Personal Independence Payments
Baroness Campbell of Surbiton Excerpts(7 years, 8 months ago)
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Lord Henley
My Lords, in the time available we have not been able, as the noble Baroness will know, to consult SSAC, nor have we been able to consult a large number of different organisations; no doubt those consultations will take place. What the two tribunal decisions exposed, to go back to what I said earlier, was that there was some confusion in the original directions. We are seeking to put those back on the footing that Parliament agreed a year or so ago, so that the matter is clear and we can continue the support that is, and has been, available at a very high level—at much higher levels than it ever was available under DLA, as I made clear in the original response.
Baroness Campbell of Surbiton (CB)
My Lords, have the Government conducted an impact assessment of the social isolation caused by denying enhanced-level PIP to people who would experience overwhelming psychological distress if they had to undertake a journey without someone to accompany them? If this assessment has not been done, when will it be and could it please be made available to this House?
Lord Henley
Can I again make it clear to the House that we are not in any way trying to suggest that people with any particular condition should be deprived of PIP? As the noble Baroness and the House will be aware, when we brought in PIP the arrangements were much more generous and reached far more people than DLA did in the past. It is not any specific condition that is being looked at here; people are not awarded PIP on the grounds of any specific medical condition but because of the way that particular impairment or medical condition affects their ability to live an independent life. That is what we are trying to do with PIP, or it is what we were trying to do and want to try to get back to.
Brexit: Disabled People
Baroness Campbell of Surbiton Excerpts(7 years, 9 months ago)
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Baroness Campbell of Surbiton (CB)
My Lords, leaving the EU is very much a disability issue, with hidden risks that were not aired much during the referendum campaign. Therefore, I am most grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, for introducing this really important debate.
As time is short, I will concentrate on the area I am most familiar with: the workforce which facilitates independent living for disabled people such as me. I declare an interest as someone who has employed personal assistants from at least 10 EU countries during the past 25 years. I am not unusual. There are thousands of disabled people who do the same. Our personal assistants—some call them carers—are a mixture of UK and EU nationals. They are crucial to our independence and our freedom to enjoy a private and family life, to work, to socialise and to raise children. Our employees are funded mainly by social care or healthcare personal budgets. During the past 30 years, increasing numbers of disabled people have become employers.
When preparing for this debate, I searched for data on how many EU nationals were employed as personal assistants. I contacted the United Kingdom Homecare Association and independent living PA agencies, such as Independent Living Alternatives and PA Pool. No specific data were available but we know there are more than 70,000 EU citizens working in social care. I then contacted disabled employers through social media platforms to find out more about their reasons for seeking personal assistants from EU countries.
Everyone I heard from said first that the pool of potential UK employees was drying up, yet demand for care workers continued to rise. The EU workforce was therefore an essential supplement, and all were concerned about moves to restrict it. Other reasons given for recruiting EU nationals were a strong work ethic and reliability, and the fact that the job tends to attract single people, who, as a rule, are found to be more flexible in their working hours, giving much-valued opportunities for spontaneity. They are keen to fill live-in employment positions. This helps disabled people who live in rural villages where local employees are limited. Some commute to and from their home countries between work stints. Such flexibility is a win-win situation for both employers and employees.
I spoke also to John Evans, a quadriplegic man and pioneer of independent living for disabled people in the UK and internationally. He said:
“I have been free from residential care for 34 years, employing my own PAs who support me to have full control of my life. They have come from 15 different EU countries. Without their support I could not do my work at home and abroad. If the Government does not make some kind of arrangement to protect our access to the EU PA workforce, I will lose my freedom again”,
and he will have to return to residential care. We constantly hear about the threat to the NHS if restrictions to work in the UK are tightened. The PAs and carers employed by thousands of disabled people must be accorded the same attention; otherwise, the current social care crisis will worsen and disabled people will lose the right to independent living, as set out in Article 19 of the UN convention.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission shares my concern. In its evidence to the Joint Committee on Human Rights’ Brexit inquiry, it said that any change in Immigration Rules,
“should be subject to a rigorous equality and human rights impact assessment”.
Will the Minister assure the House that this assessment will be carried out rigorously and shared with Parliament? Will he also guarantee that disabled people and their organisations will be thoroughly involved in any Brexit developments regarding access to the EU workforce? Our independence depends on it.
Welfare Reform and Work Bill
Baroness Campbell of Surbiton Excerpts(8 years, 8 months ago)
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Baroness Campbell of Surbiton (CB)
My Lords, I echo my noble friend Lady Grey-Thompson’s deep regret at the Government’s rejection of my noble friend Lord Low’s amendments—amendments that were carried in this House with a considerable majority, twice. In my view, our arguments were pretty indisputable, especially with regard to the absence of evidence that cutting severely disabled people’s employment support allowance would incentivise them to work. I think that, deep down, we all know that it is attitudinal and environmental discrimination that prevents this group from accessing employment. This will be borne out very soon in the evidence of the forthcoming Select Committee report on the Equality Act and disability, which is to be launched at the end of this month.
