disabling
accounting
mary bishop
and rebecca boden
(bristol
business school, uwe, uk)
Contact: rebecca.boden@uwe.ac.uk
Disabling Accounting
“Bodies, then, are not born; they are made. Bodies have been as thoroughly denaturalised as sign, context and time. Late twentieth-century bodies do not grow from internal harmonic principles theorised within Romanticism. Neither are they discovered in the domains of realism and modernism… Organisms are made; they are constructs of a world-changing kind” (Haraway, 1991, p208)
“…like racism, sexism,
heterosexism and other forms of institutional prejudice, discrimination against
disabled people is institutionalised in the very fabric of British society” (Barnes and Oliver, 1995, p114).
Cultural theorists such as Haraway
(1991) and Butler (1993) argue cogently that our bodies, or at the very least
the way in which they are classified or “read”, are social constructs. For
instance, classificatory regimes such as “race” may represent no more than a
desire to categorise, amongst other things, certain groups as “other” to more
effectively exercise power over them. A brief recollection of some of the
definitional twists and turns of the former South African apartheid regime’s
attempts to define the “right” people as “white” (for instance, the Japanese)
illustrates that this is not a bizarre theoretical approach.
More contentiously, but nevertheless
persuasively, Butler (1993) extends this argument even to the sexing of bodies.
These approaches have now been taken up and successfully utilised and developed
by many theorists exploring the idea of “disability”.
Disability has traditionally been characterised using a “medical” model as a (physical) condition that arises from some inherent characteristic of the body itself. More contemporary “social” models construe disability as an identity ascribed to or adopted by certain people with particular bodily impairments as a result of their classification and other social treatment. For example, under the medical model, a person with no legs has a physical impairment that disables them because they cannot, for instance, enter a building via steps. Thus the impairment causes the disability. Utilising contemporary social models, the same individual is seen as disabled by society, which orders itself (for instance, through its architectural practices) in such a way as to exclude them.
These two approaches prompt different social attitudes towards and policy outcomes for those with impairments. Because medical models infer that the cause of disability is the individual’s own impairment, they legitimise discrimination whilst promoting charitable acts on compassionate grounds. In contradistinction, social models emphasise that it is society that is responsible for some people identified/identifying themselves as disabled: if society were ordered in different ways individuals with impairments would not suffer exclusion. Under social model approaches, individuals have rights of inclusion rather than an expectation of charity. This key difference has meant that social model approaches have a strong appeal to campaigners in the radical disabled rights lobbies.
The reconceptualisation of disability as a social construct made possible by social model theorists opens up fertile new ground for social enquiry. The positivistic approach implicit in the medical model has all the accoutrements of rationality: the empirical assessment of physical and mental impairments and their effects (i.e. what can impaired people not do?) permits the adjudication of who is “normal” and who is abnormal on an apparently objective basis. The social model, in contrast, facilitates an exploration of the operation of power in the classification/identification of some bodies as disabled. In this paper we argue that accounting has facilitated that operation of power because the economic productivity of an individual’s labour and the consequent costs of social inclusion are central to the formation of “disabled” people as a category/identity.
Our argument consists of a number of steps. Firstly, we argue that the advent of capitalism in Britain in Elizabethan times augured a compulsion for ordinary people to participate in paid labour markets. This became and remains central to notions of social inclusion, citizenship and identity in British society.
Second, and using a Marxist analysis, we argue that central to the capitalist project is the measurement and management of the value of labour. Thus the imperative is to maximise the surplus value of labour.
Third, we argue that, putting these first two arguments together, the surplus value of labour from an impaired body (in a work situation designed for an unimpaired body), as measured by traditional accounting techniques, is likely to be lower than that from an unimpaired body. This has the effect of partially or totally excluding certain people with impairments from the labour market and, because of the centrality of work to identity and citizenship, from society.
Fourth, and finally, we argue that the economic rationalism axiomatic to capitalism, which is supported and sustained by accounting technologies, found legitimation for this discrimination through the medical model of disability. The growth of political radicalism amongst disabled people was facilitated by the reconceptualisation of disability as a social construct as opposed to a medical fact. Consequently, new challenges have arisen to disability discrimination. To defend itself, and capitalism, from these challenges, government made recourse to the use of economic (cost) arguments that were, again, made possible by the use of accounting techniques. This paper therefore, ultimately, explicates the role of accounting in the social construction of some physically and mentally impaired bodies as “disabled”.
In sum, in this paper, we seek to
argue, using a social-constructivist perspective, that the ability to
participate in a capitalist labour market has been a primary imperative in the
creation of disabled identities. That
imperative has been sustained through accounting.
This paper is organised into three further sections. In section two we explain the significance of the medical and social models of disability. In section three we trace the historical development of the medical model and the economic rationale for discrimination on the grounds of disability in the UK. In section four by way of a case study of legislative episodes in the UK, we explore the contemporary role of accounting in maintaining the social exclusion of disabled people. This is followed by some conclusions.
