Disability Employment Gap

Debate between Jim McMahon and Paul Maynard

Wednesday 8th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[Paul Maynard]

I am pleased to see the shadow Secretary of State nodding his head. It is a little churlish of him to criticise us for not narrowing the gap in the first year since the election. He is quite right to point out that the gap has broadened—[Interruption.] It really annoys me that the Opposition Front-Bench team always think that the best way to address any speech by a Conservative Member is to sit and give a running verbal commentary on everything we say—a monologue to their imaginary friends sitting on the Front Bench. [Interruption.] Will the hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner) be quiet for a minute? I am sorry to have to shout at her. I listened very patiently and quietly—[Interruption.] I do not want a conversation with her; I am asking her to listen to my speech. I sat patiently and listened to the shadow Secretary of State. I did not engage in a running commentary. [Interruption.] If she wishes to step outside and argue with me now, then we can do so. All I am asking is for the hon. Lady to show me a common courtesy and to listen to what I am saying, not issue a running commentary. [Interruption.] Yes, I know that my time is running down, but I place great importance on standards of politeness in this Chamber. If I choose to use my time in trying to enforce those standards, that is my choice and it is not for her to comment on it.

[Jim McMahon]

I appreciate the fact that the hon. Gentleman has given way. Inadvertently, that will give him an extra minute, which he will be very grateful for. With all due respect, he will not have seen from where he is sitting that, during the opening speech in this debate, his Front Benchers were making the same running commentary against Labour Members. That is perfectly reasonable as part of the debates that take place, but I do not think it is reasonable for him to offer to take outside a Member of the official Opposition.

[Paul Maynard]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that comment. As you always remind us, Mr Speaker, we are responsible for what we say in the Chamber. My point to the hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne was that rather than interrupting my speech, I was more than happy to continue the debate about proper standards of addressing Members in the Chamber after we had completed our speeches. On that note, I think we will move on.

I was touched by what the hon. Member for Airdrie and Shotts (Neil Gray) said about his nephew in Lancashire and his perception of engaging in the jobs market. That spoke to me quite a lot because there was a time when I often felt I would be a burden to an employer. An implicit assumption built into how I viewed the world was that, for some reason, employers would somehow not want to touch me with a bargepole, that I would have to be better than the best and that the hurdle would always be that much higher. I very much understand his mindset.

To me, the biggest challenge in trying to overcome the disability employment gap is that some of our assumptions about what will happen to us in the workplace are so low to start with that it is very hard to give people the confidence to engage in the process. One of my concerns—this is partly why I agreed to participate in the review organised by the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Disabled People—is my belief that percentages can be a very difficult way to measure what is actually going on. We had a very helpful contribution from the Labour party to the review. I welcome the fact that it felt able to make a submission, and I hope it will do so on the Green Paper as well. The contribution was actually interesting. Again, it focused on percentages—the percentage of people with a disability who are in work or engaging in an apprenticeship—but such figures are always hampered by the fact that those are self-declared disabilities. Many potential applicants simply do not want to acknowledge somewhere on a form that they have a disability in the first place, in case it affects the employer’s perception of how they will be treated during any interview process.

Welfare Reform and Work Bill

Debate between Jim McMahon and Paul Maynard

Wednesday 2nd March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Jim McMahon (Oldham West and Royton) (Lab)]

There are plenty of cameras in this place, but they do not always pick up what is going on across the Chamber. When my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams) was speaking, the Minister was engaged in conversation with a person to her immediate left. I am not sure whether that conversation was related to the debate in hand, but they thought it fit to laugh during the debate when the true impact of these cuts on the people who can least afford them was being laid out. Either the Minister was not paying attention to the debate because of disinterest, or she thought that what was being laid out was funny. Either way, she should be ashamed of herself.

[Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)]

The first thing that I did when I was elected to this place in 2010 was to attend a dinner in honour of Alf Morris, the first disabled Minister, to celebrate the passing of the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act 1970. At that dinner, I sat between Roger Berry, the former MP for Kingswood, and the late Paul Goggins, the former MP for Wythenshawe. Both were excellent Labour disability Ministers, who did a superb job. Also there was William Hague, who brought in the disability living allowance. What that brought home to me was that the only time that real progress is made on disability issues is when there is a spirit of bipartisanship in this Chamber. On this particular issue, that bipartisanship is clearly lacking.

For the past six years—[Interruption.] Will the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) please be quiet? Her behaviour now reminds me why I chose not to vote for her for the Public Accounts Committee. She is showing me no courtesy at all.

For six years now, I have believed that we need to improve our support for those with a disability. There is a crying need for reform. We now have a White Paper. I want us all to engage in the process, not just to sit there. I was proud to stand on a manifesto that promised to halve the disability employment gap. Nothing would upset me more than to think that Opposition Members actively want us to fail in that goal, because they see some sort of short-term political gain. They owe it to their constituents and to the country to help us achieve our goal, and I do not think that some of them want to do that.