Last week, when I listened to the Government’s arguments in the other place in the debate on the Lords amendments, I have to say that words failed me, particularly when Members were told to separate the “issue” from the more important principle of Commons primacy. I find it very difficult when the niceties of parliamentary protocol trump the lives of disabled people. However, we are where we are, and I have to salvage what I can to protect those who will undoubtedly struggle significantly to make ends meet as a result of such a severe cut to their weekly income.
The Minister has generously—and I mean that—acknowledged the deep anxiety that I and expert disability organisations feel about this policy. He has made great efforts to assure me and them that they will be fully involved in the preparation of the White Paper. He also underlined his commitment to detailing in the annual report on full employment progress towards halving the disability employment gap. He said, “No ifs, no buts. We will do it”. In good faith, I therefore withdrew my amendment on additional reporting on disability.
The Minister is asking us to have faith again today, but I hope and pray that we do not look back on this day as the moment when we pushed some of the most severely disabled people in Britain over the edge. I will try not to let that happen and I will do what I can to become involved in the White Paper and the reporting, but, this time, please will the Minister involve disabled people centrally throughout that process?
Lord Low of Dalston (CB)
My Lords, perhaps I might be permitted to say a word about the Commons rejection of my amendment. Despite the Minister’s best efforts to soften the impact of the £30 cut in the incomes of disabled people in the employment and support allowance WRAG, which I readily acknowledge, this is a black day for disabled people. The Commons has spoken decisively and we must bow to their wishes, but we do so under protest. Do not let anyone kid you that this is democracy in action. There is more to democracy than just being elected. Questions of representativeness, accessibility, openness and responsiveness all come into it as well. From these standpoints, this House, though unelected, is much more democratic. Organisations representing the needs of poor and dispossessed people find it much easier to get their point across and have it taken on board in the House of Lords than in the House of Commons, which is more politicised and subservient to the Whips—and the Whips were certainly working overtime last Wednesday night in the House of Commons, going round handing out bribes and blandishments like there was no tomorrow.
Last week, the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, took me to task for quoting selectively from the Commons debate on our amendments, but I did so because the debate ran largely one way. Last Wednesday, the Minister had a bit more support, but some telling points were still made against the Government. Commenting on the Commons reason for refusing our amendments— that is,
“Because it would alter the financial arrangements made by the Commons, and the Commons do not offer any further Reason, trusting that this Reason may be deemed sufficient”—
Neil Gray, MP for Airdrie and Shotts, said:
“So the Commons did not offer ‘any further Reason’, which I found shocking. The Government could not come up with anything else to say—no empirical evidence, no logical argument, nothing socially responsible or of any consequence. It relied on a pseudo-constitutional technicality to explain the decision to remove £30 a week from the pockets of sick and disabled people on ESA WRAG … What message does that send from this Government to ESA recipients? It says, ‘We don’t need to justify why we are cutting your ESA, we just are. We just can and we just will. We trust that this reason may be deemed sufficient’”.
Helen Goodman, MP for Bishop Auckland, said:
“The Minister said that she was going to spend another £100 million on supporting these people. If her scheme was going to work, she would not need to cut this £30 from such people’s weekly income, because she would get the savings as they all moved into work. This is doomed to fail and the Minister knows it. If she was convinced that it was going to work, she would do the impact assessment, because she would be confident of the upshot. She is not doing so, and she is ignoring the very real impact that this will have on the health of the most vulnerable of our fellow citizens”.
From the Conservative Benches, Stephen McPartland, MP for Stevenage, said:
“I genuinely think we would not have been in this position if the White Paper had been brought forward already and we were not having to take on faith something we are not really sure is going to happen, who the Ministers will be, who will be in charge of the money, and how we are going to move forward for these disabled people”.
With those words in mind, it is essential that the White Paper focuses on better back-to-work support for disabled people and better support for employers. Jo Cox, MP for Batley and Spen, said:
“If implemented, these cuts will surely also hinder the Government’s ambition to halve the disability employment gap. Instead, they will push many disabled people further into poverty and have a significant and harmful impact on the health and wellbeing of many people, including many in my constituency”.
Accordingly, I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, that the Government must monitor how these cuts affect disabled people, both in and out of work, and gather evidence as to the impact on disabled people’s physical and mental health and their finances as well as their ability to move towards work, as called for in your Lordships’ amendment.
A little later on, Jo Cox said that,
“it is time to listen to Macmillan, Scope, Sense and Parkinson’s UK, to the many experts who have lined up”,
to oppose the cuts to ESA. Stephen Timms said:
“The judgment that the House has to make … is whether”,
to listen to Ministers or to the organisations representing disabled people. Your Lordships have listened to disabled people, but the House of Commons, which ultimately determines how things play out, has preferred to listen to the Government, who have not been able to give any convincing reason for their decision to cut £30 a week from the incomes of 500,000 disabled people. As I said, it is a black day for those 500,000 disabled people—and for disabled people in general because this action is emblematic of the way in which this Conservative Government have chosen to treat disabled people. As Helen Goodman said:
“The fact is that Ministers are looking for large savings at the expense of the poorest and most vulnerable. That was not made clear in the general election campaign; then, the Prime Minister said that disabled people would be protected”.—[Official Report, Commons, 2/3/16; cols. 1052-58.]
