MP John McDonnell’s ‘shock and anger’ at benefit cuts

2nd April 2025

bbc.co.uk/accessall

Access All – episode 154

Presented by Emma Tracey

EMMA TRACEY: Gutan tag Paul Carter, how’s Berlin?

PAUL CARTER: Guten tag,  Lovely to chat to you. I'm here at the Global Disability Summit.  I hope you don't mind a little bit of background noise, I'm sat in the media area at the moment, but it's the quietest space I can find, but there's a fair bit of hubbub going on in the background.

EMMA: I'm actually interested to know how many journalists are in there with you? Is there like a fleet of journalists?

PAUL: [laugh] I'm not sure what the collective noun is for a group of journalists. No, it's very quiet in here at the moment there’s only about four other people, but that's because there is a very orchestrated photocall happening at the moment with Olaf Scholz which I've just left to come and talk to you. So, Emma, consider yourself more important than the German Chancellor.

EMMA: Aw. Thank you. Tell me what is the Global Disability Summit and what happens there?

PAUL: I mean, it's a semi-regular event. I guess you'd call it a high level conference where representatives, diplomats, people from government get together and discuss the disability issues of the day, if you like. It's got quite a global development focus so there's lots of aid organisations and things like that.

EMMA: Who's there, anyone interesting?

PAUL: The King of Jordan is here and the Deputy Director of the United Nations is here. I was here because I was moderating a panel event this morning and one of the speakers at the beginning of that event was Stephen Timms. The social care and disabilities minister in the UK.

EMMA: Oh really!

PAUL: Yeah, so fairly heavyweight delegations.

EMMA: Well, Stephen Timms. Let's talk about him for a minute because he's going to be on the podcast next week. Did he give you any intel?

PAUL: Unfortunately not. He was quite heavily guarded, so to speak. He had a minder and a handler. Wish I could bring you more tea.

EMMA: What’s the difference between a minder and a handler?

PAUL: [Laughter] I'm not actually sure. Well, I mean, you know, one of them was a security guard type of person and the other was from the DWP.

EMMA: OK. The Department for Work and Pensions. Tell me what are you going to do for the rest of the summit?

PAUL: So I'm going to go and have a bit of a mill around. It's absolutely chock full of disabled people, obviously. And if I can use a crass bit of terminology, if you’ll forgive me, it’s crip chaos here to be to be quite frank.

EMMA: Oh. Tell me more about that I like that. I like that phrase.

PAUL: I was speaking to a former Paralympian this morning and she described it to be very similar to the athletes' village at the Paralympics, where you have all of these people with all different types of impairments colliding.

EMMA: Literally.

PAUL: Literally and figuratively.

EMMA: Listen, you get on with your eating bratwurst and drinking beer and we will get on with the show.

MUSIC-                Theme music.

EMMA- Hello, I’m Emma Tracey and this is Access All, the podcast working hard to demystify confusing and complicated stories about disability and mental health. Please do contact us, get in touch, tell us what you think. We’re on email, accessall@bbc.co.uk. And you can WhatsApp us on 0330 0123 9480. If you subscribe to us on BBC Sounds you will get Access All onto your device every single week without doing a thing. Now, later in this episode I will be talking to the fabulous Rose Ayling-Ellis about teaching older people British Sign Language for her new documentary, Old Hands, New Tricks. That is such a great title and it’s a great documentary as well, so stay tuned for that.

                But first, many disabled people expressed alarm at how life, already challenging due to the cost of living crisis, could get even harder because of the government’s plans. Some MPs have spoken out, including John McDonnell. He’s a former Labour Shadow Chancellor, and now independent MP having lost the Labour whip over a vote on benefit cuts at the beginning of this parliament, and he joins me now. Hello, John McDonnell.

JOHN-  Hi. Can I make just one small correction?

EMMA- Absolutely.

JOHN-  I don’t describe myself as an independent MP. I’ve had the Labour whip suspended; I expect it to be returned. You never know these things. But I don’t designate myself as an independent MP. I always say that I’m a suspended Labour MP. I’m still a Labour Party member, have been for 50 years. And, as I say, I hope I get the Labour whip back.

EMMA- All right. £5 billion in savings have been announced through cuts to disability benefits by Liz Kendall and the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves. Now, you’ve had a few weeks since the green paper or discussion document came out and then the Spring Statement, what are your thoughts on the government’s plans for disability benefits?

