

DES will continue to represent the views and lived experiences of disabled people. We will do this without fear or favour because in the end whichever political party (or coalition) forms the next UK government, the

Back to all research