Work: Lifelong Learning

Lord Touhig Excerpts

Monday 27th November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Touhig (Lab)]

My Lords, I join other colleagues in thanking my noble friend Lord Watson for securing this debate.

The issues we are considering tonight are not new. More than 20 years ago, I remember reading some research which showed that in the United States, 80% of people in work had been back in a classroom-learning situation since leaving education. The figure was 56% in Germany and Japan, and barely 30% in the UK—that is the mountain we have to climb. I confess I do not know what the figure is now; perhaps the Minister might enlighten us when replying. However, my own experience of 27 years in newspapers and publishing before being elected to the other place taught me that whenever there was an economic downturn, it was training and upskilling that went first when budgets were cut, and when I became an MP and a Minister it was no different. Indeed, during my time in newspapers and publishing, which included two periods of recession, the one area of newspaper advertising that remained relatively buoyant was recruitment advertising. Why was that? Simply because many companies, having failed to train and upskill their own staff, sought to persuade better-skilled and better-trained staff employed by their competitors to jump ship and join them.

The truth is that we never stop learning. I want to highlight a particular issue today. We have heard much about the lack of a skilled workforce, but an unbelievable number of barriers are put in the way of our fellow citizens with learning difficulties—especially autism—who want to get a job in the first place, let alone improve their skills or retrain. Our economy, our country, is wasting the talents of so many people who simply need to be given a chance.

“I’m not unemployable, I’m autistic”—


that was the powerful message on the front page of a report published by the National Autistic Society into the autism employment gap. I declare an interest as a vice-president of the society. The Government had made a welcome pledge to halve the disability employment gap by getting 1 million more disabled people into work, but for nearly a decade the full-time employment rate for autistic adults has stagnated. While work is not right for everyone on the autistic spectrum, the majority of autistic people want to work and have much to offer. However, efforts to help them into work and stay in work are failing. A survey carried out by the NAS, which interviewed 2,000 people, indicated that the full-time employment rate for autistic people remains stubbornly low at 16%, just 1% higher than in 2007. Combined with the part-time rate of 16%, this gives an overall employment rate of 32%, compared with 82% of non-disabled people and 47% of people with other disabilities.

The overwhelming majority of autistic people want to work, but the types of work that they want can vary greatly. The truth is that autistic people, like anyone else in society, want to work across all sectors in a huge variety of jobs. Given the low employment rate for autistic adults but the big mix of skills and interests, we need a government programme to develop and raise awareness of autism among employers, and to identify the skills gaps in the economy and how autistic adults could be supported to fill them. One of the key challenges that autistic people face in getting into work is preparing for work. Work experience, internships and apprenticeship programmes, alongside training, can be particularly beneficial for autistic people, helping them to build confidence.

However, too often autistic people have a negative experience at their jobcentre. Jobcentre Plus is often the “front door” to people’s first conversation about gaining work. When asked to rate their experience of Jobcentre Plus, over six in 10 of those who responded said it was poor or very poor. Fewer than one in seven said it was good or very good. Many say that staff do not treat them as individuals or consider the particular adjustments that the staff themselves need to make to meet the communication and other needs of autistic people. This is particularly important for people who may not qualify for formal employment but who increasingly will receive their support from work coaches at jobcentres. To do their jobs effectively and to ensure they are complying with the Equality Act, all staff at jobcentres should have the training in and knowledge of autism to support the people they are working with. Does the Minister agree?

The National Autistic Society survey of employers exposed some of the myths that employers may believe, which could cause bias against autistic people both in recruitment and in the workplace. For instance, 34% said they thought an autistic person would be unlikely to fit into their team and 28% said an autistic person would be unlikely to be a team player. Roughly half of the NAS respondents with experience in the workplace reported bullying or harassment due to their autism. These bad experiences have long-term consequences. Autistic people can be left with lower confidence than ever, leading to long-term unemployment, greater dependency or mental ill-health.

However, it is important to recognise that the vast majority of employers want to do the right thing but feel apprehensive about getting things wrong and often do not know where to go for advice. A growing number of employers are working with the National Autistic Society and other organisations to offer work experience and internship programmes to young people on the autism spectrum. Research suggests that this type of stepping-stone job often translates directly into paid employment as it enables both participants and employers to test suitability.

It is helpful for young people to be exposed at an early age to a working environment and to begin to understand how workplaces operate and what is expected of them. A pilot project in Surrey called Employment Works for Autism combined training, work experience and ongoing support for autistic jobseekers. It cost £3,000 a head for a year, and at the end of the year 43% of the jobseekers were in paid work, filling businesses’ and industry’s skills gap, while half were in ongoing work experience or volunteering. As part of their Green Paper on supporting disabled people into work, published over a year ago, the Government committed to trialling supported work experience for young people with a disability. How is that trial going? What plans exist to make supported work experience opportunities like the one in Surrey more widely available?

I welcome the fact that maths and English minimum entry requirements for apprenticeships are now flexible, so that those with education, health and care plans can be considered. That opens things up for people who may be very capable on a practical level of taking on particular apprenticeships but who, because of a disability, might struggle academically. How many autistic people have been able to take up this opportunity? What impact is this having on autistic people’s employment rates? More widely, it is more than a year since the Government published their Green Paper on disability employment. When do they plan to publish their next steps? To what extent will those steps look at skills development, apprenticeships and internships? These are the issues that we are debating today.

There are an amazing number of able and talented people out there who could make a contribution to our economy—people who, given the chance, could be part of the ambition stated in the Motion we are considering today, and who could help us to meet the challenges of technology, productivity and the changing nature of work. They are autistic; they are not unemployable.