Committee on the Equality Act 2010 and Disability Report

Lord Addington Excerpts

Tuesday 6th September 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, as somebody who did not serve on the committee, I think that this debate has been an incredibly interesting look at its work. Indeed, the quality of the speeches takes away some of my irritation at not having managed to get on to the committee. However, even a committee doing this much work could not cover everything in the field of disability. I say that and make the first of my declarations of interest: I am a dyslexic and president of the British Dyslexia Association. Reading through the report, I discovered that there is more than one BDA involved in the disability field, as there is also the British Deaf Association—dyslexics are very bad with acronyms.

A series of themes come out of the report. The big theme is that you have got the law—implement it. Drive it forward. I am a veteran of the DDA. However, before we celebrate it too much, we should remember the pain of its birth. The noble Baroness, Lady Campbell, was outside the building and I was inside at the time of its birth, and it was a painful and prolonged labour. It was dragged out of a Government who did not want it, largely through the actions of their own Back-Benchers, and so the Conservative Party, if not that Government, can feel a degree of pride about that. The general theme was that it would destroy business—that it would be the biggest burden on us that we have ever had. When in doubt, people go back to that place and, to an extent, all parties and Governments have done so. Even in the internal structures of my own party I have at times bumped into people asking, “How do we do this?”. Let us take that as a position backed by history.

The noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, described the football premiership as an organisation awash with cash which is finding excuses not to do something that is morally acceptable and has the will of Parliament behind it. If it is not doing it, should we not at least allow the capacity we have for action to take place? If the Government are not prepared to sanction such action, they should allow someone else to. They should get out there and do something.

The last but one noble Lord who spoke—I am sorry, I am dyslexic and have difficulty with the pronunciation of names—got it right: unless you drive people towards the required conclusion, either with a carrot or a stick, they are not going to go. I declare an interest as chairman of Microlink, a company which helps find solutions for businesses to get the benefit of employing disabled people. I agree with the noble Lord that the Government have to both tell people what the solutions are and drive them towards them. It is interesting that the biggest companies with the biggest names and biggest responsibilities tend to be better at doing this. Our biggest clients are Lloyds and Ernst & Young, with which we have a long-standing relationship.

Companies which employ disabled people and support them correctly get a benefit—an employee who takes less time off sick, which kicks the stereotype firmly in whatever tender part of its body you choose. It is proven. The Business Disability Forum has done work on this. The employee tends to be loyal and does not change jobs. However, you have to take the action. We are one model of how to do this. I will conclude my commercial there.

The problem is that this committee has done what virtually all committees on disability do—it has gone to what I refer to as reverse battlefield medicine; it has gone to the worst and most obvious situations first. On the battlefield you patch up those who can get out of there quickly first to get a good conclusion.

When businesses are dealing with those who are disabled, they are dealing with people with degenerative or undisclosed conditions. Unless a firm has a reason to support them, the stick, and knows that something can be done to get a good return, the carrot, it will have a problem. The person becomes unproductive and is more likely to take time off sick. They are more likely to develop mental health problems because stress leads to them. That person is being placed into an enormously stressful situation.

Perhaps the great idea in this is talking about it, but no—companies have to be told that the solutions are out there and that they should look at them. The major offenders are small and medium-sized businesses because they are under pressure in terms of resources and they do not take proactive action. Unless someone says to them, “Here it is, come and get it”—I cannot think of a better body to do this than the commission, unless we are going to set up something else, which in the current political situation is highly unlikely—we will miss the opportunity and the dissemination of good practice will slow down. It will happen when people come upon it by accident or are forced to take action through individual law suits. That is not a good way forward; rather, it is taking tiny baby steps and occasionally going backwards. Will the Government take an aggressive approach towards showing the benefits of employing disabled people by giving them the correct support?

We have a wonderful scheme called Access to Work, which has been described as one of the best-kept secrets in the entire system. It helps some 35,000 people a year. More than 5 million people of working age in this country are disabled. The waste that is intrinsic in that figure is incredible. Although we do need that stick, it is also an admission of failure. We have had legislation for more than 20 years and we still do not have a pattern of reflex behaviour that says, “Let’s deal with it”. It is still something that leads to periodic bouts of fear every time something comes up and people realise that no one is enforcing the changes needed. Unless we put together the two operations, we are going to have problems.

I want to emphasise the fact that many of the problems we are talking about, particularly in those with developmental difficulties and so on, are usually fairly minor and cheap to deal with. If someone has a back problem as the result of a degenerative condition through an old sports injury or simply because of wear and tear, they can be given a supportive chair. If the process is made easy and quick, the person can continue to function. If someone who is mildly dyslexic is promoted into a job where they are under stress, simply give them the assistive technology that we have been using in the Disabled Students Association for 15 years. It costs a couple of hundred pounds, including the training in how to use it because it is now so easy to use, and you can say, “There you are”. Unless people are told about these solutions correctly and aggressively, nothing will happen. Holding little forums and so on will not make it happen. We have to educate in an assertive manner.

It is said that talking and persuasion are better. That does not mean just saying that there is the odd little scheme here that you will find if you look for it hard enough and giving out another pamphlet. More has to be done. We want to get more of those 5 million working-age people with disabilities into jobs but, unless we get on with these activities, it will not happen. We know also that unless there is an enforcement procedure which states that action will be taken, even if it is not used most of the time, people will not go and look for it. That is because we are all busy and have pressures put on us. We know that we are terribly busy and cannot do anything more. Who here willingly does something that they do not have to most of the time? There will be around two virtuous souls in the place but the rest of us have to look at our shoes in shame. That is the situation we are in.

When we consider the selfish gene of our society, I want to comment on what has already been said about transport issues. The right idea is that you will enhance your service and make it run more smoothly if a bus or a train tells the passengers when it has arrived at a station and displays a sign saying that they have arrived. Anything else is utter idiocy. How often has a perfectly able-bodied person using a route for the first time or simply reading their book been saved by such an announcement? These aids help the whole system. In the same way, if transport is wheelchair accessible, it helps the person who walks with a slight limp and uses a stick. An example that goes against it can probably be found, but usually that is the case. It also helps if you are moving something, or if you have the aforementioned baby buggy or the case on wheels—the thing that tends to trip you up when you are not expecting it at any major station. All these things are helpful to you if you bring them inside. Unless the Government take an active approach of saying, “This is beneficial, we will do it and we will encourage you to do it”, they will miss a trick—they will miss the stick and the carrot. We currently have a rather pathetic, weedy stick and a carrot that is hidden in a cupboard somewhere. We do not bring them together or co-ordinate. Unless we are prepared to do so, the benefits that would be available to us with very little effort at the moment will be missed.

To try to bring my comments together, the last thing I will say is that we have to look at this in the round, because when we look at this subject it expands into everything else. Indeed, the next commissioner will say, “Is it possible to remove disability matters from the rest of society?”. It is not, because the two are too interlinked. We here have to start pointing out to the rest of society that it will benefit by taking this appropriate action. If we make people with disabilities more economically active and more socially included, we will save ourselves hassle and trouble. Let us encourage the selfish gene to go on here, but let us not pretend that it will happen without aggressive action.