Unemployment: Disabled People

Baroness Deech Excerpts

Thursday 20th October 2016 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Deech]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what progress they have made towards creating the conditions necessary to halve the unemployment rate of disabled people.

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Lord Freud) (Con)]

Our ambition is to halve the disability employment gap—the difference between the employment rates of disabled people and those of people who are not. We will publish a Green Paper setting out our vision and options for longer-term reform. There are nearly half a million more disabled people in work than there were three years ago, but the gap remains too large.

[Baroness Deech (CB)]

I fear—and I wonder whether the Minister agrees with me—that these schemes are destined to fail because the Government have not removed the barriers between disabled people and jobs. There is a lack of transport and an unwelcoming workplace. What disabled people need—and I hope that this will be favourable to the Minister—is that all buses should be accessible with audiovisual information and all the taxi provisions of the Equality Act should be brought into force. Tribunal fees, which deter discrimination claims, should be removed or lowered. Employers should be helped to understand what reasonable adjustments they should make. Will the Minister work across departments to promote those recommendations of the Select Committee on the Equality Act 2010 and Disability, which I had the privilege of chairing earlier this year?

[Lord Freud]

We made a comprehensive response to that interesting report from the Select Committee—but on the fundamental point that the noble Baroness makes, we all have to acknowledge that this is not easy to achieve. Getting more people with disabilities into work is a complicated thing to do, and through the Green Paper we are looking to combine very big and complicated organisations in the shape of the health and welfare systems and employers. You have to do it across all three to have a hope of bridging this gap.