2. Defining bodies
The medical definition of disability has a long history. Winzer (1997) argues that:
“Throughout
history, the medical aspects of disabilities have been paramount, other
concerns relating to disability have been secondary, where they have been
considered at all.” (Winzer, 1997)
Such medical model approaches focus on medical diagnoses and solutions to disability. Where disability can not be cured it should be relieved: thus policy interest arose in translating the individual’s disability into specific needs for welfare benefits and services. In the 1970s there was a shift in emphasis from just looking at how an abnormality led to incapacity to translating how physical incapacity affected an individual’s service needs:
“The
most influential intervention in these debates was the World Health
Organisation’s (WHO) decision to complement its ‘International Classification
of Disease (WHO 1976) with a scheme that detailed the consequences of
disease. These discussions resulted in
a threefold distinction in its new ‘International Classification of
Impairments, Disabilities and Handicaps (ICIDH).” (Barnes et al, 1999).
The WHO issued a new classificatory
document in 1980 (WHO, 1980). “Impairment” was defined as “any
loss or abnormality of psychological, physiological or anatomical structure or
function”. “Disability” was “any restriction or lack (resulting from an
impairment) or ability to perform an activity in the manner or within the range
considered normal for a human being”. Whilst
“handicap” was “a disadvantage for a given individual, resulting from an impairment or
disability, that limits or prevents the fulfilment of a role (depending on age,
sex, social and cultural factors) for that individual” (WHO, 1980).
These definitions are interconnected; disease or disorder results in an impairment which causes a disability, leading to the individual being handicapped within society. The logic is that impairment disables, not society. Society is then, under the medical model, benign and neutral. This positivistic approach leads to the study of the essential characteristics of disability (being impairments) and to the acceptance that exclusion on the grounds of disability is inevitable because it is impairments that lead to an inability to participate. So under the medical model, disability is an inherent characteristic of the individual that prevents their social inclusion.
This pathologisation of disability had a number of consequences. First was that the socially excluded position of disabled people was non-contestable: it was their inability to be included by virtue of the tragedy of their impairment that made them disabled. Second, the same pathologisation precluded discussion of the ‘why’ of their exclusion: it was axiomatic. And third, disabled people became the worthy recipients of charity - thus emphasising their exclusion. They were, as a result, denied a voice on the grounds that their condition was a given and unalterable save for medical solutions and the provision of services and other charitable relief.
“When
I began to read some of the things that able-bodied academics, researchers and
professionals had written about disability, I was staggered at how little it
related to my own experience of disability or indeed, of most other disabled
people I had come to know. Over the
next few years it gradually began to dawn on me that if disabled people left it
to others to write about disability, we would inevitably end up with inaccurate
and distorted accounts of our own experiences and inappropriate service
provision and professional practices based upon these inaccuracies and
distortions.” (Oliver,
1996)
“A
major ... criticism of organisations run by non-disabled people is that they
operate within a framework which assumes that disabled people cannot take
control of their own lives and, therefore, the ‘charitable’ assistance of
well-meaning professionals, voluntary workers or politicians” (Batye, 1966[RB1])
The second major influence on the development of the social model were other rights-based social movements that were developing at the same time.
“There
were also a number of external influences on the disability movement,
noticeably the similar rise of movements of black people and women, and the
passage of anti-discrimination legislation in these areas.” (Oliver, 1985).
Largely from within the ranks of
disabled scholars came new social models of disability:
“Over
the last two decades disability activists have established the social model of
disability as a comprehensive critique of mainstream academic theories and
policy approaches. The disillusionment
of disabled people and their organisations has also extended to research on disability.”
(Barnes and Mercer, 1997).
Oliver puts all of these trends together thus:
“The
gradual recognition by disabled people that neither party politics nor
charitable and voluntary organisations were serving their interests
appropriately or well is a key factor in the emergence of the movement. There were also a number of external
influences such as the civil rights movement and feminism, both of which had
succeeded in getting the outlawing of discrimination on the grounds of race and
gender onto the statute books in Britain.
This in turn influenced the emerging consciousness of disabled people,
who were beginning to recognise that the problem of disability is externally
located and that our exclusion from society is a human rights issue” (Campbell and Oliver, 1996)
Oliver
distinguishes the medical and social models by suggesting that
“the two areas where these conflicts
have emerged are epistemological and methodological. In epistemological terms, the crucial issue is that of
causality. For medical sociologists,
what they call chronic illness is causally related to the disadvantages
disabled people experience. For the
social model however, there is no causal link; disability is wholly and
exclusively social. Hence each side
accuses the other of being incorrect in causal terms.” (Oliver, 1990, p34-5)
Oliver
continues this argument:
“The problem arises when doctors try to
use their knowledge and skills to treat disability rather than illness. Disability as a long-term social state is
not treatable medically and is certainly not curable. Hence many disabled people experience much medical intervention
as, at best, inappropriate, and, at worst, oppressive. This should not be seen as a personal attack
on individual doctors, or indeed the medical profession, for they, too, are trapped
in a set of social relations with which they are not trained or equipped to
deal with.” (Oliver,
1990, p36)
Tom Shakespeare, a radical disabled
activist and academic explores issues of disabled identity in his writing. He
offers a radical critique of the social model developed by Oliver and others,
whilst simultaneously recognising its value and taking it further. In his work
in ‘Exploring the Divide’ (Shakespeare, 1996) he explores five options for
identifying disability as a social process. The first of these is the social
model developed by writers such as Oliver, which focuses on the disability
as a relationship between people with impairment and a discriminatory society.