JOHN-  I’m pretty angry to be honest. What I didn’t expect from a Labour government is to come into power, when we know that we’ve had austerity for 14 years, and that austerity has borne very hard on disabled people and the sick, some of the poorest in our society. I’d expect a Labour government to sort of start the rebuilding of the welfare state, and certainly not introduce policies that would impoverish people, and certainly not policies that are going to hurt and increase the I think suffering and actually the risks to disabled people. I’ve already started campaigning against the government’s proposals. I’m trying to get them to think again. I’m trying to get them to engage with all those groups that represent disabled people, and say all the groups have been asking for is to co-produce a strategy which ensures that disabled people can get a decent quality of life and have all the range of support, including financial support, to achieve that.

EMMA- And are you surprised then?

JOHN-  I was shocked, I was really shocked. We already knew that when Labour took over, Liz Kendall became the Secretary of State, and I had meetings with her. And the Treasury, the Chancellor of the Exchequer basically said to Liz Kendall, yes you have committed yourself to not proceeding with the reforms the Conservatives were putting forwards, but you still have to get the £3 billion worth of savings. And when they say savings they mean cuts. But then what happened, that got doubled. So, I just thought this is completely contrary to everything we stand for, but also will hurt so many people.

EMMA- Liz Kendall is at pains, and has been at pains to say that the so-called most vulnerable disabled people, people who will never be able to work will be looked after by the state and won’t be subject to assessment, reassessments etc. Does that not reassure you?

JOHN-  No. I’ll tell you why not, because I’ve had lots of constituents write to me with their own personal circumstances. And you now how the Personal Independence system works; you gain points on different indicators, and usually what’s happened up until now you’ll get a couple of points on a number of indicators and cumulative, you add them together and you qualify. What’s happening now is they say you have to have four points on a specific indicator otherwise you won’t get the benefit. Now, I’m getting people contacting me who are saying, actually I’ll lose Personal Independence Payments completely as a result of this. And also they’ve said on the Universal Credit additional element if you’re under the age of 22 you won’t get it, full stop. And in addition to that they’ll then cut it in half and freeze the level.

EMMA- What are your constituents saying to you? What kinds of letters and emails and phone calls are you getting?

JOHN-  You could weep. Honestly, you could sit down and weep when you hear the stories that are coming in. It’s not just me, other MPs will be getting the same. It’s people saying I’m really fearful I’m going to lose my benefits, I’m really anxious, I don’t think I’ll get by. So, I’m asking the government just think again. They’re out for consultation at the moment until the end of June. They’re not consulting though on the PIP criteria changes, which I think is a real mistake. And what I’m getting is people who are writing to me very distressed, but I have to say as well very angry too. They cannot believe this is a Labour government doing it to them.

EMMA- Do you think there will be a U-turn?

JOHN-  I hope so. I almost pray for it. You know, way back, this is 12 years ago, I attended the founding meeting of the group called Disabled People Against the Cuts, DPAC. And that was exactly the reason DPAC was set up to campaign against the Conservatives bringing in these sorts of cuts, these sorts of supposed reforms. And we pointed out then if you do this people will really suffer, they will struggle to survive, and also some people will lose their lives. And that’s what’s happened. We’ve seen the reportage on this, the analysis of it, and it has caused immense suffering, austerity over the years. And I’m saying to any Labour MP or any Labour minister that will listen to me, this is austerity and we’ve had enough and people want to change it.

EMMA- I mean, the Office of Budget Responsibility says that spending on PIP will go up to 58 billion by 2030. Is that sustainable? Is that sustainable and if not what do we do?

JOHN-  Well, here’s an interesting fact: our level of expenditure on welfare benefits has largely been about between 10% and 12% of our gross domestic product for the last 15 years, so it hasn’t ballooned. If you look at what’s happening overall on welfare, yes there are more people, particularly young people who have been claiming benefits as a result of mental health issues, and I think that is a response to COVID and what’s happened on COVID. And I don’t think we really fully understand long-COVID in particular. But the way you tackle those issues is you look at the research, you look at what health supported is needed, what financial support is needed. Yes, if we can get people back into work that’s great, but you need to invest money to do that.

EMMA- So, the government would say that they are investing money, they’re investing £1 billion to get people back into work.

JOHN-  But what you do is you invest that money and then you support people back into work, and then as a result of that the bill will come down. What you don’t do is make the cuts in benefits before that investment has actually had its effect. It’s cart before the horse by the government’s policies.

EMMA- But you were the Shadow Chancellor, what would you do? That was six years ago, what would you do now if you were the Chancellor in terms of fixing the UK’s financial woes then?

