Programme for Government Statement
We welcome the Scottish Government’s Programme for Government and its ambition to build public services around people, invest earlier to prevent harm, and strengthen Scotland’s human rights framework.
The lives of people with learning disabilities can be improved through stronger rights protections, support for independent living, community-based support, tackling the root causes of violence against women and girls with learning disabilities, whole-family support and public services designed around people rather than systems.
But we are concerned that people with learning disabilities are largely invisible in the Programme as a distinct group whose rights are risk. At SCLD, our vision is a Scotland where people with learning disabilities live full, safe, loving and equal lives and participate directly in the decisions that affect them. The test of this Programme is whether it makes that vision real.
Prevention means investing in rights
We welcome the strong commitment to prevention. This requires a rights-based approach which recognises the positive obligations to respect, protect and fulfil rights and use all available resources to the maximum extent possible to realise economic, social and cultural rights.
For people with learning disabilities and their families, prevention means having the right support, in the right place, at the right time. A preventative approach can support people with learning disabilities to stay healthy, have a safe home, maintain relationships, participate in their community and live the life they choose. They should not need to wait for things to reach crisis point before receiving support.
“I never knew my family growing up; I never really had many visitors in the hospitals I lived in. When I was growing up, I never knew when my birthday was, and for many years didn’t even know it had passed.”
—The State of Our Rights report
The use of rights-based budgeting can help ensure that public spending is tested not just against short-term savings, but against whether it is progressively making people’s rights real. Cutting support in one part of the system can simply move the cost somewhere else: into hospital admission, placement breakdown, homelessness or crisis intervention.
People with learning disabilities must shape reform
We welcome the Scottish Government’s commitment to participation, community empowerment and services that fit around people. That principle aligns strongly with the right of people with learning disabilities under UNCRPD to particate in decisions which affect them.
The Government plans intensive dialogue over the next three months on local government and social care reform. No reform affecting people with learning disabilities should be designed without them.
People with learning disabilities are experts in their own lives. Participation is not an act of charity, and it is not something to add once important decisions have already been made.
“People in power need to be in our space to hear from us, to have their attitudes shaped by our experiences. We are the experts by experience. It needs to come from us, not from the people who work around us. We are the ones living this.”
— Include For Good Rapporteur
People with learning disabilities have chosen as the theme for this year’s Scottish Learning Disability Week “I am here… to be seen”. People with learning disabilities need the space and support to express their views, an audience with responsibility to listen, and evidence that what they say has influenced decisions.
“We want people to see us for the talents that we have and the things that we have achieved, not to focus on our disabilities. And more than anything we just want people to stop excluding us.”
— Include For Good Rapporteur
Human rights legislation cannot wait
We welcome the commitment to a Human Rights Bill but are disappointed that it is not scheduled for introduction until Year Two of this Parliament. This legislation has already been delayed, and that has a direct impact every day on people with learning disabilities whose rights are being breached and who struggle to access justice and an effective remedy.
Scotland has shown through UNCRC incorporation the importance of bringing international commitments into Scots law fully and directly. We need the same ambition for the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, the economic and social rights protected by ICESCR, and other core human rights treaties. Full incorporation of the UNCRPD was just one of the recommendations for Scottish Government made by the Human Rights and Learning Disability Lived Experience Board.
“We could finally matter as much as everyone else. For example, we could get the same access to law and justice as everyone else. It’s so important to know that if someone does wrong to you then you have a law that will help you. That’s how you feel like you matter.”
— Human Right Lived Experience Board member
For many people with learning disabilities the rights to health, independent living, equality, family life, participation and freedom from violence are daily issues. Whether someone gets healthcare in time. Whether they can choose where and with whom they live. Whether information is accessible. Whether they get support to make decisions. Whether they are safe from abuse. And whether they can challenge decisions when their rights are not respected.
“Holding others accountable puts us in the driving seat, not passengers sitting quietly in the back.”
— Include For Good Rapporteur
We look forward to working with the Scottish Government on the Bill, and will press for more urgency, strong incorporation of the UNCRPD, clear duties, accountability and effective remedies.
Public service reform must deliver better lives
We welcome public service reform as an opportunity to deliver better services for people with learning disabilities who often rely on multiple services such as health, social work, housing and education.
Public service reform must be driven by a Human Rights-Based Approach rather than being driven primarily by financial savings. Reform should be judged by outcomes for rights-holders, not by how many structures are merged or how much money is saved. Simplification must not mean weaker independent scrutiny, advocacy or routes to remedy.
That is particularly important in health.
We are particularly concerned that there are no specific commitments to improve health outcomes for people with learning disabilities. Given that prevention is a defining principle of the Programme for Government, the omission of Annual Health Checks is particularly striking.