Shakespeare criticises this model for failing to distinguish between people
with impairments, the degrees of impairment experienced and other ways in which
those with impairments may face prejudice, for example racially.
The second approach identified, and one
that can coexist with the type of social model developed by the likes of
Oliver, is the minority group approach.
Here, disabled people are seen as an
oppressed group and as such may need special affirmative measures. Shakespeare fears that this approach may
reinforce marginalisation of disabled people.
A third approach he calls the Weberian or Foucauldian. Here, disability is perceived of only
as a category of social policy, thus shifting attention from the individual
with an impairment to the statutory or policy processes that construct him/her
as “officially” disabled. Such creation of “people with disabilities” is
typified by government schemes such as the official registration of certain
disabled people. Access to state benefits and assistance for individuals is
often conditional upon such registration. Thus disabled people are encouraged
and incentivised to participate in the creation of their identities as people
with disabilities.
The fourth
approach sees disability as the outcome
of definitions inherent in social research methods. Examples of this
include the UK Government’s Office of Population and Census Statistics
disability surveys which construct, to Shakespeare’s mind, arbitrary categories
of disability that he finds methodologically unsatisfactory because of ‘the
weakness of such empiricism’.
Finally, Shakespeare considers disability as a cultural category. This
utilises notions of ‘otherness’ in a
cultural construction of disability. Such categorisations have precedents in
the work of Sontag (1979) and are related to Foucauldian concepts of discursive
formations.
In offering these different ways of categorising disability Shakespeare claims:
‘I do not thereby intend to abandon the
social model’s stress on material, environmental and policy factors. But rather than reducing the category
‘disability’ to a straightforward social relation, I think an analysis of
discursive practices offers a richer and more complex picture of
disability. It is in this sense,
rather than the narrow phenomenological sense, that I would say disability is
socially constructed, and would highlight the benefits of a Foucauldian
analysis, regarding disability as a process of subjection.’ (Shakespeare,
1996)
Shakespeare
argues that whilst social models of disability differ from the essentialist
approach of the medical model by using a social constructionist analysis:
‘In practice, social constructionism
may not be as politically effective as essentialism, due to a lack of
rhetorical power. Some have asked why
they should deconstruct their own identities when the oppressors identities are
still so strong, and questioned what social constructionism can offer them’ (Shakespeare, 1996[RB2])
In this section we have explored two radically different conceptualisations of disability. We have shown that the medical model is primarily positivistic and essentialist. Its use results in the objectification of those with impairments and denies them a voice, legitimises discrimination and also promotes charitable acts.
In contrast, social model theorisations
of disability emphasise that the concept of disability is a social construct.
The origins of such models lie in the ontologies of the writers who developed
them and have been utilised to give voice to previously silenced disabled
people. Such approaches facilitate new considerations of the power
relationships inherent in disability issues.
It is worth giving some consideration to the reasons for the long-standing predominance of the medical model of disability and the consequential the silencing of disabled people. We wish to argue that this situation arose primarily as a result of the underpinning of emergent capitalism of economic rationalist modes of thought. This economic rationalism, fuelled by the use of accounting, prompted the development and maintained the hegemony of the medical model.
In the next
section, we discuss the historical development of the concept of disability
from Elizabethan times, matching it with contemporaneous socio-economic
developments. We explain the creation of the imperative to join labour markets
and the accounting measurement of the value of labour on which such markets are
predicated. We then discuss the legitimisation of disability discrimination
that these circumstances gave rise to. In section four we consider more recent
episodes where, following a political radicalisation of disabled people, this
discrimination was challenged, leading capital to invoke accounting cost
arguments to sustain discrimination.
3. Working bodies
As Britain was transformed from a feudal to an industrial society, there was a corresponding and related shift in the economic status of the individual. Ordinary people gradually ceased to be subject to relationships based on feudal allegiances and became instead paid labourers operating in a market. In capitalist Britain, individuals’ standing came to be defined by their socio-economic identities. These in turn were defined by their ability to participate in and position within the labour market. Such socio-economic positioning was and continues to be crosscut with issues of gender and of ethnicity.
The first burgeoning of capitalist society in Britain caused major disruptions in long-standing feudal socio-economic relationships and increased population mobility. As labour moved from feudal orderings based on the mutual obligations of kinship to markets two problems were evident. First, first, new ways had to be found to discipline labour – to make people work. Second, those ‘impotent’ and ‘aged’ people who were unable to support themselves, because their labour was of insufficient market value, had to be supported by some means.
