Improving Lives: Work, Health and Disability Green Paper

Debate between Lord Beamish and Damian Green

Monday 31st October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Damian Green]

Very many—I have spoken to a number of private sector employers who are leading the way in providing the equipment needed. But what happens in the public sector is to some extent more under the Government’s control, so I hope that by the end of this year every Whitehall Department will be signed up as a Disability Confident employer and that in the course of 2017 the rest of the public sector will have followed. The public sector is a very large-scale employer so that will be very helpful.

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

I broadly welcome the thrust of the Green Paper, but I suggest that there are two things the Secretary of State could do for people with mental health conditions now. One is to ensure that assessors undertaking work capability tests are properly qualified. Secondly, can we stop the small number of people with long-term, enduring mental health conditions, who are never going to work, going round this merry-go-round, which is not good for them or for the taxpayer?

[Damian Green]

I am grateful for the expertise the hon. Gentleman brings to this. I will take both his points on board. In fact, on his second point, he may have seen that I have already announced that we are going to stop retesting those with a condition that already means that they cannot work and that will only stay the same or get worse. That seems to me a piece of pointless and fundamentally heartless bureaucracy that we can happily get rid of.