JOHN-  We put forward a programme whereby we would use the resources of this country to raise the standard of living for everybody, and that included ending austerity, raising the levels of incomes and benefits. And part of the way you do that is, like all Labour governments in the past, you redistribute income and wealth, and you have a fair taxation system. And what I’m saying to the Chancellor at the moment, you could undertake marginal increases in taxation, particularly on the wealthy and corporations, and in that way you would not need to cut the way you are at the moment. And I can’t understand why we’re not having a rational debate in that way. I want to abide by what Kier Starmer originally said, where the heaviest burden should fall upon those with the broadest shoulders. That isn’t what’s happening at the moment. We’ve had 14 years of austerity, cuts in all of our public services. I think the young people at the moment have been the most harmed generation we’ve had for a long period of time because if you look at what’s happened to them, all the public services that they rely upon have been cut as a result of austerity. It’s almost as though they’ve been targeted. And as a result of that – and I’ve been arguing this for years – when I was Shadow Chancellor I kept saying to government, you need to put more support into families in particular so that when problems occur you have early interventions and you prevent them becoming significant crises with those families. They didn’t, and as a result of that cumulatively over the years we’ve had these problems build up, and now they’re hitting them. So, what we need to be doing is recognise that, and therefore put more and more support in. And yes, young people will need that support possibly to get back into work or education or training, but it takes time and it takes investment, and actually it takes a more caring attitude as well.

EMMA- Well, John McDonnell we are going to have disability minister, Steven Timms, on next week to talk to him about all of these cuts and changes. What would your question be to him?

JOHN-  I know Steven, and when he was the chair of the select committee many of the things that are happening now he criticised, and would be criticising if he was the chair of the select committee. I think you should be asking him to hold true to what he believed in before, and to challenge the Treasury. Because I think he wants to do well, I think he wants to invest in the welfare system to help people and support those youngsters to get back into work as well, but the Treasury is demanding cuts. And I think Steven needs to stand up to them.

EMMA- And do you think he’s the right man for the job, for this job?

JOHN-  I think he could prove himself to be. He needs to stand up to the Treasury. Liz Kendall and him need to say to the Treasury, you’ve got this wrong, we’re not willing to implement these cuts and you need to think again. It needs the Treasury and the Chancellor to back off now and actually start looking at the consequences of what they’re forcing upon Liz Kendall and Steven to do.

EMMA- Well, John McDonnell, former Shadow Chancellor and MP for Hayes and Harlington, thank you very much for joining me.

JOHN-  Thank you. [Bells ringing] Perfect timing. The bells are going off to the start of parliament [laughs].

MUSIC-

EMMA- Chancellor Rachel Reeves has announced £5 billion in cuts to disability benefits in the last few days, and actually there have been a lot of numbers swirling around. So, to help me go through it I have with me Felicity Hannah from 5 Live’s Wake Up To Money, Radio 4’s Moneybox.

HANNAH-          Hello. I’ll try and make it make sense.

EMMA- Thank you very much. This is how it all unfolded in parliament:

[Clip]

LIZ-        We believe that if you can work you should work. But if you can’t work you should be properly supported. This government inherited a broken system. More than a thousand people every day are qualifying for Personal Independence Payments. One in eight young people are not in employment, education or training. If we do nothing we are writing off an entire generation.

[End of clip]

EMMA- Right, Felicity, well help me through all of this, because there are quite a few different elements. And the first one is tightening of criteria for Personal Independence Payments, and that’s the benefits that’s designed to cover the extra cost of being disabled, whether you’re in work or not.

HANNAH-          Yeah, this is probably one of the most significant changes. So, this benefit is paid to more than 3.6 million people in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. It is worth mentioning before we get into this, Scotland has a different system called the Adult Disability Payment, and we don’t yet know how that’s going to change. But for the rest of the UK what’s changing with PIP is the assessments for the daily living part, they’re going to be tightened. So, a lot of your listeners will already know the assessments involve questions about tasks like preparing and eating food, washing, and each is scored on a scale from zero, for no difficulty at all, to 12 for the most severe. And that’s scored by a health professional. And what’s going to change from November next year is how many points you have to score to qualify. So, applicants will have to score at least eight points to receive the standard daily living rate, and then 12 for the enhanced rate.

                And something else that’s changed, for the first time four of the points have to be scored on at least one of those activities. So, essentially if you’ve got lots of difficulties that aren’t considered as severe then you wouldn’t qualify for the benefit.

