Welfare Reform and Work Bill

Baroness Hollins Excerpts

Monday 25th January 2016 Lords Chamber

When all is said and done, this is still a saving measure. According to the briefing I received from the department, £640 million will be saved by 2020, which is a huge amount of money. Of course, we look forward with interest to the Green Paper, through which we will get an extra £100 million a year, which is very welcome. However, if the gap is not addressed by 2020 I, for one, will say—if I do not, the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell, will get there before me—“There is half a billion pounds of savings here”. If we cannot tackle this issue with the money allocated in the Green Paper, we should go back to central Government, or the next Government, and say, “You have saved a lot of money out of this. However, we are still not doing the job with the money and resources that are available, so we want more assistance to get to where we all want to be: to seriously address this gap”.

[Baroness Hollins (CB)]

My Lords, I support Amendments 1 and 42. I will not repeat what I said in Committee or what has already been said today. However, I want to emphasise why the reporting duty needs to report on different groups, particularly people with learning disabilities, people with autism and people with mental health problems. The Work Programme and Work Choice just have not worked for people with learning disabilities. The disability employment gap is approaching 70% for people who would like to work but cannot find work and need specialist support to enable them to do that. That is why we need to look specifically and carefully at some groups quite separately from each other. Therefore, I support these amendments.

[Baroness Afshar (CB)]

My Lords, I support the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher. In the case of minorities, mental disability is regarded as a dishonour or as a great failure for the family, and only within the formal context of education, and at early stages, is it possible to intervene. Furthermore, because the intervention adjusts a young person to the requirements of the British community, with which the minority communities are not very familiar, it is essential to bring in these potential talents by catching them early and helping them.