Autism Employment: Buckland Review

Baroness Sherlock Excerpts

Tuesday 10th September 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Touhig]

To ask His Majesty’s Government whether they intend to continue the work programme set out in the Buckland Review of Autism Employment.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Baroness Sherlock) (Lab)]

My Lords, we believe everyone should have an equal opportunity to work. In Labour’s Plan to Make Work Pay, we committed to raising awareness of neurodiversity in the workplace. The Buckland review was independently led and explored the specific barriers that people with autism face when seeking employment and remaining in work, and it made some helpful recommendations to remove those barriers. We are exploring how to expand this to meet our commitment to provide the right support for all neurodiverse people to enter, remain in or return to employment.

[Lord Touhig (Lab)]

My Lords, just three in 10 autistic people are in employment. A report for Autistica found that doubling the employment rate of autistic people could boost the economy by £1.5 billion. I am sure that my right honourable friend the Prime Minister, whose key mission is to kick-start economic growth, would welcome that. The Buckland report showed us a way forward, but recruitment of the task force to put forward the recommendations of the report was put on hold when the general election was called. Can the Government confirm that they will now go ahead and commence the recruitment?

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, my noble friend is absolutely right about the shockingly low level of employment of autistic people. It is shocking to find that only about 35% of autistic employees feel able to be really open in work about being autistic—how can they develop, and how can the employers learn? We very much welcome the report from Sir Robert Buckland. The process had begun, in the sense that informal expressions of interest had been made about the task force, but the process was stopped by the general election. Ministers are meeting with Sir Robert Buckland next month to discuss the report’s recommendations and to look at expanding the scope to cover neurodiversity in general and not just autism. Recruitment for the task force is paused for the moment, but my department is working with colleagues across government to look at each of the recommendations under the five themes and to find ways in which we can apply that learning to neurodiversity in general.

[Lord Wigley (PC)]

My Lords, I pay tribute to the work that Sir Robert Buckland has undertaken in this sphere over many years. Can the Minister give any indication of how long the Government are likely to take to come to some positive conclusions regarding the report?

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, obviously, having only just come into government, we have only just begun to look at this, but there are things in the report that the department was already doing that we can therefore develop. For example, the review pointed to the need to develop a digital service we have that is aimed at employers and supports employee health and disability. We are looking at other ways to make that more visible and easier to reach, because employers often want to engage people but need help in understanding the barriers so they can work out how to get better at this. We can start learning from that already, but we will move on to this as fast as we can.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, what are the Government doing about passporting when those identified in the education sector and training go into employment? If you have to reapply for support and help at any point, that puts on a further brake and, as this is not generally handled easily and quickly, it means the employer has extra costs. What are the Government doing in practical terms to address this? I remind the House of my declared interests.

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, I confess that I have learned a lot about this in the last week. There is a huge range of schemes and support out there. For example, DWP has specialist coaches—people who can support our work coaches and work with people with autism who want to move into jobs or develop them. We have schemes of all kinds, such as internship schemes for young people with autism and other disabilities. We have ways of working directly with people and supporting them. We have schemes with employers, and there is Access to Work, through which people can apply for support directly. DWP is trying to make all the work we do as tailored as possible to individuals, so that we can give people the support they need to get them into a job, keep it, progress in it and stay there.

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

My Lords, the previous Government saw it as a vital priority, on the back of the key recommendation from the Buckland review, to work with employers to encourage more employment of autistic people, which has been mentioned. How will the Government’s recent decision to change the PIP and WCA assessments under the new Health Assessment Advisory Service affect such progress, particularly as the Minister’s letter of 6 September states that there will be “an impact on service levels”?

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, as I took over as Minister from the noble Viscount, I am sure that he is quite aware of the contracting issues that led to the decisions that were made in the department.

Probably the single most important thing when dealing with somebody with autism or another disability coming forward is that the person who assesses the health condition is properly trained and has the resources needed to make an appropriate assessment. As of yesterday, we have brought the educational material for all our healthcare assessors in-house, so that we can control the quality, make sure we train people well and support them well, so that when they are making these important decisions about whether someone is entitled to support or not, they are able to understand what they are hearing, and the person can come forward and get the best possible support at the next stage. We are committed to supporting disabled people of all kinds into work, and we will make that a reality.

[Baroness Bull (CB)]

My Lords, I appreciate that I may be expanding the Question into the remit of her noble friend sat alongside her. Work experience is a vital window into the world of work for people with learning disabilities and autism, yet I am not sure we can be convinced that young people with such disabilities have the same experience of work through work experience programmes. What will this Government do to help employers provide work experience placements and to encourage them to offer this opportunity to all children, regardless of neurodiverse conditions?

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, I confess that I do not have the details about what is being done about work experience, but we are developing the availability of supported employment, including for autistic people and those with other neurodivergent conditions, and across other disabilities. We are trying to tackle the problem of hidden worklessness. The idea is that we will start progressing towards the goal of a more collaborative, locally led approach to help people into work. Once it is fully rolled out, the aim is to support up to 100,000 disabled people, including people with health conditions and quite complex barriers. Eligible and suitable participants will get one-to-one support for up to 12 months, which will help them identify what they want to do, find a job that might be suitable, and get wraparound support. If we can get this right first time, we can support people to stay in work for a long time. That is a real benefit to the individual, and to the employer. I am hopeful that we can improve in this area over the months ahead.

[Lord Sterling of Plaistow (Con)]

My Lords, over many years I and many others have said that when people are being trained to teach, we also need them to be trained to know what a meltdown is about and how to handle it. There are still not enough people who truly understand SEND and what really happens. I am more than interested in this because I have a grandson who is autistic, and I have followed this through many times. We need at least 2,000 educational psychologists to identify people at an early enough stage that they have an opportunity to put something back into society. The whole thing must be sped up. I know many people who are disabled—through Motability, which I co-founded many years ago—who would be delighted to be able to put something back into society after having been helped for so many years.

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord for that question, and I pay tribute to his many years of work with Motability, a scheme which has helped many people. He makes an important point. I sometimes think that our system has had trouble, in that what looks like bad behaviour is in fact something quite different. One of the challenges for public sector professionals in all areas is to get the kind of training to understand what they see in front of them. If we do not have the experience or understanding, it is not unreasonable to misinterpret a pattern of behaviour we see. That is why DWP has put so much effort into trying to improve and develop the training. In any organisation, if we take the time to ask, we will find that many of our staff have relevant experience to bring and to share with their colleagues. I have no doubt that similar work is being done elsewhere. I know that my colleagues at the Department for Education are looking carefully at how the Government can better support SEND and children who are in that position.

I thank the noble Lord for that question—it is an important opportunity to highlight something about which there is too much misunderstanding. Many of the conditions we have talked about today are highly stigmatised. It is hard enough for people to deal with the consequences of a complex condition, without a total failure of the society around them to understand it.

[Lord Laming (CB)]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that the transition from school to employment is critical in the lives of many of these young people; that there are some outstanding examples of how that transition is being managed, but, unfortunately, they are few in number; and that the real challenge is to make sure that what is exceptional becomes general across the whole country?

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[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, it is typical of the extent of the noble Lord’s strategic experience that he puts his finger on the question: how do we take best practice and turn it into something the entire system can learn from? We have some really good practice out there. For example, I know that autistic young people on their transition to employment can benefit specifically from supported internships, which are aimed at young people with a learning disability or autism who have an education, health and care plan. One of the things we could do is look at what works from that and how we can learn from it, and transfer it not just to other young people with autism but to a broader category of disabled young people trying to make those transitions. I thank the noble Lord for that very wise suggestion.