By this action, the Government have betrayed the trust of disabled people and they should not be surprised if they forfeit it for the rest of their time in office.
Motability
Baroness Campbell of Surbiton Excerpts(8 years, 8 months ago)
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Baroness Campbell of Surbiton (CB)
My Lords, considering the numbers of PIP recipients who win on appeal, does the Minister agree that it would be much fairer to leave the Motability car with the person while they wait for the appeal decision to come through, especially if the car has had an expensive adaptation?
Baroness Altmann
My Lords, the time taken for appeals is being reduced. Certainly the first step is mandatory reconsideration, which in general takes place before the Motability car needs to be returned, as there is a seven-week period. However, the long-standing policy of the department is that if it is assessed that somebody is no longer entitled to a car, it must be removed pending appeal.
Welfare Reform and Work Bill
Baroness Campbell of Surbiton Excerpts(8 years, 8 months ago)
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Baroness Campbell of Surbiton (CB)
I support the amendments of my noble friend Lord Low. I, too, am extremely disappointed that the other place rejected the amendments passed by this House. Like my noble friend, I thank the Minister for his genuine attempts to find some concessions to alleviate the effect of the outcome of the cut. He generously met us, took great pains to explain how far he could go, and listened very hard to our concerns and worries that this may not be enough. However, I am afraid that the concessions—I studied them very hard over the weekend—do little to address the real reasons why the disability employment gap remains at a constant 30%.
I remind the House why disabled people placed in the work-related activity group of employment and support allowance receive £30 a week more than those on jobseeker’s allowance. This group of disabled people faces multiple costly barriers in finding work and in just living from day to day. First, they have to manage very severe conditions, whether complex, progressive conditions or long-term illnesses, which may or may not be associated with severe fluctuating pain. It is important to remember that when they are awarded ESA WRAG, they are judged to be unable to work. Almost 40% of them are not expected to improve for at least a year. The majority of this group also struggle with mental health challenges or learning disabilities, and that is just for starters.
The next barriers are the problems of getting to work and staying in work. You have a hostile built environment with inaccessible transport, offices and information systems. Then, when you are finally through the door, you face your biggest challenge ever—the attitude of employers. Trust me, it is comparable to doing an SAS assault course before you even get to do your day’s work. The concessions will do little to address these barriers that have nothing to do with sorting out the individual but have everything to do with sorting out society. This is borne out by the fact that almost 60% of people on JSA move off the benefit within six months, while almost 60% of disabled people in the WRAG need this support for nearly two years. Until now the ESA WRAG component has recognised that disabled people are seeking work for far longer than their non-disabled counterparts. If one looks at the Minister’s concessions, they are focused solely on supporting the individual. This is good but it is only a very small part of the problem. It ignores the major reasons behind disability unemployment, which are the countless external barriers. To suggest that this cut will incentivise disabled people to work is deeply flawed and, frankly, quite offensive.
The Government say that there is evidence of a correlation between employment rates and the level of disability benefit, but this is found only in countries where the level of disability benefit is significantly higher than in the UK. The think tank Reform produced a report last year citing Norway, where the equivalent benefit to the WRAG rate is 66% of the average wage; Sweden, where it is 80%; and France, where it is 50%. By contrast, the ESA WRAG rate is only 20% of the average wage. Believe me, this is not sufficient to provide a financial incentive to remain out of work. In addition, the OECD data show that, since the mid-1990s, in every country where there has been a reduction in the proportion of people receiving disability benefits, unemployment among disabled people has gone up.
Welfare Reform and Work Bill
Baroness Campbell of Surbiton Excerpts(8 years, 9 months ago)
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The Lord Bishop of St Albans
My Lords, as I said in Committee, if this reduction in benefits for the disabled is about incentivising work rather than simply cutting costs from the benefit budget, I support the Government’s intention. However, the way in which they are going about the task to cut ESA WRAG and its universal credit counterparts is misguided. Clearly, other noble Lords agree with that. For that reason, I am inclined to support the removal of Clauses 13 and 14.
A number of noble Lords have spoken about this stubborn disability employment gap—this sad indictment on a society that has perhaps for too long been willing to ignore the aspirations of the disabled to engage fully in society through work. Reference has already been made to the Government’s impact assessment, which found that 61% of those in the work-related activity group want the opportunity to earn a living. It is quite right that the Government have committed to halving the disability employment gap. The problem is that this is a complex issue. Some have a physical disability, others a mental disability. As the noble Baronesses, Lady Manzoor and Lady Meacher, said, people with chronic illnesses are also lumped into this group.
I declare an interest, in that my sister works for the motor neurone disease charity, which has met with me about this. It is deeply worried about this. This is a disease the progression of which is so rapid that many people would be way beyond any possibility of doing any work even before they get any sort of assessment. It is vital for people with this devastating diagnosis—many are young with children—to have all the support that they need immediately.
