Health and Disability White Paper

Florence Eshalomi Excerpts

Thursday 16th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Tom Pursglove]

My hon. Friend hits the nail on the head about what we are trying to achieve with these reforms. He is a passionate campaigner for employment opportunities in Workington, and has had considerable success in that regard during his time in this House. I appreciate his welcoming the reforms, which are about helping people to achieve their aspirations. If work is something that people want to do, Government ought not to put barriers in place to prevent that. That is precisely what we are determined to do away with.

[Florence Eshalomi (Vauxhall) (Lab/Co-op)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea (Marsha De Cordova) for asking this important urgent question.

The sanctions do not work. Measures to tackle disability employment gaps are way overdue, and I pay tribute to many groups across Vauxhall, including Autism Voice in Clapham, which I recently visited. They do a lot of work to try to help disabled people back into the work market but, sadly, the employment gap is still there. Many employers discriminate and are not prepared to give disabled people an opportunity, because of the widespread perception that disabled people are less capable, regardless of whether they are the best candidate. What are the Government are doing to tackle negative attitudes about disabled people, which are preventing many of them from fulfilling the opportunities that they should be taking?

[Tom Pursglove]

The hon. Lady is right to raise this issue. We all have a duty and a responsibility to be brilliant advocates and allies of disabled people, promoting opportunities for them at every turn. I expect that we will be in a position to say more about autism specifically over the coming weeks—something that I feel very passionately about as Minister for Disabled People. We are doing work on perceptions, and there is more work to be done over the coming months. We have a campaign that I expect to come to fruition in the not-too-distant future. I want to see more employers sign up to schemes such as Disability Confident. There is more to do, although we have seen real strides forward, with 1 million more disabled people in employment achieved five years early, but we must take the next steps forward. There is so much untapped potential from people who can contribute and offer so much to their workplaces.