Improving Lives: Green Paper

Debate between Lord Sterling of Plaistow and Lord Freud

Monday 31st October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

Youngsters are able to go to other areas to work. I think that the noble Lord must be referring to the restriction on 18 to 21 year-olds getting housing benefit. One of the exclusions that we have been debating with people—we announced that we would look at that strategy—was to make sure that those youngsters who move between areas for work could be exempt from that particular restriction.

[Lord Sterling of Plaistow (Con)]

My Lords, I have just come from next door, where there has been a gathering on autism. I have two interests. One is through Motability; the other is because I have a young grandson who is right at the bottom end of autism, so this is very personal. One very key factor on autism is that 60% of people said that they did not know where to go for support or advice about employing an autistic person. I see people nervous of how they should support and handle people whom they have never quite understood. Also, if I may, another factor that we have found over the years—I have had the pleasure of discussing this with noble Baronesses opposite—is that this can also deal with loneliness. If you are disabled and at home, and do not have a job, you might be left on your own for hours or days. I very much greet this Green Paper because it is the start of the right dialogue. How can one achieve on the former factor and make certain that we can help to educate workforces, before somebody comes to them, as to how to handle what they would consider a problem and we would consider a challenge?

[Lord Freud]

One of the problems with autism is, clearly, that many—too many—of those people are not in the workforce. That essentially acts to exclude them from the normal economic life of the country, which in itself leads to isolation. If we want to get the volumes that we are talking about and halve the disability gap, we need some concrete policies to come out of this Green Paper and address this issue. We now have dialogue between the health systems, the DWP and employers. It should not be beyond our capability as a society to solve this problem.