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Disability Policy (Economic Downturn)

That is right. Before I conclude, I will refer to the report by Leonard Cheshire. If we tackle poverty, that will have a significant impact on tackling the number of people in prison. I am not saying that there is a direct link and that being poor means that people will commit crime, but we know that people living in poorer conditions can be tempted down that route. To tackle the numbers that my right hon. Friend mentioned, we need to ensure that we have better educational outcomes, better skills and better employment opportunities, and we need the hope that disabled people can contribute to mainstream society. That would have an impact on the number of people with learning disabilities going to prison, and I have been in correspondence with colleagues at the Ministry of Justice about the issue. A couple of weeks ago, my right hon. Friend kindly chaired a meeting to discuss the 40th anniversary of the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act 1970. At that meeting, my right hon. Friend Lord Morris of Manchester talked about how he had managed to get the Act on to the statute book. He reminded us that when he first introduced his Bill in 1969, he had drawn first place in ballot for private Member's Bills, but only one organisation for disabled people contacted him after he wrote around. Oh, how times have changed—and that is a good thing. As Lord Morris told us, organisations did not write to him because they had no expectations, given that disability issues had not been debated since the 1940s. We have made great progress in the past 40 years, but we need to do more for the advancement of the 10 million disabled people in this country. We need to do that for the sake not just of those 10 million people, but for the sake of all 60 million people who live in our society.