EMMA- How many people is it going to impact?

HANNAH-          The government assessment is that these changes will mean 370,000 people who receive it at the moment and 430,000 people who would receive it in the future will not get the PIP that they otherwise would.

EMMA- What kind of impact will it have practically on people’s money?

HANNAH-          For some people it’s going to be a really, really significant difference; there’s no way of getting away from that. So, PIP is tax free, it doesn’t count towards the benefit cap and you can get it if you’re working. The government’s own assessment suggest the average loss will be £4,500 a year.

EMMA- But this isn’t the only change to benefits, because there are quite a lot of changes are happening to Universal Credit, aren’t there?

HANNAH-          There are. Now, Universal Credit is not always the most straightforward benefit to understand. Essentially Universal Credit’s standard allowance that’s going to slightly increase, so a single person aged 25 or over will get around an extra £3 a week by the year 2029/2030. I don’t think anyone’s going to be living it up on that extra [laughter], but you know, every little helps. And unfortunately there is then a big change for claimants of the health element of the benefit. So, the basic rate of UC is worth just over £393 a month. Now, if you have limited capacity to work because of a disability or a long-term condition then that payment more than doubles, you get an extra top-up worth £97 a week. That’s at the moment. So, there’s two big changes to that. Now, the first one is new claimants, they’ll see that top-up fall to £50 a week by the year 2026/27, from £97, so pretty much halved. And then that amount is going to be frozen until 2030. Now, if you’re a claimant now, if you’re an existing claimant you can keep getting the higher rate, but it’s also going to be frozen until 2030, so it’s not going to rise with inflation.

                It is important to give the full picture. So, the numbers don’t take into account the extra money that the government plans to spend it says on helping people with disabilities and long-term health conditions to get into work. So, it’s set aside £1 billion. It says that support is going to mitigate some of the financial losses that I’ve just talked about.

EMMA- Now, how people find out whether they’re eligible for the health top-up of Universal Credit is currently via the Work Capability Assessment, and that’s going to be scrapped. And instead the Personal Independence Payment assessment for the daily living element will be used to figure out eligibility instead in 2028. Quite interesting that they are tying those two together, isn’t it?

HANNAH-          It is. And again, we don’t have all the details yet but yes, the Work Capability Assessment determines if someone is deemed fit for work, has limited capability for work, or limited capability for work related activity. As you say, that’ll be scrapped by 2028. It looks like that would mean the only way to determine eligibility for that extra support based on health would be via PIP. Now, the government says it’s doing this, it’s taking steps to break the link between trying to get into work and losing benefits. So, Universal Credit is means tested, it tapers off as you earn a bit more. PIP isn’t means tested, you can keep working and get it. So, it does seem quite likely though that someone who loses the daily living component of PIP because of the tightened rules, the tougher rules to start with…

EMMA- Yeah, the points system.

HANNAH-          …is also going to lose their health element in Universal Credit. And do you know, these are often people who are really on low incomes. So, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation says 50% of people receiving that health related element of Universal Credit are either unable to heat their home, behind on bills or they have very low food security.

EMMA- And carers are affected by this change too, aren’t they?

HANNAH-          Yeah. PIP is one of the disability benefits that a person has to claim in order for their carer to get either Carer’s Allowance or the carer’s element of Universal Credit. And so they estimate that by 2030 there’ll be this 800,000 people who won’t get that daily living element of PIP who would today, and that means that a further 150,000 people won’t get carer benefits as a result because the people that they’re caring for no longer qualify.

EMMA- It’s so complex, isn’t it, and confusing. Can you give me an example of a what a particular person in a particular situation might stand to lose with these changes?

HANNAH-          As one example, if you took a single person who’s over the age of 25 and can’t work because of a health condition right now they can claim Universal Credit limited capability for work related activity; they can claim the daily living PIP; the standard mobility PIP. Under tighter reforms if they didn’t pass the new tougher assessments they would lose the Universal Credit top-up and the PIP daily living allowance, so that would be a loss of £795 a month, which well, it’s 9,500 quid a year.

EMMA- That is an enormous amount of money to lose.

HANNAH-          If you took a new applicant who’s over 25, who does pass the tougher assessment and does qualify for the full support they’re still going to be £2,700 a year worse off because that support has been reduced and that support has been frozen. So, these are really, really big numbers.

EMMA- Many disabled people are anxious and slightly alarmed by this, so where can they go to get advice?