However, if this cut continues under the Government’s strategy, I fear that it will be a poor strategy. Indeed, I fully concur with the review into these clauses, published by the noble Lord, Lord Low, which found that,
“the Government’s impact assessment of the removal of the ESA WRAG component is lacking in depth and quality”.
It may be that the case for a cut in benefits will act as an incentive to encourage the fully able to find employment, but I have still to see the evidence that that will apply for the disabled. By removing nearly £1,500 from the future budgets of those who join ESA WRAG or those receiving universal credit limited capability for work, it seems that all the Government are likely to succeed in doing is push more disabled people into poverty, and, as others have said, probably destroy what little confidence and hope that they have as they want to get back into work. Those in this group are not in the same position as fully able JSA claimants and should not be treated as such; many are likely to remain in the WRAG for an extended period and their benefits situation must reflect this reality.
Like many noble Lords, I have met people who are disabled who are longing to get back to work. I do not believe that the basic problem is one of incentivising them. It really is a different problem—one of perception. I remember when I was an archdeacon many years ago and we made some major steps when legislation first came through to get ramps for every one of our churches. We looked at these problems and thought, “How on earth are we ever going to do it?”. Actually, there was a massive change of attitude, partly because we insisted that some of the people who argued against it got in wheelchairs and got themselves into churches. They discovered just how difficult it was. I have to confess that I had a change of perception; I had not got my mind around it.
I believe that we have an even bigger leap to take now. The vast majority of disabled people will need customised, individual help. That is part of the issue and the problem. What is needed is not so much carrot-and-stick incentives, but a wider strategy that helps disabled people to overcome the many challenges that they face in entering, or re-entering and staying in, the workplace. We need programmes and interventions designed to help these groups into employment, not arbitrary cuts to the living standards of some of the most vulnerable people in our society.
Baroness Campbell of Surbiton (CB)
My Lords, I also support the amendments in the name of my noble friend Lord Low and other noble Lords. I will concentrate on an aspect that I do not think has been fully recognised in the Chamber today.
It is important to remember that the cuts to ESA proposed in the Bill are happening not in isolation, but in a certain context. I respectfully disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, who said that we cannot let things remain the same. They are not remaining the same; I am afraid that they are getting worse. For example, I have spoken in the Chamber regularly about the desperate situation in social care, where disabled people are having their support drastically cut. This leaves them no alternative but to fund the shortfall personally or to go without and face the consequences. There are other areas of disabled people’s lives where the extra expense of living with a disability is rising year on year and month on month. My own annual bill comes to just over £12,000, which is checked and verified by my social services department—£12,000 a year. Please do not imagine that DLA or PIP covers this; it simply does not.
We know from the spending review last November that the Government plan to bring forward a new White Paper which is expected to announce further changes and reforms to ESA and benefits to disabled people, as well as to the WCA. Disabled people are fearful that the assault on their personal finances does not end with today’s proposals, and I think that they are right to be anxious. Today, the Minister will ask the House to decide whether to follow my noble friend Lord Low’s amendment on financial support for disabled people who have been assessed as unfit for work. In a few weeks’ time, the Minister will again announce plans to reform the whole system further in the White Paper. Today we are being asked to make decisions on proposals that will soon be impacted by further government changes. This is not joined-up government. It is not the joined-up approach that we have been promised by this Administration.
Frankly, disabled people are worn down by the relentless changes and cuts to their support arrangements and are right to be afraid of what is to come. Their personal finances are not in a good state. I speak for all of us, including some others here today—we should be afraid on their behalf and should support my noble friend Lord Low’s amendment today.
Welfare Reform and Work Bill
Baroness Campbell of Surbiton Excerpts(8 years, 9 months ago)
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“Disability employment gap: reporting obligation
(1) The Secretary of State must lay a report before Parliament annually on the progress which has been made towards meeting the commitment to halve the disability employment gap.
(2) The report under subsection (1) must set out—
(a) how the Secretary of State has interpreted “halving the disability employment gap”;(b) the factors that the Secretary of State has used to determine whether progress has been sufficient, including the extent and speed at which progress has been made; and(c) if progress under subsection (1) has been insufficient, what remedial steps will be taken.(3) The report under subsection (1) must contain data on—
(a) the overall rate of employment, and(b) the progress of the rate of employment of people at working age with—(i) a learning disability;(ii) autism;(iii) mental health problems;(iv) visual impairments; and(v) any other disability as the Secretary of State may by regulation specify on the grounds that the people with the disability are marginalised from the labour force and require a specific focus.”
Baroness Campbell of Surbiton (CB)
My Lords, I have returned today to ask the Government again to include this amendment in the Bill. It would impose a requirement to report annually on the progress made towards their manifesto commitment to halve the disability employment gap. If the Government do not have a disability-focused reporting methodology embedded in their strategy, there will be no robust way of analysing what exactly is preventing disabled people from working, and of putting it right.
