Hounslow Council recognises the validity of British Sign Language (BSL) as an official UK language and urges the government to do the same

12.00.00am BST (GMT +0100) Tue 25th Apr 2000

At a debate on Tuesday 24 April, led by Cllr. John C. Murphy (chair of Hounslow Borough Association of Disabled People) and chaired by Cllr. Ray Fincher (leader of the Hounslow Liberal Democrats), the following motion was passed unanimously.

This Council resolves to recognise:

• The inalienable Human Rights of Deaf People.

• The validity of BSL as an official language of the UK.

• This Council further resolves to instruct the Chief Executive to write to the Home Secretary and the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport to urge them to bring forward the necessary legislation to make BSL an official language, thereby recognising the Human Rights of Deaf people as full citizens of our country.

Harrow Council recently passed this motion and Cllr. Adrian Knowles, who was responsible for this, spoke at the Hounslow debate. Hammersmith Council has passed a similar motion and the GLA has also recognised BSL as an official language.

The debate was entitled: Giving Deaf People a Hearing. That is exactly what happened. The whole debate was interpreted into British Sign Language and sent out on Hounslow Council's website. There were many contributions from Deaf people. Dominic Banza-Mwenze, who is deaf, spoke in the debate, as did Siddika Kargi, who works for Harrow Association of Disabled People as a BSL interpreter.

The whole thing was Cllr Murphy's brainchild and he says:

"We all learnt a lot about the problems that Deaf people face in our society. It was a good and constructive debate with people of all parties and all ethnic groups working together to improve things. Let us hope that this is a milestone in the struggle for disabled people to be fully included in our society.

"It just shows that even a very small group like the Hounslow Liberal Democrats can do much to make things better. Now it's over to the government. They say much about social inclusion. Let's now have some deeds to match the rhetoric."