Unemployment: Disabled People

Debate between Baroness Stroud and Lord Freud

Thursday 20th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

The way we are now addressing this will effectively encompass what the noble Lord is asking for. We are preparing to launch a work and health Green Paper and there will be a lot of work following it. We will need to work with the sector, the health system and employers to make sure that we have something that really starts to achieve our aims.

[Baroness Stroud (Con)]

My Lords, one in six people who develop a disability while they are in work lose their employment within a year. Can the Minister explain to the House the structural changes he is making to universal credit in order to keep disabled people close to the workplace, particularly disabled people with fluctuating conditions, and to support employers?

[Lord Freud]

The fundamental change in the new benefit structure—a single benefit in the form of universal credit—allows people to stay in their benefit while they have varying amounts of work. Some of the main beneficiaries will be disabled people, many of whom do have fluctuating conditions. Today, they are frightened of going into work if they are having a few good months, because they could lose their entire package. At the moment, there are silo packages and a person can be labelled and told, “You are in this disability package; you cannot go into work”. Under UC, you can move up and down the taper depending on how you are doing, which is one reason why I was able to relax the permitted work rules when we went through the Welfare Reform and Work Bill. With universal credit, we no longer have to patrol so tightly the legacy system.