Once again, the so-called disability unemployment problem will be passed around to some official or some department to resolve. I have seen this again and again throughout my career. We tinker at the edges, running pilots, employer awareness campaigns and support programmes with short-lived funding and we wonder why the figures remain abysmally low. Halving the employment gap is a very ambitious commitment, which has not been achieved by any Administration in my lifetime. It will take a well-informed, cross-government strategy that addresses the barriers specific to different impairment groups to understand what lies behind the barriers to work.
In response to my amendment in Committee the Minister said that,
“as progress against the disability employment gap commitment is a key factor of our overall commitment to full employment, these”,
reporting,
“amendments are not necessary, as that progress will be reported in the annual report on full employment”.—[Official Report, 14/12/15; col. 1941.]
I am afraid that I am not confident that generic annual reporting on full employment will receive the detailed attention that is necessary to understand the obstacles that have dogged disabled people since I began work in the 1980s. The employment rate for disabled people is currently 47.6%, while for non-disabled people it is 80.5%. That is a gap of over 30 percentage points, and it has remained at that level for over a decade. The Government need to radically think again and put a specific reporting obligation in the Bill. I know that departments will then give it higher priority, and everyone concerned will see that the Government’s commitment in their manifesto is genuine.
In Committee the Minister argued that setting up such a reporting mechanism is costly and will delay universal credit. None of us wants to see this, but I cannot believe that this would further delay its introduction. Reporting is not a difficult task. Indeed, it would help the Government to identify those who encounter the biggest barriers to work, ensuring better targeting of resources for support. It would also give far greater clarity on where the role of academics, disabled people, their charities and employers can help the Government to realise their very exciting commitment. No one sector and no one Government can expect to do it alone.
My experience of working with Governments on challenging initiatives is that they work when they have legislative priority, detailed analysis, appropriate piloting and good reporting mechanisms. The community care direct payment scheme was a prime example. The collaboration between government, social care professionals and disabled people and their organisations turned a culture of formal care dependency into one of independent living and civic participation. The establishment at that time had always maintained that disabled people could not operate their own care—a bit like the way people think that most disabled people cannot hold down a full-time job. Professionals at that time developed an expensive industry telling us how to live a passive life. It took a very bold Government—a Conservative Government—to turn this around. We can do this again with the employment gap—of that I am sure—but not without a whole-system change that is tracked and reported on regularly so that we can all scrutinise it.
Lord Freud
Yes. The Secretary of State for the DWP has no power to make referrals into the health system. That is just the way that these things are kept separate, and there is enormous sensitivity in the medical area about data and information flowing around the systems. In practical terms, that makes it impossible to join them up; it must be done in a much more subtle and clever way.
Baroness Campbell of Surbiton
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his reply to my amendment, which I shall come to in a moment. First, I thank the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans, the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, and of course my noble friend Lord Low for putting their names to my amendment and believing in some of the arguments that I put forward in Committee. I would also like to thank everyone else, but they are too numerous to mention. I am thrilled to get that amount of support for the amendment.
I am fully aware of the Minister’s and the Government’s good intentions towards helping disabled people gain fulfilling employment. They were and, I believe, still are very serious about wanting to halve the disability employment gap. I welcome that, but I remember thinking the day I heard it, “My God, that’s going to take some work!” and, “Goodness me, we are really going to have to understand what lies behind the lack of mobility and movement within the unemployment field as it concerns disabled people”. I am aware that it will be tough—it will be really tough.
I hear what the Minister says about committing to making sure that disability is properly scrutinised in the annual reporting system. He will probably even get them to give a dedicated chapter to disability, but I also know that this will not do what it needs to for disabled people in really beginning to address that 30% gap.
I have been involved in writing and being part of generic reporting many times in my life. I have often been asked to do the work on disability for general reporting on health and social care. One very clear example struck me when the Minister was speaking—from when the Disability Rights Commission and the reports written by it was amalgamated into the Equality and Human Rights Commission, a lovely generic body where we would all work together on addressing the barriers that everyone faces with getting into work, housing, and so on. I am currently sitting on the post-legislative scrutiny committee on disability to see how well it is doing under the Equality Act and the commission. I have to say that we are receiving overwhelming evidence that the generic approach is simply not working. Disabled people are complex creatures; we are all so different, and all our support is different. Understanding why we are not entering the employment market will take something else—something more than a chapter in a generic report. However committed the Minister is that it should reflect the situation, I am afraid that it will not. That is why I was very keen—and I am keen—that something more should be put forward to address this intractable problem, as unemployment among disabled people is probably one of the biggest.
I am very tempted to test the House, but I am not sure that it would work—and, if it did, I am sure it would be overturned. So I am looking to the Minister to go back to the Government and to departments other than the Department for Work and Pensions, which, frankly, will write the report. Who will collaborate with the department across government? Which departments will really throw their weight behind this? I am sceptical, because they have not done very well so far on other issues. I would like the Minister to go back to the Government and say, “Okay, this will be part of the generic report, but I want it to be a substantive part, and I want more than a generic report with a chapter on disability that tells us all the things that we already know”. For that reason, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Welfare Reform and Work Bill
Baroness Campbell of Surbiton Excerpts(8 years, 11 months ago)
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Baroness Campbell of Surbiton (CB)
My Lords, before I speak to Amendment 67 I apologise to the Minister for not being here at Second Reading. Unfortunately, it clashed with the hearing of the Select Committee on the Equality Act on disability provisions and I was very torn as where to go, so I ask him to forgive me for not being there at that time.
