Employment Gap for Blind and Sight-impaired People

Baroness Buscombe Excerpts

Wednesday 17th December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, I cannot speak to exactly what happened at the time that was abolished. What I can say is that this Government are absolutely committed to supporting people. I talk to brilliant, inspiring disability advocates in my organisation—advisers who have customers who come in and start out thinking there are not things that they can do and end up having jobs found for them and being supported into them. I want to do two things: enable people to get all the help they can, and persuade employers, many of whom want to hire disabled people but do not know how, that they can hire them and that they can thrive and be a real asset to the organisation. We should all get behind that.

[Baroness Buscombe (Con)]

My Lords, to the Minister’s point about employers, I remember that in government we offered all employers up to £52,500 per year for every person with disabilities to be supported into work. What has happened to that offer?

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

I am not sure what the noble Baroness is referring to but, if I can find out, I will be very happy to write to her. We now have something called the support with employee health and disability service, which was developed with input from smaller businesses and disability organisations. It gives employers tailored step-by-step guidance as to how they can support employees in common workplace scenarios involving health and disability. It helps employers to understand their legal obligations and what reasonable adjustments may look like, and it even goes down to helping them feel confident having sometimes tricky conversations, either with a new member of staff or somebody whose health or disability may be changing. We know that lots of employers want to do the right thing; our job is to help them to do it well.