Despite the right to the highest attainable standard of health within UNCRPD, people with learning disabilities continue to experience stark health inequalities, with research from the Scottish Learning Disabilities Observatory showing that people with learning disabilities die, on average, around 20 years younger than the general population. Adults aged 25–34 with learning disabilities are six times more likely to die prematurely and nine times more likely to die from treatable causes.
“We shouldn’t have to fight for our lives to be the same length as everybody else.”
— Include For Good Rapporteur
Annual Health Checks are one practical way of making the right to health real. They are an important opportunity to identify health needs early, support prevention and address the significant health inequalities experienced by people with learning disabilities. There has been progress, but around 65% of people identified as eligible were still not offered a health check in 2025/26.
One of the top priorities for the New Strategic Health Boards should be a focus on reducing learning-disability health inequalities, improving uptake and follow-up of Annual Health Checks, and publishing clear data on outcomes.
The same rights test should apply to social care
We welcome the commitment to reach agreement on reform of social care over the next three months. Social care is not simply a service. For many people it is what makes other rights possible: getting out of bed, maintaining relationships, working, participating in the community, accessing healthcare, or choosing where and with whom to live.
The UNCRPD right to independent living must be at the centre of that reform. It should address inconsistent eligibility criteria, charging, the availability of good-quality support and whether people have genuine choice and control.
“We need to have choices, make our own decisions, and have the right help and support when we need it. We need freedom as well as responsibilities.”
— The State of Our Rights report
And people with learning disabilities must be directly involved.
Hospital is not a home
We welcome the commitment to invest in supporting people with learning disabilities and complex support needs to live in their communities. This links directly to Coming Home.
“We need the government to try and improve people’s lives, no put people in institutions”
— The State of Our Rights report
Too many people remain in hospital or inappropriate placements because the housing and support they need are not available. The Coming Home Action Plan provides an opportunity to change that, and its Lived Experience Hub must ensure people themselves have real influence over delivery.
“I was devastated to have to stay in hospital. The planning needed to start before they decided I was fit to go home.”
— Include For Good Rapporteur
If someone cannot leave hospital because appropriate housing or support is unavailable, that is not simply a delayed-discharge statistic.
It is a person whose life is on hold.
Public service and social care reform must deliver on Coming Home and ensure there is accountability when systems fail.
Women with learning disabilities must not be hidden
We welcome the strong focus on tackling violence against women and girls, Delivering Equally Safe and longer-term specialist funding, including prevention and improved responses to harm and exploitation. We know that women with learning disabilities face heightened risks of abuse, exploitation and violence alongside significant barriers to accessing equitable support and justice for gender-based violence, and frequent interventions that violate their human rights.
For women and girls with learning disabilities protection from violence means not only prevention and education but also removing these barriers, challenging attitudes and making sure that support and justice is accessible to them. This includes systems and services that are accessible, respectful and inclusive, accessible information, communication support, appropriate advocacy, reasonable adjustments and staff training in learning disability.
The Scottish Government should ensure that women with learning disabilities are meaningfully involved in the design and evaluation of policies and services, in line with the UNCRPD. The role of multi-agency services is key to delivering improvements for victims and survivors. Data should also identify the experiences and outcomes of disabled women so that inequalities are visible and can be addressed.
As women involved in SCLD’s work have said:
“We will not be hidden anymore!”
— Unequal, Unheard, Unjust: But Not Hidden Anymore – Women with Learning Disabilities’ Experience of Gender Based Violence in Scotland (SCLD, 2023)
In the absence of a specific LDAN Bill, Scotland needs national leadership on learning disability
The biggest concern running through the Programme is the lack of specific focus on learning disability.
The absence of the LDAN Bill from the legislative programme, and subsequent confirmation from Ministers that it is to be dropped is deeply disappointing, and represents a missed opportunity to deliver meaningful, long-overdue change for people with learning disabilities.
People with learning disabilities invested considerable time, expertise and trust in the Government’s work on the proposed Bill. The draft provisions included stronger planning and reporting, workforce training, improved coordination between services and greater accountability. Those people who spent their efforts in the process will rightly question how the Scottish Government will honour its commitment to delivering the meaningful change that they have been calling for.
Better services and neurodevelopmental pathways are of course welcome but are in no way a substitute for the stronger rights and accountability promised by the Bill.
In the absence of a specific LDAN Bill, strong national leadership on learning disability is desperately needed.
Scotland needs a National Learning Disability Strategy, co-produced with people with learning disabilities, which brings together action across health, social care, housing, employment, family life, safety, participation and access to justice.
It should have measurable outcomes, clear responsibilities and public reporting.
“It is all very good saying people have a voice, but we need to see results.”
— Include For Good Rapporteur
Without that national focus, there is a real danger that learning disability continues to fall between policy areas.
The Programme for Government contains important commitments, and SCLD will work constructively with Ministers and public bodies to deliver them.