I am delighted that Amendment 67 has the support of the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, and my noble friends Lord Low of Dalston and Lady Hollins. Amendment 67 would require the Secretary of State to report each year on the Government’s progress in meeting their commitments to halving the disability employment gap. My amendment is designed to ensure that this commitment has the prominence it needs if it is to come to fruition.
I was delighted and honoured to receive many invitations last month to speak on the 20th anniversary of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995. One of the key objectives that drove our campaign at the time was to end discrimination faced by disabled people in the workplace. The Disability Discrimination Act made it unlawful to discriminate against disabled employees, which was a good start, but we all know that legislation alone cannot provide all the solutions—and it did not.
One need only glance at the statistics to see that disabled people are still facing significant challenges which prevent them pursuing interesting careers. At present, the employment rate for disabled people is 47.6%; for non-disabled people, it is 80.5%—a gap of over 30%, and it has been stuck at that level for more than a decade. The Government identified this gap as one of their election priorities and committed to halving it by the end of the term. That was a very bold commitment but one that I praised enormously.
The Minister for Disabled People in another place has put his weight behind the Disability Confident campaign to raise employers’ awareness of disabled people’s potential, in the hope that they will get the same opportunities as their non-disabled peers. It is a laudable aim but not quite as new as it purports to be. The Business Disability Forum has been promoting a similar campaign in great detail for years upon years. Nor is this a solution to the gap. It helps, of course, but it will not achieve the objective on its own. As many organisations working in the field have found, awareness-raising is important but it goes only so far—and not that far, I am afraid.
The disability employment gap illustrates the systemic and deep-seated inequality that disabled people in the workplace face. It is constantly there, whether the economy is booming or in recession. That is why the Government need to step up their oversight and target action where it is needed. It is not enough simply to count the employment numbers. It is the employment gap that needs to be measured in more detail. The Minister for Disabled People in the other place said that measuring progress towards full employment will include some—I repeat: some—reporting of the gap. That is of course welcome but, if change is to be driven across government, we need to have a proper reporting mechanism enshrined in law to incentivise all departments to scrutinise what goes on beyond the headline figure. Reporting against specific groups of disabled people will give the Government a greater understanding of how to tackle the complex reef of barriers to work. These are deeply ingrained at every stage of the path to employment, including further and higher education and apprenticeships, which I shall come to later.
Support for disabled people in other areas is crucial to their ability to work. It also needs factoring in when addressing the employment gap, as I shall briefly illustrate. In a recent research study carried out by the charity Scope, 79% of disabled users of social care said that support services are vital to help them to work, seek work, volunteer and study. The research further showed that fewer than half of disabled people now receive the support they need to live independently and access jobs.
Inadequate support for independent living is another massive barrier to the employment of disabled people. Without assistance to get out of bed, wash, dress, have breakfast and leave the house, it is nigh-on impossible to find and retain a job. The lack of work income has an impact on the independence of disabled people, and in the end creates a vicious circle. Therefore, reporting on the gap would help the Government to get a more accurate picture of what is behind these figures. It would enable them to plan a well-co-ordinated cross-departmental response to the long-term chronic unemployment cycle in which disabled people are caught.
In the recent spending review it was announced that more than £115 million would be invested in the joint health and work unit. A requirement to report annually to departments on progress towards halving the disability employment gap, in the detail set out in my amendment, would support the unit and provide a cross-departmental employment focus.
I look forward to the Minister’s response to my amendment. I hope he will appreciate that it is an enabling amendment that is intended to be helpful and to ensure that the Government continue to support disabled people in playing an active role in our country’s growing economy. It is time to move on from awareness raising.
Baroness Doocey (LD)
My Lords, I rise to support Amendment 67 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell of Surbiton, and in particular to support the right of disabled people to access employment. As the noble Baroness has just said, it is quite shameful that almost half the working age population of disabled people is without a job.
The Bill includes little detail on how the Government plan to halve the disability employment gap. Perhaps the Minister could kindly tell the House what practical and measurable steps they are taking to achieve the target and how they plan to involve disabled people themselves in formulating the plans.
Disabled people clearly know from personal experience the barriers they face to finding and staying in work; despite the best intentions of successive Governments, disabled people face major discrimination when trying to get work. Employer attitudes are a particular problem, not because employers do not care but because they often see disabled people as “risky hires”.
One of my friends, who has an excellent degree, exceptional IT skills and is very personable, has spent 10 years trying to get work without success. The fact that he is blind has been a major problem, largely because employers have absolutely no idea what specialist equipment is available that would allow him to play a full part in the workplace. He tells stories of explaining to employers that he can type because there is a special programme. It is not that employers do not care; they do not know. It is therefore essential to find ways to educate employers about the specialist employment support that is available to disabled people. Although I am sure that the large employers understand what systems are available, I have spoken to about 50 SMEs and the vast majority have little or no idea of how disabled people operate and the huge contribution they could make to their business.