In response, Elizabethan governments
developed the Poor Laws, the primary purpose of which was to ensure that the
economic burden imposed by those who were unproductive was minimised. The Laws
divided the poverty-stricken into three categories. First, there were the
‘able-bodied’ poor who could not find employment and who were to have work
provided for them. Second, were the rogues, vagabonds, and sturdy beggars who
were to be whipped or otherwise punished for their disinclination to work.
Third were the ‘impotent’ poor (the old, sick or handicapped), who were to be
relieved in almshouses. Thus,
those who could not earn their living in the emergent labour markets would be
set to some form of work provided by the parish (but not necessarily work that
was economically viable). In recognition of a public responsibility to look
after those who were physically or mentally impaired and unable to entirely
support themselves, the Poor Laws required parishes to collect money for them
from parishioners. Thus those who were “disabled” were characterised as
deserving of charitable support (Feiling, 1950).
The simplistic classificatory nature and financial imperatives of the Poor Laws emphasised the state and nature of the individual’s own body: one was either “able-bodied” or impotent and therefore fit for economic activity or not. This conceptualisation of bodies in relation to their physical capacity for productive (profitable) labour prompted an essential view of disability.
By the end of the eighteenth century, as industrialisation and urbanisation increased, so the Elizabethan Poor Laws became outdated. Old forms of labour control were eroded further in the towns and cities, necessitating new methods of control. The old laws, which discouraged labour mobility with systems of local relief, were increasingly expensive and created inflexible labour markets (Perkin, 1969; Thompson, 1968). The reform of the Poor Laws was resisted by the labouring classes- who viewed the end of relief as the removal of the last of their rights. The new 1834 Poor Law was aimed at ensuring by duress the economic and moral independence of the able-bodied labourer (Thompson, 1968).
Thus the circumstances of Britain’s industrialisation placed heavy emphasis on the need to discipline workers to work. As feudal systems and allegiances collapsed so they were replaced with increasingly onerous requirements to labour for wages. Those who could not earn their living through the sale of their labour in the market – the infirm or “impotent”- were the recipients of charitable relief. Two things are of importance here then: the creation of identity through paid labour rather than through feudal allegiances and the creation of a group of economically non-viable labourers who were the recipients of charity.
This dominant emphasis on labour market participation has persisted. Although the growth of the Welfare State after 1945 offered a less harsh climate for workers, its principle aim was still to act as a temporary safety net for those who had fallen out of paid employment (until they could return) and minimal relief for those who could not work. The persistence to this day of a difference in the level at which contributory benefits (earned through previous paid work) are paid compared with non-contributory benefits (for those with no recent work history) is illustrative of the longevity of the Poor Law principles.
Even the halcyon days of the Welfare State were relatively short lived. Successive Conservative administrations from 1979 to 1997 sought consistently to halt and indeed reverse any trend away from the primacy of paid labour as a means of support for all individuals. These years saw the assertion of what has come to be known as “Economic Citizenship” (Lister, 1998,). Such a concept of citizenship is predicated on an individual’s responsibility to support themselves through paid work and a corresponding right to retain the lion’s share of such earnings without the imposition of “onerous” tax burdens. Such an approach stands in stark contrast to the Welfare State tradition, most notably in its emphasis on individual rather than collective responsibility.
New Labour administrations since 1997 have seen a mild attenuation rather than a reversal of such thinking. In line with its “hand-up” rather than “hand-out” philosophy, New Labour’s self-proclaimed altruistic approach has sought to ensure and facilitate the entry of everyone to the labour market and to forge greater strategic alliances between the state on the private sector in this regard. Such policies are often loosely (and perhaps beguilingly) referred to as “The Third Way” (i.e., as lying between free market capitalism and socialism). New Labour thinking thereby bolsters the paradigm under which social position/participation depends upon one’s position in and membership of the labour market.
Much therefore currently hangs upon the ability of an individual to undertake paid work in the UK. Not only is such participation the most important method of providing a decent standard of living, but it also brings with it “Economic Citizenship” – or to adopt the New Labour neologism (as we do in this paper)- “social inclusion”. It is important to recognise that paid labour market participation is for most people a source of real social capital. Moreover (and perhaps consequently), the undertaking of paid or financially profitable work is undeniably of crucial psychosocial importance to the vast majority of the population. The New Labour Government counts labour market participation as the most important means of combating the social exclusion that grew so markedly under preceding Conservative administrations.
Paid work therefore represents a vital means of producing the means of supporting oneself, of being regarded as a full and included citizen and, related to this, is an important source of self-esteem and social capital.
The
disciplining of workforces into work is crucial to the capitalist project, as it
relies upon the extraction of the surplus value of labour. In Wages, Price and Profit written in 1865,
Marx argues that the value of a commodity is dependent upon the amount of
social labour (i.e. not labour expended to satisfy only the labourer’s own needs)
incorporated in it. A commodity has value because it is the crystallisation of
social labour. He draws a sharp distinction between rewards for labour and the quantity
of labour required to produce a commodity. He goes on to argue:
“It might seem that if the value of a commodity is determined by the quantity of labour bestowed upon its production, the lazier a man, or the clumsier a man, the more valuable his commodity, because the greater the time of labour required for finishing the commodity. This, however, would be a sad mistake. In saying that the value of a commodity is determined by the quantity of labour…in it, we mean the quantity of labour necessary for its production in a given state of society, under certain social average conditions of production, with a given social average intensity, and average skills of the labour employed” (Marx, 1968, p204).
