Long-term Health Problems and Work Outcomes

(Limited Text - Ministerial Extracts only)

Tuesday 18th April 2017 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work (Penny Mordaunt)]

Thank you, Mr Hollobone. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. I shall start standing, but will take you up on your kind offer if it becomes too much.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire (Craig Tracey) on securing this debate on a critical issue that faces the country, at an opportune moment, with the Green Paper consultation having just finished. I also thank the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and my hon. Friend the Member for Bury St Edmunds (Jo Churchill). We have had a lean but fit debate, and I thank them personally for their contributions.

As has been stated, the Department for Work and Pensions and the Department of Health published the “Improving Lives” Green Paper in October last year, to start a national discussion about how we can support more disabled people and people with health conditions to get into work, stay in work and have full and fulfilling careers. The consultation ended in February and we have received a huge response from a wide range of employers, disabled people, people with health conditions and organisations with an interest. I thank Members who held events during the consultation period, and healthcare professionals who have also responded. We are now taking stock of what we have heard and will decide the next steps on this important agenda.

In moving forward, we want to continue working with stakeholders—that includes employers—to build on those contributions to the debate and to keep the momentum going. It was always going to be tricky to give my hon. Friend satisfaction about exactly when a White Paper would appear; it is even more tricky bearing in mind announcements made earlier today. I can assure my hon. Friends that we want to seize the momentum that the Green Paper has built and bring forward a White Paper very swiftly. Work can continue outside of the civil service, in the private sector and the third sector, which will play a critical role in delivering the support. We want those organisations to continue thrashing out the issues so that we can arrive at a White Paper in good time.

Let me focus on the case for employer action. It is clear that there are compelling reasons for employers to take action on health and work. Employers who invest in inclusive workplaces and in the health and wellbeing of their staff can expect wider access to talent and skills, improved engagement and retention of employees and consequential gains for the performance and productivity of their businesses, reduced sickness absence and also reduced presenteeism, which is an issue, although it is not often spoken about. They will be more able to capitalise on the purple pound’s nearly £250 billion of spending power in this country because of the insight that their workforce will have.

Employers will increasingly need to help their employees remain healthy and manage their conditions if they are to benefit as much as possible from the skills and experience of our ageing population, which my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire referred to. Older people will make up an even greater part of the workforce in the future. In the next five years, it is estimated that the number of people aged 50 to 64 will increase by 800,000, while the number of people aged 16 to 49 will fall by about 300,000. We know that older workers bring great benefits to businesses by drawing on their knowledge, skills and experience, and can help businesses to remain competitive.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bury St Edmunds spoke about cancer, which is becoming a chronic condition. Although we are living longer, we are living more years in ill health. There is clearly a correlation between our ageing population and the increased prevalence of long-term chronic conditions and multiple health issues, so this is an incredibly important agenda for the nation.

[Jo Churchill]

Cancer is often referred to as a generic, but various forms present very differently. The TUC has a great campaign called Dying to Work, which is driven by someone with metastatic cancer. They have a limited lifespan, but they want to carry on working. That is part of this agenda. If a person feels fit and able, whatever their condition, the Government should be doing all they can to encourage them.

[Penny Mordaunt]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. Part of the importance of the Green Paper is that it tries to push the concept of work as a health outcome. Whatever someone’s circumstances, meaningful activity is a key part of keeping them healthy, and it benefits their emotional wellbeing.

We can already move forward with many of the things we trailed in the Green Paper. The one-stop shop will be not just a passive repository for Government information to support employers, but a shop window to the third sector and other organisations that can provide the expert, bespoke support that employers want. If, for example, a business has employed someone with autism, it will want expertise and expert advice, so we want to move forward with that immediately. The Disability Confident scheme is gathering pace, and there are many other things we can do to improve services, such as Access to Work.

On the issue of statutory sick pay and income protection, through the consultation we have been exploring how employers can actively promote health and wellbeing and manage sickness absence, including whether statutory sick pay should be reformed to better enable supportive consultations and a phased return to work. We also know that group income protection insurance, which offers preventive programmes, wellbeing services and income protection elements, can offer benefits and has the potential to help employers retain disabled employees and those with health conditions.

Analysis by the Centre for Economics and Business Research indicates that long-term absences among employees who have access to and use early intervention and rehabilitation services tend to be nearly 17% shorter than those among employees who do not. We want employers to do more to invest in their employees’ health and wellbeing, and thereby to reap the benefits that such investment brings. That includes actively considering whether group income protection could be part of the answer in promoting the health and wellbeing of their workforce. That was a key focus of the Green Paper, and we want to focus on it as we go forward.

We welcomed the responses to the consultation, in which we asked questions about the role the insurance sector should play in supporting the recruitment and retention of disabled people and people with health conditions. We also asked for feedback on the barriers and opportunities for employers of different sizes when adopting those insurance products for their staff. In particular, we asked why larger employers are not making better use of such protection schemes, and how take-up among SMEs in particular can be encouraged. We are now reviewing the full range of opinions expressed in the consultation, and we look forward to continuing to work with the industry to consider how those barriers can be overcome. We will consider what role the Government might play in reducing those barriers to take-up, and what the industry might need to do. We welcome offers to continue to work with the Government on these issues to encourage wider employer action to help employees stay in or return to work.

A number of health trials are going on at the moment, and we wish to run further trials with our innovation fund. Many of them touch on the incentives for employers to make the investments and follow good practice in their workplace. For example, one trial is introducing a wellbeing premium—a reduction in local business rates provided the business puts in place particular things to support the mental health and emotional wellbeing of its staff.

As we explore what works and what is good practice for employers, we need to remember that we are already asking employers to do a lot. They have done a lot on pensions, and some of them are doing a lot on the apprenticeship levy. Those are really good things, and businesses clearly see the merits of investing in them. We must also bear in mind that we want employers to create jobs, so we have got to get the balance right. That is why I think this is one of the interesting parts of the Green Paper consultation and the White Paper that will follow.

It is important that any efforts to improve opportunities and outcomes for disabled people and those with long-term conditions also focus on mental health. Only one in three disabled people with a mental health condition is in employment, and 49% of the 2.4 million employment and support allowance claimants have a mental health condition as their primary condition.

In January, the Prime Minister announced the first steps in our plan to transform the way we deal with mental health problems at every stage of a person’s life—not just in our hospitals, but in our classrooms, at work and in our communities. An important strand of that plan is to support mental wellbeing in the workplace. That is why Dennis Stevenson, who has campaigned for a better evidence base for mental health for many years, and Paul Farmer, the chief executive of Mind, have been commissioned to review how employers can better support all employees, including those with mental ill health or poor wellbeing, to remain in and thrive through work. They are considering best practice across the full range of employers, and engaging with individuals with lived experience. They will present evidence and recommendations for employers and the Government to consider.

My hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire made a point about measurement, which will clearly be a focus for us as we bring forward our ideas in the White Paper. Although we will continue to report the labour market statistics and look at the disability employment gap and other such numbers, we need locally driven solutions in health and employment services and education, so we need to focus on the current unmet need, whether in healthcare or employment support. By looking at the local numbers and getting local ownership so the different stakeholders can wrap support around the individual, we will get really good things to happen at a local level. That is what we need to enable and encourage—so expect some of those targets, which will look at the actual numbers, and formulas surrounding the disability employment gap. Once again, I thank my hon. Friend for securing this important debate and all hon. Members who took part in it.

Question put and agreed to.