In the latest spending review the Government announced plans for a new work and health programme to provide specialist support for claimants with health conditions or disabilities and those who have been unemployed for more than two years. Can the Minister confirm that the programme will be similar to the Work Choice model and say whether it will respond directly to the specific barriers to work that disabled people experience?
Access to Work is a vital scheme that enables many disabled people to stay and progress in work. The Government also announced in the spending review a real-terms increase in spending on Access to Work. This is extremely welcome, but it can only make a difference if employers and disabled people know that it exists. This is not the case all the time. The investment also comes with a great opportunity to improve Access to Work itself. Will the Minister, for example, consider an approach which delivers Access to Work through a single personal budget for employment support that is available both before and during employment? Disabled people tell me that this could make a huge difference, because it would guarantee prospective employers that any adjustments a disabled person needed would follow the person and would already be in place. It would take away the concern that they would not be able to provide what was needed.
If reporting requirements are included in the Bill, it will provide a departmental and cross-government focus on these laudable goals and ensure that achieving them is embedded in the organisational culture. It will also ensure that successive Governments remain committed to delivering the changes in policy, practice and, more particularly, public attitudes that mean that disabled people can find the employment they want and so desperately need.
Lord Young of Norwood Green (Lab)
My Lords, given the time, I shall endeavour to be succinct and to the point. Nevertheless, Amendment 68 is important as it seeks to ensure that we receive a proper report from the Government on the various aspects of apprenticeships defined in it. I shall speak also to the other two amendments in the group.
The Government have set themselves an ambitious target of 3 million apprenticeships during the life of this Parliament. The challenge will be to ensure that they sustain quality as well as quantity. A recent report by Ofsted said that the expansion of apprenticeships has been a disaster, with too many poor-quality programmes that fail to give young people new skills or better chances of a job. The Chief Inspector of Schools, Sir Michael Wilshaw, accuses some employers of wasting public funds on low-quality schemes that undermine the value of apprenticeships. Indeed, a recent Channel 4 episode of “Dispatches” revealed exploitation of apprentices working for the retailer Next.
Poor-quality apprenticeships were particularly prevalent in retail, healthcare, customer service and administration according to the highly critical report from Ofsted. About 140,000 people started apprenticeships in business administration last year and 130,000 began healthcare apprenticeships. Standards were much higher in the motor vehicle, construction and engineering industries, where numbers were much smaller. So far, apprenticeships have not trained enough people for sectors with skills shortages, smaller businesses are not being involved and not enough advanced schemes leading to higher skills and wages are being created. Widespread concern has been expressed by business about the introduction and application of the proposed new training levy.
Amendment 68A, tabled by my noble friend Lady Nye, seeks to ensure accurate reporting of information in the areas of disability, gender and so on. It also contains an important point about the destination data for those completing apprenticeships.
Amendment 69 again draws to our attention the worrying situation for disabled people under the age of 25 seeking apprenticeships. We know that apprenticeships provide an excellent route into work for young people, including disabled people. However, too often apprenticeships are inaccessible to disabled people. The proportion of disabled apprenticeships has declined from 11.5% in 2007-08 to 8.7% in 2014-15. During the passage of the Bill, we would like to see further commitments from the Government to support more disabled people to participate in apprenticeships. This is why I welcome Amendment 69.
I have a few questions for the Minister which I am sure she will enjoy. What steps is she taking to ensure the quality of apprenticeships and to prevent the exploitation of young people, recognising the damage this can cause to the reputation of apprenticeships, and the waste of public funds? What steps are the Government taking to ensure that all schools give career advice on apprenticeships, bearing in mind the need to encourage young women, black and ethnic minority groups and disabled people to recognise the advantages of apprenticeships as a career option? Bearing in mind that only 5% of youngsters aged 16 currently go into an apprenticeship scheme, how will she ensure that young people are made aware of their right to receive proper training and education in a safe working environment?
What steps are the Government taking to expand the participation of small and medium-sized enterprises in apprenticeship schemes, given that only some 25% of them currently take on apprentices? Do the Government plan to expand the use of group training associations and ATAs? What will be the nature of and timetable for the introduction of the new training levy, which I presume will be accompanied by a statutory instrument and an impact assessment? I would be grateful if the Minister confirmed that. Finally, can the Minister comment on the future of UKCES, the United Kingdom skills body? I beg to move.
Baroness Campbell of Surbiton
My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 69, tabled in my name, and to which I am delighted to see that my noble friends Lord Addington, Lord Low of Dalston and Lady Grey-Thompson have added their names in support. I also support Amendment 68, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Young, and Amendment 68A, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Nye.
My amendment is intended to address the particular barriers faced by disabled people wishing to enter apprenticeships. It places a duty on the Secretary of State to lay before Parliament a report on the number of disabled people aged under 25 who are seeking apprenticeships in order to identify the barriers that prevent successful take-up. The amendment also requires the report to set out examples of good practice by employees and apprenticeship providers that remove such barriers.