Perhaps unwittingly, Marx here provides an insight into the economic rationale for the exclusion of the physically impaired from the labour market, with a consequential effect on their identity and economic well-being. Or, to put it another way:
“We tend not to think of progressives
like Marx as tied up with a movement led by businessmen, but it is equally true
that Marx is unimaginable without a tendency to contemplate average humans and
think about their abstract relation to work, wages and so on. In this sense, Marx is very much in step
with the movement of normalising the body and the individual.’” (Davis, 1997)
Industrial economies have quite distinct, economically rationalised, use for people’s bodies as paid labourers. Under such conditions, those with physical impediments that lower the surplus value of their labour are deemed unsuitable for certain work as they diminish profitability. Similarly, the growing need for skilled, trained workers capable of working at “full capacity” means that those with learning difficulties have been found unacceptable to the labour markets.
There are parallels here with the definition of other groups as unsuitable for full labour market participation, and their consequent social exclusion. The characterisation of women as a “reserve army of labour”, called upon in times of national need such as war, or the exclusion of people of colour from certain sorts of (generally better paid) work has been an aspect of the operation of labour markets in the industrialised world for some time.
This long-standing
economically-rationalist concern with the physical and mental characteristics
of labourers has given rise to medical models of disability. Under this model,
the definitions of dis/ability can be directly related to the value of people’s
surplus labour. Therefore, particular physical or mental characteristics are
categorised as “impairments” when they impinge upon an individual’s ability to
participate in the labour force in the same manner as an “able” person. These
(labour market defined) physical or intellectual impairments came to be seen as
intrinsic to the disabled identity of the individual. The power of the ability
or otherwise to participate in work to determine people’s physical and
intellectual identities is unsurprising given the economic, psychosocial and
social capital importance of work in Britain’s industrial society.
In Britain’s liberal market economy, the exclusion of people identified as disabled from work remained for a long while the legal prerogative of employers. Under Welfare State provisions, the financial support of such people was a family or state responsibility. It is unfortunately true that disabled people were largely socially excluded and, lacking the necessary social capital that comes from the dignity of labour, poorly catered for as citizens. At the same time, government has long felt that the “burden” of employing disabled people should be to some extent shared by employers. In 1944 it imposed an obligation on employers to ensure that at least 3% of workforces of more than twenty people should be “registered” disabled (Disabled Persons (Employment) Act). Of this, Campbell and Oliver said:
“The
main pieces of legislation relevant to disabled people included the Disabled
Persons (Employment) Act 1944, which was supposed to ensure reasonable access
to paid employment for disabled people and which failed lamentably, largely
because successive governments refused to enforce it.” (Campbell and Oliver, 1996, p 28/9).
Later, companies were obliged to
disclose in their annual report and accounts the percentage of disabled people
employed. However, such regulations failed to ensure much compliance and the
Act was poorly policed- some £302 (circa $500)
in fines was collected under the legislation in over fifty years of its
operation.
4. (Non)compliant bodies — new
challenges
All legislation regarding disability until the 1970s was predicated on the medical model. As new social movements began to gain ground from the 1970s, a shift in the legislative approach in this area is discernible. In many senses, the emergence of the social model of disability created the necessary space within which such a challenge could occur. The pathologisation of disability under the medical model had enabled those practising discrimination to go unchallenged- disabled people might be seen a inherently unsuitable for work as a result of their own characteristics. Here again, there are obvious parallels with other forms of discrimination on the grounds of race, gender and sexual orientation.
In 1970 the Labour government passed the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act (CSDA). This represented a new approach to disability by attempting to address issues such as disabled access. At the same time, disabled people began to use the legal system as a way of campaigning for enhanced rights.
In 1974 the Labour party appointed Britain’s first Minister for the Disabled, Alf Morris MP, author of the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act. A committee that he set up in his capacity as minister in 1977 assessed the impact of the Morris Act on access. The Committee reported in 1979 that the Act had achieved little. Shortly afterwards, the Committee on Restrictions against Disabled People (CORAD) was established in 1979. Amongst the recommendations made by this latter committee was that broad anti-discrimination legislation should be enacted.
During the 1980s, when Britain suffered a long and entrenched economic recession, disability classification became a further means of disciplining the workforce. As unemployment reached peak levels, those reduced to living on state benefits were increasingly categorised as “disabled” by sympathetic medical professionals in order to secure access to the improved benefits available to disabled people. The Government of the day responded by changing the medical definitions of disability, setting higher levels of impairment, and making the regime of acceptance more onerous.