HANNAH-          There are lots of places you can go. There are of course all the official lines for benefit support, the government lines that you can find on gov.uk. Other options are you could try Citizens Advice, Turn2Us and EntitledTo. I think for a lot of people making an appointment, like an in-person appointment with Citizens Advice is going to be really helpful; just having a human being there to talk this stuff through with. And if you are in debt I recommend contacting one of the many really excellent debt charities, like StepChange, they’ll talk you through, they’ll help you work out a budget and whether you can get any help or ask any organisations to kind of reduce your payments.

EMMA- How do disabled people know or find out what benefits they’re entitled to?

HANNAH-          It’s a really, really important question. And at the moment the thinktank, Policy and Practice, estimates that in 2024 the total amount of unclaimed income related benefits was just under £23 billion. That is a very big number. It obviously doesn’t include these changes to benefit, so it might not be as big in future years. But it does show that there’s just a lot of help people don’t know they can claim, things like social tariffs, energy support. I really, really recommend going online, using a benefit calculator and checking is there anything I could be getting help with but I’m not.

EMMA- Felicity Hannah, you are so knowledgeable. That was incredibly helpful.

HANNAH-          Thank you. Hopefully I can come on with some good news sometime [laughs].

EMMA- Please call me directly if you’ve got good financial news for disabled people and let me know, because I think we’ll have a party.

MUSIC-

EMMA- Friend of the podcast and all-round superstar, Rose Ayling-Ellis is back on our screens with a new documentary called, and I love this name, Old Hands, New Tricks. In this two-part series Rose is on a mission to teach some residents of a retirement village the benefits of learning British Sign Language.

[Clip]

ROSE-  [Laughter] Me again. I’ve got a cringey idea, and I can’t believe that no one has thought of this before.

FEMALE-             We’re not old people. We’re recycled teenagers.

FEMALE-             I saw you flirting a little bit.

FEMALE-             As the expression goes, there is life in the old dog yet.

ROSE-  I want to teach sign language to the people who really need it.

[End of clip]

EMMA- I am absolutely delighted to say that Rose is with me on Access All, and so too is the documentary’s series producer, Camilla Arnold. Hello both.

ROSE-  Hello.

CAMILLA-           Hello.

EMMA- We’re going to hear Rose’s own voice, and she’s having my words signed by a BSL interpreter. And Camilla’s words are going to be spoken by another BSL interpreter. So, we’ve got Jess and Rachel. I hope I can figure out what’s going on most of the time. I know you guys will. But we’ll start by talking about this fabulous documentary. We touched on what it was about at the start in the introduction, but can you tell me a bit more about it?            

ROSE-  I knew there was a big problem in the UK that there is a lack of care for deaf people; at the moment there are only two care homes. And I felt like there is distinctly a lack of choices. So, then I thought well, the only way for things to change is to increase the demand to learn BSL. But then at the moment the problem is a lot of people assume that sign language is only a thing that helps deaf people. But actually it shouldn’t be only to help deaf people, there’s 70% of people who are over 80 are losing their hearing. And also there are other things going on, some people could have strokes, some people could have problems with their lungs, cannot breathe, cannot speak, brain injury. It’s just a no-brainer.

EMMA- You went into a retirement village, a hearing retirement village and decided to suggest that the residents learn sign language. What happened?

ROSE-  Well, obviously at the beginning it was quite slow. A lot of the attitudes were, oh I’m too old to learn. And the team had to convince them, come on, you can do it.

EMMA- And the location it’s like something out of the Thursday Murder Club, isn’t it? How did you go about choosing who to teach the sign language to?

CAMILLA-           So, we actually recruited an incredible BSL tutor who’s deaf himself, a native sign language user, and it was actually him who has taught thousands of hearing people all over the UK sign language. His name is Marios. And not only is he a good teacher but he’s a brilliant character on screen. So, once we’d brought him in he brought the life, the energy and he built some really beautiful relationships with the students as well, which made learning BSL very fun. And I think that was very important for them; we didn’t want sort of dry, sitting in the classroom, we actually wanted them to feel like this is a language that we want to learn and would like to continue learning afterwards. So, Marios did a fantastic job with that.

EMMA- Rose, you called Marios naughty more than once. What did you mean by that?

ROSE-  Well, the deaf community is very small so everyone sort of knows each other and stuff, and he’s just a really cheeky chap.

EMMA- [Laughs] Yeah, I bet the older people absolutely loved that. They all seemed like great fun.