I welcome the Government’s commitment to create 3 million apprenticeship opportunities over this Parliament. Apprenticeships provide an excellent opportunity for disabled students wanting to engage in vocational education alongside their non-disabled peers. For many disabled people, it will be the first time they experience mainstream employment and education. Apprenticeships introduce disabled people to the world of work in a supportive learning environment, which is much needed by young people who are facing additional barriers to entering the world of work. In addition, apprenticeships are crucial to the Government’s commitment to halving the disability employment gap—a central plank of their incredibly ambitious aim to cut the welfare budget.
In 2014, Disability Rights UK with the support of Barclays published a guide called Into Apprenticeships. It demonstrated through case studies that apprenticeships provide opportunities for young disabled people to secure training for employment. Such schemes also help employers to become “disability confident”. Noble Lords will recognise that this is also the name of a current campaign being supported by the Minister for Disabled People in another place to encourage employers to remove those disabling barriers. This will boost employment outcomes for disabled people. However, as I said when speaking to my previous amendment, I am sure that the Minister appreciates that awareness and education alone will not shrink the significant employment gap between disabled and non-disabled people. There must also be regular reviews of progress. Existing barriers that prevent disabled people from accessing apprenticeship opportunities must be removed. This is echoed by the Equality and Human Rights Commission in its recent report, Is Britain Fairer?
The requirement for non-specific industry qualifications to access apprenticeships is one of the greatest barriers. In Peter Little’s 2012 report, Creating an Inclusive Apprenticeship Offer, he says: “Apprentices with LDD”—learning difficulties and disabilities—
“are often disadvantaged due to the fact”,
that functional and GCSE,
“qualifications are assessed out of context. Thus an Apprentice working to the vocabulary and numeracy associated with a particular job may find it difficult to relate to a completely different set of language and numbers presented during assessment”.
There is substantive evidence that significant numbers of disabled people, especially people with learning disabilities, are prevented from gaining an apprenticeship certificate because they have not got GCSE maths and English. These requirements could so easily be replaced by the successful completion of work-related requirements such as the relevant industry-accepted vocational qualifications. The National Voice for Lifelong Learning, which has been working with the Government on apprenticeship placements, has said:
“Some learners are more than capable of achieving the competence and knowledge based elements of an apprenticeship but, due to their learning difficulty are unable to achieve English and maths at the required standard. Until there is a relaxing of this rule disabled learners will continue to be disadvantaged in work and training”.
Disabled People: Independent Living
Baroness Campbell of Surbiton Excerpts(8 years, 11 months ago)
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Baroness Campbell of Surbiton
To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they are monitoring how local authorities disburse money previously disbursed from the Independent Living Fund to enable disabled people to live as independently as they were before the closure of that fund.
The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Baroness Altmann) (Con)
My Lords, the Government are conducting research on the impact of the closure of the Independent Living Fund based on interviews with a sample of former users. They are also conducting research on the implementation of the Care Act 2014, which made the Independent Living Fund’s main features—personalisation, choice and control—part of the mainstream social care system.
Baroness Campbell of Surbiton (CB)
I thank the Minister for her reply. Is she aware that two independent research reports, carried out by In Control and Scope, have been published in the past month? Both found that more than half of disabled people using social care can no longer get the support they need to live independently. Now that the Independent Living Fund has been transferred to the wider social care system, will the Government commit, in the spending review, to invest in social care that will directly ensure that disabled people’s independent living support continues in the future? It would be a travesty if it returns to 1980s provision.
Baroness Altmann
The Government are committed to ensuring that people who require care and support have choice and control over their lives, and they are aware that independent living is often vital to the well-being of those we are trying to assist. That is why the Government added the extra chapter to the Care Act guidance before closing the Independent Living Fund. We will be monitoring the situation, and local authorities now have a statutory duty to ensure minimum standards.
Personal Independence Payment
Baroness Campbell of Surbiton Excerpts(9 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Freud
The judge found significant shortfalls in the introduction, as the noble Baroness said, and we agreed at the time that that was simply unacceptable. Noble Lords will probably remember that at the peak of the backlogs we were looking at waiting times of 30 weeks. That was in June; we set a target of less than 16 weeks, and we have now gone down to seven. On that basis we are confident about the full rollout, although we will and are doing it on a safe and controlled basis.
Baroness Campbell of Surbiton (CB)
My Lords, during the general election campaign the Prime Minister stated his desire to “enhance” and “safeguard” PIP. Will the Minister say how the Government plan to fulfil that election promise to disabled people and reassure them that their payments will be protected in the Chancellor’s up-and-coming Budget?
Lord Freud
To clarify matters, I said that this Government would support disabled and vulnerable people through this process.
Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)
My Lords, the Minister will recall that, during the debates on personal independence payments, warnings were expressed from all sides of your Lordships’ House about the dangers of rolling out this programme too rapidly, with some people possibly left exposed. He has told the House how long the average waiting time will be. Can he now tell the House the average amount of money involved for disabled people who have not received the funds that they are entitled to? What emergency provision is made for people who are, after all, some of the most vulnerable in our midst?