Unemployment: People with Autism
Lord Hope of Craighead Excerpts(1 month ago)
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Baroness Sherlock (Lab)
The noble Lord raises an important point. I reassure him that the Government are completely committed to delivering on the manifesto commitment to introduce mandatory ethnicity and disability pay gap reporting for large employers. I know that my colleagues in the Cabinet Office are working hard on this and will introduce legislation as soon as parliamentary time allows. There is always competition for Bills in the Session, but I know that they are still committed to it. In March, as the noble Lord probably knows, the pay gap reporting consultation was published, showing how the proposed approach would work. Employers with 250 or more employees would have to report their workforce composition and ethnicity and disability pay gaps and take action to address that. It is very hard to solve something if we do not know the scale of the problem. I reassure him that the Government will do this as soon as possible.
Lord Hope of Craighead (CB)
My Lords, should more be done to advertise the benefits of employing autistic people? I know of one employer who employs 20% of its workforce with autistic people with appropriate management. They find them to be loyal, hard-working and capable of solving problems that, in some cases, few other people can. There are real benefits in employing autistic people.
Baroness Sherlock (Lab)
The noble and learned Lord asks an excellent question; I would love to hear after this who the employer is and see what we can learn from them. I would be especially interested to know whether that employer is a member of the Disability Confident scheme. The noble and learned Lord may know that that scheme encourages collaboration between employers, not only through peer-to-peer learning, but by specifically asking leading organisations to use their influence across their networks and supply chains. There may be things that we can learn from this employer, as well as ways that we can support them to take the message out. There is some really good news out there, and I would love to hear more about it.
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Lord Hope of Craighead Excerpts(7 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
I am afraid the situation is even worse than my noble friend has identified. A considerable amount of money is being spent on special educational needs and disability provision, but parents remain concerned about being able to access the support they need, the outcomes for children are not good enough, and local government is facing considerable deficits because of that. That is why we need the type of reform that this Government have undertaken. A test of it will be whether parents feel more confident at an earlier stage that their children are getting the support they need to flourish.
Lord Hope of Craighead (CB)
My Lords, is more being done to ensure that teachers have the time they need to assess the needs of people with particular educational needs? It takes time: no person is the same and individuals need to be assessed according to their own individual problems.
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
The noble and learned Lord is absolutely right about that. That is why, for example, we are improving the ability for staff in early years settings to identify special educational needs. It is why we are also developing a national professional qualification for the special educational needs co-ordinators, who will play an important role in that assessment, and why we have invested in recruiting more educational psychologists, who play a really important role in assessment.