Parliament | The reform of the law defining services for the disabled is faltering due to the lack of time in the parliament

Services the law defining more than one hundred thousand people with disabilities is wavering in the parliament due to lack of time.

The Constitutional Law Committee issued a statement on the government’s proposal on the Disability Services Act on Thursday, which contains several demands for changes. Markus Lohi (center) tells STT that it seems quite impossible that the social and health committee he leads will have time to deal with the changes before the end of the election period. In this case, the government’s proposal would lapse and be carried over to the next election period.

“We’ll see if there’s anything else that can be done. My current interpretation of the schedule is unfortunately bleak,” says Lohi.

The current parliament has less than two months of working time left before the election break.

Chairman of the Constitutional Law Committee Johanna Ojala-Niemelä (sd) characterizes the change requirements as significant. According to Ojala-Niemelä, some of the legislation is leaving unclear what kind of services a person is entitled to.

“Experts said that this is so loosely written that people will have to test whether they are entitled to services or not through the administrative court and the Supreme Administrative Court. Of course, it is not the intention of the law to have such an unclear situation”, says Ojala-Niemelä.

In addition, certain points concerning the elderly and patients with respiratory paralysis caught the committee’s attention.

Government presented a bill on the Disability Services Act to parliament last year.

It is a total reform of the current legislation. It was intended to combine the previous laws so that all disabled people would receive their services based on the same law in the future.

“The presentation includes services that were previously only available to people with intellectual disabilities. In addition, there are some completely new services, such as special participation support”, the lawyer Cricket Sivula from the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health says.

For the second time, the reform of the Disability Services Act is in the grip of the end of the election season in the parliament. The project ceased four years ago, when Juha Sipilä (Centre) overthrew the government he led after the social security reform at the time stalled.

According to Sivula, the law reform has been developed since the last election period, so it is not exactly the same proposal. He says that the preparation of the law has been delayed by almost a year due to the coronavirus pandemic, which kept the ministry busy for a large part of the election season.

“No one would have hoped that such a large entity would be in the final stages before the parliament,” says Sivula.

He says that disability services currently cover around 125,000 people. About a quarter of them are intellectually disabled.

Salmon also, some disability organizations have criticized the issues that have been brought up, while others have considered the reform so good that it should be carried forward in any case.

“Of course, it’s a shame that we didn’t manage to get a good disability services law done, if this happens. Still, bad legislation is not worth making, and these corrections have been found to be necessary.”

The schedule rush is not made easier by the fact that, after the changes, the motion would have to be approved again by the Constitutional Law Committee, which has its own employment projects before the election break.