Levelling the Playing Field

The thing that changed my way of thinking was being selected as a torchbearer for the Paralympics in London 2012. It made me realise that my disability has actually given me all these wonderful qualities: I’m humble, I’m balanced, I’m determined, I’m compassionate. Being disabled has made me transition my career: when I left university, I went into the corporate world initially and worked for lots of multinational organisations, but now I’m a disability rights campaigner who has managed to change a number of significant systems and helped millions of disabled people. These are all blessings that have come from my disability, so I reframed the relationship from a curse to a blessing, and from having negative connotations around the word disability to having positive connotations.

Tell us a little about how you transitioned away from working for large corporations to becoming a campaigner for disabled rights.

Initially, I joined the BBC World Service and then moved from media organisations to investment banking. I did an internship at Bloomberg then worked at HSBC, Lehman Brothers and Morgan Stanley. The problem with the corporate world I found that most don’t actually understand the Equality Act: their premise is that if we treat everyone equally then we’re treating everyone fairly, and they don’t understand that with disability, actually sometimes you need treat people differently and to make reasonable adjustments to treat everyone fairly. That was one of challenges that I had in the corporate world and that was one of the reasons I transitioned to being a disabled entrepreneur.

I left investment banking and traveled around the world. I went to India, China and Europe and saw the poverty and inequality in the world and the challenges that disabled people face. That’s when I decided to start my first enterprise, Choice International, to focus on international development, disability and inclusion. The focus is on countries like India, to see how we can help disabled people and to improve quality of life using some of the innovative ideas from the UK, Europe and America: things like Access to Work, helping to promote disable leaders and changing mindsets and cultures. We also empower disabled people to have confidence and belief in themselves, because I often found that disabled people lack confidence and self-belief due to society, which has repeatedly told them that disability means you’re not able or you’re less capable than everybody else. The focus is always on what a disabled person can’t do rather than focusing on what a disabled person can do. The focus is never on the unique skillsets associated with disabled people: things like resilience, perseverance, motivation, problem solving. There are so many wonderful attributes that disabled people have and use on a daily basis.

The next significant system I tackled as at Chelsea Westminster hospital, where I was a Governor. They wanted to start charging for disabled parking at the hospital. This is the area with the highest income inequality anywhere in the country. I showed them evidence of the correlation between disability and poverty and explained that there has been a systematic violation of disabled people’s rights since austerity and that less than 30% of our tube stations are accessible. Eventually I said that I would start a national campaign to abolish all disabled car parking charges in all hospitals in England. They told me I was welcome to try, but they were not going to change their policy and would now charge for disabled parking.

After I publicly questioned Matt Hancock, who was then Minister of Health & Social Care, the story was picked up by the Times, the Telegraph and the Daily Mail, and we also did an interview for BBC London Radio. I began to work with MPs from all the main political parties to continue raising awareness. When the general election was called, we managed to get the campaign included in the Labour and Conservative manifestos and Liberal Democrats also agreed before the elections. The guidance changed at the end of April this year, making it mandatory for all 206 hospitals in England abolish disabled parking charges, helping 2.5 million disabled people to access critical healthcare during the covid-19 pandemic. It would have been a significant system change anyway, but to have that happen in the chaos that is the current pandemic was truly amazing.

Recently, I launched a new campaign around the ultra-low emission zone (ULEZ) in London, which comes into effect on 25th October. I’ve been in discussions with the Mayor’s office for blue badge holders to have the same exemption that they currently have for the congestion charging zone. Which is that they can exempt two cars per day, whether it’s their own car or someone who is assisting them. At the moment they’re only giving an exemption if the car is tax classified as disabled, and the problem with that is there’s no flexibility in it. Lots of disabled people don’t own a car, so you may hire a car or you may be using someone else’s car or receive care and support from someone with a non-compliant car. I’m launching a crowdfunding campaign with Crowd Justice which is going to raise money to seek legal advice from an eminent QC to clarify our human rights and Equality Act in regards to ULEZ.