Last summer the Royal Assent was bestowed on Alf Morris's

Chronically Sick and Dis- abled Persons' Bill and all the conquering altruists who had burned Westminster's mid- night oil to get it through whooped it up with a well-justified champagne party. A nation's goodness may be judged by the way it treats its less fortunate members and no doubt the champers tasted as self-con- gratulatory as it should. No doubt, too, the occupants of a million or so wheel-chairs raised the odd cheer, somewhat less grandly.

Raise your glasses, then, to the first an- niversary of the Bill, celebrated rather fool- ishly by Mr Lewis Carter's motion modestly suggesting that it might be a good idea if the provisions in Mr Morris's Bill were ac• tually implemented. The chivalrous spirits from last year's philanthropic triumph gather once again to bemoan the stark fact that daddy government's orders to her children have been ignored. Comfort, it would seem, Is a cripple and comes ever slow. For a Year it has been mandatory that local autho- rities should seek out their disabled, register them and see to it that their needs are pro- perly attended to by the welfare services. And now we find that virtually nothing of the sort has been achieved. Various surly re- sponses have been noted, of course. Mostly to the effect that all this caring for dis- abled folk costs time, effort and money. which are commodities local authorities feel they cannot well afford while they are so busy doing important things like organising themselves.

To make a small pattern of the statistics peppering the debate like gunpowder, it would seem that so far as anyone is aware

DIARY OF THE YEAR

Wednesday 19 May:. Mr Heath spoke in correct, even if not mellifluous, French on arrival at Orly for talks with M Pompidou. The Queen delicately asked her 'faithful Commons' for a pay rise and a committee was set up to examine her case. India and Pakistan were reported to be on the brink of war.

Thursday 20 May: There was progress in talks in Vienna between the us and USSR about end- ing the nuclear arms race, and in Paris between the PM and M Pompidou about an enlarged rEc. Lord Longford announced his team of forty-seven to study pornography, but 793,761 People were still out of work.

Friday 21 May: Success in Paris for Mr Heath: the French seemed willing at last to let Britain into the Common Market. Failure on Everest: the ill-starred international expendition aban- &fled their climb of the sw face. Women were again excluded from Stock Exchange member- ship.

Saturday 22 May: Eastern Turkey suffered a Severe earthquake and up to 1,000 were feared dead. Another night walker for charity was killed on the A23. A soldier was killed in Belfast. Sunday 23 May: The second day of a grim weekend: seventy-three British tourists were killed in an air crash in Yugoslavia. Mr Elrorn, the kidnapped Israeli Consul-General in Ankara, was found murdered and terrorists seized a British consul in Argentina. Monday 24 May: Mr Heath told MPS about his

there are something like four million dis- abled men, women and children in this coun- try, of which more than half receive no help whatsoever. While for the small half there seem to be more kicks than ha-pence. One may feel negative about complaints against local councils who fail to erect ramps for the wheel-chaired, since the public gallery is presently full of the hale and hearty while those in wheel chairs are obliged (for lack of a ramp) to peep humbly over the rail from the corridor behind the gallery. Neverthe- less, Ernie Money (Con. Ipswich) persuades us that horror stories are worth listening to for effects other than the merely dramatic on account of the fact that he had an an- cestor at large in the Wilberforce govern- ment but for whom we'd still be selling each other let alone condemning each other to isolation because our legs don't work.

So far, our local authorities are in the habit of providing children with leg irons of the type our grandfathers knew; telephones that we are physically incapable of using; three-wheeled vehicles designed to jolt the haemophiliacs in our midst to internal haemorrhage; radios we cannot switch on; jobs for mental defectives when we are physically defective (and vice-versa) and a whole world of indignity and humiliation, made all the more dreadful because of the good intentions behind it. And what is the point, as William Molloy (Lab. Ealing N.) points out so graphically, of having tele- phone boxes and public lavatories when they are inaccessible to anyone who happens to have a wheel chair in his life? Or, as Ernie Money suggests, what is the use of having legislation for employers to give employ-

ment to certain numbers of disabled people when, to admit that you are a registered disabled person when applying for a job is like signing your own death warrant?

It is all infinitely depressing. Until the rise of a man whose appearance 1 have long ad- mired. My admiration, I am bound to ad- mit. has been held by observation of two characteristics, superficially unobtrusive enough, exhibited by the fellow that are rare. if not totally absent, in Members of Parliament. One, he listens with rapt atten- tion to whoever is speaking, and two, if he wants to get up and wander about while friend or foe is holding forth, he does so on tippy-toe. My affection, therefore, was

heightened still further when, commencing his speech. I had the joy of suspecting he might be a bit tight. His voice, as I noted

with alacrity upon yesterday's Hansard, was distinctly uncontrolled, almost as though he is unable to hear himself speak. Which, as it turns out, is precisely the case. Jack Ash- ley (Lab. Stoke on Trent) is stone deaf.

One of the great tragedies of the deaf, as Dame Joan Vickers of the royal blue hair and voice was later at pains to point out, is that they look so fit and well that they fail to command the attention and sympathy of

other more obviously disabled types. I

doubt Jack Ashley agrees that his appearance is a tragedy, since he has only to occupy his seat before the gossiping hordes, who seem to have got themselves elected merely to enjoy a good giggle with their mates• are ac- tually raising their hands to their mouths for fear that he will lip-read their comments.

Meanwhile, the unmelodious tones of Jack Ashley command as respectful a silence as he has ever heard as he laments the deaf ears that have been turned upon him in the course of his campaigns to implement the Alf Morris Bill.

It was fortunate for Margaret Thatcher that she was not present for the indictment of at least two of Mr Ashley's examples of governmental sloth. Her year-old circular, it seems, asking local authorities for vital in- formation about their provisions for deaf- blind children remains in limbo and her ten- month-old promise to seek information about autistic children has not been kept. And fortunate for the absent 70 per cent of mrs who denied themselves the benefit of Carter-Jones's (Lab. Eccles) request, to miss his last impassioned appeal.

When one reflects on disability, he says, one realises the we are all disabled. Some are deaf; some are blind; some are stupid; some are arrogant; some are selfish. Each individual has a disability of some kind only some are more easily recognisable than others. Some, I might add, are councillors.