Autism Employment Review

Debate between Baroness Sherlock and Lord Sterling of Plaistow

Monday 12th May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that question and commend him for his work in this area. The Buckland Review reported to the previous Government, who did not formally respond, but most of the review’s recommendations were to employers. Several recommendations relating to government are being progressed, including working with employers to reform Disability Confident.

I think my honourable friend the Minister for Employment was signalling that this Government have broadened their focus to address employment barriers for all neurodivergent people, specifically including those with autism, while recognising that many people have more than one condition. Our academic panel is reviewing the evidence, recommendations and insights from the Buckland Review, so that they do not get lost. I understand the fear that my noble friend is expressing, but it might reassure him to know that the panel specifically includes expertise on autism. Although this Government will not respond specifically to the previous Government’s report, the Minister for Employment, Alison McGovern, alongside the Minister for Social Security and Disability, met Sir Robert Buckland to discuss his work. Professor Amanda Kirby, chair of the academic panel, recently met Sir Robert to discuss its scope and plans, and he was supportive of the way that the panel would build on the work he initiated. I hope that reassures my noble friend.

[Lord Sterling of Plaistow (Con)]

My Lords, first, I have an autistic grandson. He is at a very difficult period of life. I know from old that the Minister has a deep feeling for and understanding of the problems of it. The noble Lord, Lord Touhig, and I have worked together for many years and there are two things I want to make quite clear. First, autism is not a “neurodisease”, autism is autism. Secondly, from my own experience, autistic people have the most brilliant minds when they have the opportunity to be cared for correctly. Will the Minister, as usual, throw everything behind what is needed to help autistic youngsters?

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord. His grandson has a good champion in him, and I hope he can understand that. The noble Lord makes a really important point. The employment rate for people with autism was 31%. If you compare that with disabled people across the board at 55%, it is not good. That shows the extent of the problem. We recognise that this is extremely serious. Nothing in the way this Government are going about this is trying in any way to minimise the challenges faced by people with autism.

I take the noble Lord’s point: autism is not a disease, but it is a different way of learning and looking. That is true of many neurodivergent conditions, and there are things that can be learned. We have pulled together a panel with different kinds of expertise, not to create some generalised view on what it feels like to not think in the way that some other people think but to enable us to look at all the evidence and work with employers to try to make a better place for everybody to go out there and work. I hope the noble Lord will be reassured by that.

“Get Britain Working” White Paper

Debate between Baroness Sherlock and Lord Sterling of Plaistow

Wednesday 27th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

I never like to say that something is outside my range but sometimes it really is. The Government have a very clear strategy on green energy and building green jobs, and on building pathways to secure British energy. The creation of Great British Energy and the strategies around it will all make a difference. I am afraid that is the limit of my knowledge.

[Lord Sterling of Plaistow (Con)]

My Lords, not that many years ago, I had the pleasure of being chairman of the National Maritime Museum and got to know that area very well—it had a lot of unemployment. One day I was introduced to somebody who came along to the museum who was fourth generation on the dole. He said that it was not worth his while, considering the size of his house, to consider a job unless it paid somewhere near £48,000. I bring it up because everybody here, I would suggest, was born with a work ethic and was proud to get a job, but so many people now find all the ways possible to avoid doing so. I know how much this means to the Minister and my question is: how are we going to get people off the dole? There are millions of people who should not be on it at all.

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

This is such a hard one. I have no doubt that there are some people out there who really do not want to work and cannot be bothered. They would not get £48,000 in benefits—they would not be able to—but I am sure there are such people out there. However, I have been around this game a long time and my experience is that most people do want to work; there are just huge problems and the figures back that up. We do not have a massive unemployment problem; we have a massive inactivity problem. We have a physical health problem, a mental health problem and a crisis of sickness, disability and an ageing population.

The challenge of years gone by may have been to make sure that everybody wanted to work. The challenge of today’s economy is to make sure that everybody is able to work, and that they are able to get the job they need to help transform our economy. If we do not do that, businesses cannot fill vacancies, the economy cannot grow and nothing can happen. We are going to do it.

Autism Employment: Buckland Review

Debate between Baroness Sherlock and Lord Sterling of Plaistow

Tuesday 10th September 2024 Lords Chamber

[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.