By the time the recession has eased, radical disability campaigners had seized the issue and began afresh a high profile campaign to end workplace and other disability discrimination. From this point onwards, the parliamentary story is marked by successive attempts to get anti-discrimination legislation enacted, in the teeth of bitter government opposition. In 1982 Jack Ashley MP, who is deaf, moved the Disablement (Prohibition of Unjustifiable Discrimination) Bill. The aim of this short Private Members Bill was to give the powers to the Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC) to investigate cases of discrimination against disabled people and to try to resolve them by conciliation. This bill failed, but was reintroduced in the next parliamentary session by Donald Stewart MP, only to fail again. In all, between 1982 and 1995 there were thirteen unsuccessful attempts to get legislation to combat discrimination against disabled people through Parliament (Barnes and Oliver, 1995). Successive governments opposed these attempts to introduce anti-discrimination legislation on the grounds that no discrimination existed. However, the increasingly vocal radicalism of the disability lobbies by the mid-nineties made this a less than convincing tale. Instead, and ultimately, the government, deeply imbued with its own free market ideology, sought recourse to arguments of excessive business cost. . When further legislation was proposed seeking an end to disability discrimination in the mid-nineties, the Conservative Government invoked formal accounting techniques to “prove” by way of rebuttal that it was simply too expensive and would impose too great a burden on employers and service providers. Similar lines of argument were deployed, at much the same time, in an attempt to counter the extension of employment rights to (predominantly female) part time workers. The rest of this section charts the story of the use of accounting cost calculations in the battle for a disability discrimination act in the UK.
The Conservative Governments of 1979-1997 were overtly concerned with the deregulation of much of the British economy: an activity it pursued with vigour. In seeking this, as in other areas, they resorted frequently to the toolbox of new public management:
“A desire for rational government has
engendered the development of and reliance on what are perceived to be rational
policy tools. In what can be seen as a
shifting frontier between regulatory approaches grounded in traditional forms
of public administration and more evaluative and quantitative techniques, the
British Government has actively promoted the application of elaborate
calculative regulatory procedures.
These seek to inform regulation making through quantitative data, guide
the actions and thinking of civil servants, and provide a clear public
demonstration that the state is acting in a rational manner.” (Boden and Froud,
1996)
An emphasis on accountability and management, and the rise of technocrats in government, is accompanied by a growing expectation of what can be measured. One of the ‘rational’ tools employed in the quest for deregulation was compliance cost assessment (CCA). This was an accounting technique used to calculate the presumed costs to business of introducing new regulations and legislation. In its first manifestation, CCA concerned only costs and only business costs (Froud et al, 1998).
From the 1993/1994 Parliamentary session onwards, CCAs had to be produced for all proposed statutory instruments, Private Members Bills with a reasonable chance of enactment and all primary legislation. A summary of the CCA had to be included in the Explanatory and Financial Memorandum attached to each Bill or Statutory Instrument presented to Parliament (Froud et al, 1998).
Disclosure was an integral part of the deregulatory strategy of Government at this time. Thus, the CCA process specifically places business compliance cost data in the public domain. The belief was that by making explicit the regulatory costs imposed on business, potentially over-zealous regulators would be held accountable for their actions. Thus, having ensured the production of compliance cost data using accounting technology, the process aims to utilise it to control regulators though accountability requirements.
Dr Roger Berry MP introduced the Civil Rights (Disabled People) Bill to Parliament as a Private Member’s Bill in 1994. The proposed legislation would have outlawed discrimination in the workplace and ion the provision of goods and services. It also made provision for the establishment of a Disablement Commission (which would have matched the Equal Opportunities Commission and the Commission for Racial Equality).
The day before the Second Reading (the main Parliamentary consideration of legislation) of the Bill, the Government deposited a CCA that it had prepared on the Bill in the House of Commons Library. The CCA purported to demonstrate that the Bill would result in total non-recurring compliance costs of £17billion and a further £1billion in annual compliance costs.
The CCA dealt specifically with the issue of pay for disabled people. It said that
“There is some evidence that the average earnings of disabled employees are lower than those of non-disabled workers; however, it is not clear whether this is solely due to the different occupational distribution of disabled workers, and receiving lower pay for lower productivity, or also due to genuine discrimination” (Part 1, paragraph 6)
There are a number of points to consider in such a statement. First, the statement fails to engage with the possibility that the different occupational distribution of disabled workers may be the result of discriminatory practices. Second, there is a presumption, unproven and unevidenced, of lower productivity. And third, there is an implicit acceptance that disabled people should receive lower pay if their productivity, in a work environment determined by others and that may not be conducive to them, is lower than non-disabled workers. The document went on to imply that because 21% of disabled people earn less than their non-disabled work counterparts and 15% of them think that they are less productive, that disabled people are therefore less productive (paragraph 7). The CCA then goes on, producing figures apparently from no-where, to say that:
“Given these figures, it is assumed that around 20% of disabled employees in the private sector would have to be paid more under this legislation” (paragraph 8).
The CCA asserts that “it is… unclear whether the Bill would permit lower pay for lower productivity”. If it did not, it was reasoned, it was fair to assume that employers would incur costs of £500 a year to cover the “lower productivity” of disabled people, who under the Bill would have to receive equal pay with non-disabled colleagues. This, the author calculated, would cost the private sector £63 million a year.
