Disabled People: Employment

Lord Addington Excerpts

Monday 21st March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, the Remploy business plan was designed by Remploy management. It has failed to achieve its targets because, in retrospect, it was wildly overambitious to expect that public procurement could go up by 130 per cent. The cost of subsidising a disabled person in a Remploy job has now reached £23,000 a year, compared with the success of Remploy employment services in putting a person into an independent job for a one-off cost of £3,400.

[Lord Addington]

My Lords, will my noble friend expand on the work of Remploy employment services? Getting people with disabilities into jobs in the mainstream is surely the way forward. What guarantee is there of support for such schemes, which are in line with what most of us have been working towards for a long time.

[Lord Freud]

Yes, my Lords, the success of Remploy’s employment services is little less than extraordinary. It has now put some 24,000 people into jobs. In 2009-10 there were more than 10,000 people. It looks to get about 18,000 people into jobs this year and its target for 2012-13 is 30,000.