ROSE-  Yes, it was definitely fun. But eventually it did become really emotional, and you started hearing more about their stories, about who they are, and we started to realise then how BSL kind of breaks that barrier of being a British person and very stiff upper lip. And because of sign language, sign language forces you to have eye contact, and eventually it made them quite vulnerable in a way.

EMMA- Well, there must have been quite a few challenges around teaching older people sign language, Camilla?

CAMILLA-           Memory was also a big thing, because we were teaching them the alphabet, numbers, and then the following week we had to go back to relearn it all over again, so there was a lot of repetition. But I think having visual aids really helped the learning process as well. And of course some older people had vision impairments making it quite difficult for them to see, and therefore they needed some additional aids. So, some of our students had a fantastic attitude, they were very enthusiastic to learn, but they also started to see that sign language was benefiting themselves as well. It’s not just a language for deaf people; it’s a language that everybody can and should learn. And that was a huge thing for them to take on board as well.

EMMA- How long did you spend with the people in that retirement village teaching them sign language?

CAMILLA-           We were there overall, well the lessons themselves, the structure of the lessons was a six-week course. However, we consulted with the Royal Association for Deaf People and they said that’s the best way to learn, in an immersive fashion. It was quite a challenge. I mean, you have to watch the documentary to get the idea, and also to find out whether it was a success or not.

EMMA- Rose, tell me a few of those personal stories.

ROSE-  When you first meet them they’re just lovely old people. And then when you get to know them more and more then it suddenly became, oh wow, they all come with different stories. One guy he had Alzheimer’s – is that how you say it?

EMMA- Alzheimer’s.

ROSE-  That’s it, Alzheimer’s. So, he had the challenge of going to a lesson, learning to sign, but then worry about who is looking at his way. So, they all come with a challenge. But really the biggest challenge was that they were all like, oh I need to do my shopping, you’re interrupting my shopping. They love their routine, they’re obsessed with their routine, so we had to work around their routine as well.

EMMA- You said a great line actually, you said, ‘They just do what they want’. Rose, we’re a mental health podcast as well as for deaf people and disabled people, and we actually talk quite a lot about loneliness. Loneliness is a big, big theme in the documentary, isn’t it? What’s the situation for many deaf people?

ROSE-  So, we already know it’s a huge problem for older people in general, but it’s even worse for deaf people. There are only two care homes and a lot of the staff don’t know sign language at all, not even the basics, so a person who is deaf who is a BSL user will struggle to ask for simple things like can I have a cup of tea, and no one will give them what they need. And that is really sad and really heartbreaking to see, because a lot of families who have a BSL grandparent they don’t want to send them so far away, they want them to be near and local. But the nearest local one won’t have any BSL, no deaf awareness even. And that causes more and more loneliness. And when I meet the residents who they are already struggling with loneliness as well, I just felt like I know sign language, I know how much benefit. It is a language on its own and it can create a community. And the thing is with lip reading and hearing aids they think it solves everything, but it's not, it’s not a quick fix.

EMMA- What do you hope the documentary will achieve?

ROSE-  I want to achieve more demand to learn BSL. Us deaf people we’ve campaigned for ages, but we can’t do it alone.

EMMA- Okay. And what about you, Camilla?

CAMILLA-           Just to add to that, I do hope that people take from this documentary when they watch it that there is no excuse not to learn sign language. If you’re 95 years old or 102 you can still learn new things. Let’s start maybe with an online course or an in-person course, or maybe even just a YouTube video, but learning basic sign language it can take you such a long way. And I do believe that we are facing a world where there will be more and more deaf people in future. It’s this kind of baby to grave concept that deaf people should have sign language access.

EMMA- Rose, before we let you go, just tell me what’s coming up for you?

ROSE-  There’s this documentary first, Code of Silence, which is an ITV, and then Doctor Who as well.

EMMA- Oh, Camilla Arnold, Rose Ayling-Ellis, thank you so much for joining me on Access All. And you can see Old Hands, New Tricks on BBC iPlayer right now.

                That is just about it for this episode of Access All. Thanks a million there to the lovely Rose Ayling-Ellis and to Camilla Arnold as well from that incredible documentary, Old Hands, New Tricks. Definitely worth a listen. Now, next week I will be talking to the disability minister, Steven Timms. If you have any messages, any questions for the minister please do get in touch. You can email them to me accessall@bbc.co.uk. You can send them on X or on Instagram, we are @BBCAccessAll. Or you can get on the phone and send me a voice message or a text message on our WhatsApp number 0330 123 9480. Catch you next week. Bye.

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