LEGAL PROTECTION FOR AND PROMOTION OF SIGN LANGUAGES

Early day motion 775, tabled 30 January 2007 by Lord Bruce of Bennachie (Liberal Democrat). Signed by 69 members.

That this House calls for legal protection of, support for and promotion of British and Irish sign languages in accordance with Council of Europe resolutions, recognising that it is estimated that over 200,000 British residents regularly use sign language, many of them as a first language; calls for the parents of deaf children to be given free tuition in sign language and information and choice over the role sign language can play in their child's development, for sign language to be offered a school curriculum option to increase awareness of the languages and to increase the potential pool of interpreters, and for deaf adults to be given the opportunity to study their own language at degree level and to be given the right to a free interpreter and other communications support services in a wide range of circumstances; further calls on the Government to adopt the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, in particular Article 21(b), which calls on governments to `accept and facilitate the use of sign languages'; and requests that sign language users be provided with the resources they require in comparable terms to the users of other UK minority languages such as Welsh and Gaelic, which receive more than one hundred times the funding provided to promote and protect sign language.

Signatures by party: Labour 35, Liberal Democrat 21, Conservative 9, DUP 1, Plaid Cymru 1, Scottish National Party 1, Social Democratic and Labour Party 1.