Mr. Sadiq Khan (Tooting) (Lab): What plans he has to improve services for disabled people. [113154]

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mrs. Anne McGuire): I am pleased to advise my hon. Friend that the disability equality duty, which took effect on 4 December, will mean significant improvements to services for disabled people. My Department’s first disability equality schemes were published on 1 December, and they set out actions that we intend to take over the next three years to improve services for our disabled customers.

Mr. Khan: I welcome the answer given by my hon. Friend. I am sure that those of us who have a passionate interest in equality will welcome the huge progress made in this area over the past 10 years. Will she describe what impact she expects the new disability equality duty to have on services provided by local authorities, as many disabled people across the country receive such services?

Mrs. McGuire: It is crucial to highlight, as my hon. Friend has done, the importance for disabled people of local authority services across a range of activities. Most local authority people would accept that services were often geared to the provider and not to the individual. I hope that the new disability equality schemes, some 44,000 of which have been published, will allow local authorities, and public authorities in general, to review how they provide services, as they are legally obliged to do, and how they involve disabled people in the development of those services—they should not be involved only at the end of the process.