Other workplace costs addressed in the CCA included: the increased costs of recruitment, adapting the workplace, the costs of retaining staff who become disabled, the costs of finding out after an offer of employment that the person “cannot do the job” because of disability and the cost of legal proceedings in cases taken by employees under the legislation. The total calculated recurring annual cost in relation to employment alone was £75 million for private sector employers. For the public sector the costs were estimated, using similar arguments, at £20.4 million per year.
A number of issues arise here. First, there is an overt concern with the presumed lower productivity of disabled workers. Yet there has been no rigorous work done on this issue, and in any case, it can be argued that lower productivity may result from an unsuitably constructed job or workplace. There is no challenge offered to the presumption that the productivity of the “normal” body should be the norm. Yet, for instance, normal bodies may differ markedly in their productive capacities- some people are just lazier than others are. Second, these figures were produced with a great deal of publicity but are, at heart, pure “guesstimates”. Third, there is scant mention of any compensating benefits that may accrue to employers from employing disabled people.
The
introduction to the CCA stated that:
“It has not in all cases been possible
to consult widely in drawing up the CCAs.
We would, therefore, welcome the views of interested parties on the
estimates provided.”
Despite this, the Government chose to use the document in a highly targeted way- circulating it widely to the press yet only producing it to parliament the day before the Second Reading Debate, thereby constraining any considered critique of it. However, this did not attenuate the adverse impact on the Bill’s chances of becoming legislation that these substantial figures generated.
In fact, the Minister for the Disabled,
Nicolas Scott MP, arranged for the Bill to be filibustered the next day, with
much debate about the excessive costs of the Bill, as demonstrated by the CCA.
Or, as Barnes and Oliver (1995) put it:
“The Civil Rights (Disabled Persons)
Bill was finally laid to rest on Friday 15 July. In a Parliamentary debate on
this issue, Nicolas Scott reiterated the Government view that [the Bill] failed
to take account of the interests of the business fraternity, and that the cost
of implementation would prove far too expensive” (Barnes and Oliver, 1995,
p112)
The Financial Times report on this episode gives a flavour of the intense public controversy that the debate and the costings engendered:
“The prime minister
yesterday spelt out to the House of Commons the hard economics which lie behind
the political furore over the Civil Rights (Disabled Persons) Bill.
Mr Major [the Prime Minister] cited the official
estimate of £17bn in non-recurring costs (plus £1bn a year in subsequent costs)
and the potential bill from litigation as reasons for the government’s
opposition to the private member’s bill.
But
are these cost figures realistic? The
Confederation of British Industry and the Institute of Directors, which have
been lobbying effectively against the bill, believe that they are. Disability lobbyists say they are not.
The Institute [of Directors] argues that the bill is loosely drafted
and does not properly address the issue of who pays. It says that that the cost of compliance could close thousands
of small businesses across the country…
The government has been encouraging business lobbyists to make
public their arguments and its own cost estimates. But the figure is more than
double the true cost, according to Ms Victoria Scott, the disability lobbyist
and daughter of Mr Nicholas Scott, the minister responsible for the disabled.
Dr Berry, the Labour MP who introduced the bill, says the figure is
‘absurd’ and takes no account of the cost savings from employing more disabled
people.
Dr
Berry, who has made no estimates of his own, says several government
departments have produced summaries of costs which include a large number
of ‘guesstimates’ as well as being
based on the recommendations being introduced within five years.
Dr
Berry said: ‘The bill as amended says that the timescale would be subject to
the decisions of the secretary of state.
So the government could control the costs.’’ (Financial Times, 20 May
1994)
Whilst the Government was thus successful in deploying cost (as calculated in the CCA) in its defeat of the Bill, this proved to be something of an own-goal. The first casualty was the minister himself- humiliated by public exposure of the tactics employed to defeat the Bill and stung by the criticisms of his daughter, Victoria Scott, who said of the episode:
“I think it is time we had a minister for disabled people who represented the needs of disabled people” (Financial Times, 21 May 1994)
Scott was replaced in a Cabinet
reshuffle and the new minister for the disabled, William Hague MP, introduced
new Government proposals on disabled rights in what was plainly an attempt to
recover lost public relations ground. A new Green Paper on disabled rights (Cm
2729) made no mention of the costs of such rights. This was followed by the
publication of the Government’s Disability Discrimination Bill. This set out
measures similar to that in the Berry Bill, but with three important
differences. First, there was an emphasis throughout on “reasonableness”- that
is, discrimination would be permitted if the cost of ending it were
“unreasonable”. Second, employers of less than twenty people were exempt,
because it was felt that to include them would impose unduly onerous financial
burdens on small firms. Third, it permitted the requirements to be phased in
over a longer period. The Government’s Bill was eventually enacted and is now
the Disability Discrimination Act.
The CCA for this new Bill was markedly
different from that on the Berry Bill. Whilst it covers similar ground, public
sector costs were excluded (they had been included in the earlier CCA). The
section on the extra costs that might arise from equal pay is significantly
downplayed. The CCA notes that blatant pay discrimination would end with the
new Bill, but also notes that some existing pay differentials may be due to
“differences in productivity, hours worked, and occupational distribution of
disabled people and so on”. It concludes that there was no evidence to suggest
what the cost to employers might be, but significantly infers that this cost
would be limited to cases of blatant discrimination. The CCA declines to
provide a figure. Similarly, with regard
to tribunals, the CCA places a strong caveat on the figure given, indicating
that it is difficult to distinguish the costs of compliance from those of
non-compliance, the latter being excluded from CCAs. The CCA took into account
the exclusion of small firms, but made no adjustments for the longer period of
phasing in, nor could it assess what constituted a “reasonable” cost.
The CCA concludes that the Bill was unlikely to have:
“an adverse effect on our international competitiveness, since the costs are small in terms of labour costs per head”.
Table One shows a comparison of the two CCAs with regard to calculated employment compliance costs. It should be emphasised that the employment provisions of the two Bills were largely similar. In addition, the civil servants who produced the two CCAs were working to standard guidelines for the production of such documents. This raises issues as to how the two CCAs came out with such radically different costings.
|
|
Berry Bill (public and
private sector) |
Government
Bill (Private
sector only, public not costed) |
|
Recruitment |
Not given |
0.5million |
|
Adapting
the workplace |
3.43
million |
0.6 million |
|
Tribunal
proceedings |
12.75
million |
6.7 million |
|
Retention
of disabled employees |
Not given |
Not given |
|
Medical
questions |
0.24
million |
Not
considered |
|
Pay |
79.3
million |
Not given |
Total compliance cost |
95.72
million |
7.8 million |
In line with CCA practice and
guidelines, the two documents made only scant mention of the benefits of
employing disabled people. Yet the disability campaign group Rights Now
estimated that the costs of underemployment of the disabled to be between 32.75
billion per year to £5 billion a year (Hansard, 24 January, 1995, col. 166).
This episode illustrates a number of
themes. First, it demonstrates the continuing hegemony of a medical model of
disability grounded in notions of the productivity of labour.
Second, it is clear that, for those operating under a paradigm suggested by the medical model it was obvious that considerations of cost should be central in deciding how far legislation should go. Thus this remained a question of how far the “burden” of additional costs could fairly be imposed. This has overtones of charity, rather than of rights.
Third, for the disability campaigners
acting under the paradigm prompted by social models, the issue was one of
rights rather than costs. That is, an entitlement to receive human rights
should not be attenuated by considerations of costs. At the same time, these
groups did also engage in costing arguments, especially in critiques of the
Government’s costings. These arguments are resonant of those that have also
arisen in the USA in relation to disability discrimination legislation there
(Pfeiffer, 1994). The Economist, in
an argument that emphasises the capitalist underpinnings of disability
discrimination, put it this way:
“How much should be spent? Ministers
rejected the Private Member’s Bill because they estimated it would cost £17
billion to implement…Campaigners accused ministers of overstating the costs.
And they argued that costs should not matter where fundamental rights are at
stake. The Government, however, has a duty to restrain public spending and the
financial burden on firms. Rights for the disabled must be balanced against the
goal of a competitive economy. When is it justifiable to discriminate against
disabled people? Outlawing discrimination against blacks or women does not cost
firms anything.” (Economist, 13
August, 1994)
5. Conclusions
In this paper we have given an explanation of the nature and consequences of the medical and social models of disability. We have also explored how, because of perceived productivity imperatives of capitalist modes of production, unimpaired bodies are normalised and impaired bodies are categorised as disabled. The power of definition is significant and has generally rested with employers and the government. Categorisation as disabled results in the social exclusion of those so defined. That exclusion has particularly marked consequences in the area of work, because of the importance of work in the construction of identities and indeed of citizenship.
We have also sought to trace the interrelationship between the hegemonic medical model and the need of capitalism to legitimise the exclusion of disabled people. The essentialist and positivistic nature of the medical model has been sustained using accounting technologies. Thus it was costing techniques that first turned attention towards the importance of the value (and price) of labour and accounting has latterly provided a means by which government has sought to justify discrimination against disabled people.
These debates continue. The new Disability Discrimination Act is still predicated on a medical model of disability. The rights conferred are limited, especially by the principle of “reasonable” cost. There are two issues here that deserve further consideration and research. First, little work of a robust nature has ever been undertaken with regard to the costs of employing disabled people. Nor does any of the existing work consider the full gamut of costs (i.e. those of the individual and the government as well as of the employers). In a related vein, consideration of the compensating benefits of employing disabled people has similarly remained unexplored.
Second, a
fundamental issue remains: how are human rights to be balanced against the
perceived or actual costs (perhaps adjusted for benefits) of inclusion? The
persuasive power of accounting cost arguments achieve particular power in such
contexts. Perhaps we need to ask ourselves the question whether we would
tolerate such abuses of, say, children as workers, were similar arguments about
business costs to be deployed?
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