Disabled People and Economic Growth

Julia Lopez Excerpts

Thursday 22nd February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Julia Lopez (Hornchurch and Upminster) (Con)]

Thank you for calling me to speak, Mr Deputy Speaker. I shall try to be better behaved today. I am truly grateful to the hon. Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Dr Cameron) for leading this afternoon’s debate, for the tone that she has struck and for her constructive ideas. This follows a valuable Westminster Hall debate led by my hon. Friend the Member for Ochil and South Perthshire (Luke Graham) on the Government’s Disability Confident scheme, to which she also made a thoughtful contribution. During that debate, Members highlighted some of the economic opportunities that would result if we increased the participation of disabled people in the workplace. We also focused on barriers to employment, the disability employment gap and the Access to Work scheme. I shall therefore not go into those subjects again, beyond suggesting that the disability employment gap is an issue every bit as urgent as other workforce diversity challenges. In so far as it results from a lack of employer awareness of the support available, we as MPs ought to take the lead in publicising the Government assistance offered. In that vein, I have now signed up as a Disability Confident employer, and I have discussed with my local jobcentre the possibility of offering a work placement for local disabled jobseekers with an interest in politics.

This afternoon, however, I wish to focus on the economic cost that we will face if we fail to unlock the potential of disabled people of all ages, as well as on the economic power of disabled people both as an active consumer group and as a motivation to develop new assistive technologies with broader application to our growing elderly population. I have previously highlighted the cases of two autistic constituents who desperately want to work but who struggle with the initial stage of any new job. In the past few weeks, I have met the families of autistic children who believe that we must focus our attention on earlier support and intervention. I recently visited First Step, a local charity that provides intensive developmental support to pre-school children. It can be an enormous shock to parents to discover that their child has a disability, and First Step assists not only with the child’s development, but in supporting parents in a non-judgmental environment. Caring for a child with disabilities can place a huge financial strain on a family, particularly if parents need to take time off work or do not have the right support network in place. However, as one local parent said,

“A failure to develop a child is not only a moral mistake, it is also a very expensive financial one. With proper, dedicated support these children could learn to talk and make a decent contribution to society. With no support, they will be left in adult day care centres or worse.”

Too often, local authority support is either entirely absent or limited and patchy. Early investment in the development and schooling of disabled children can lift the strain on parents, helping them return to the workplace, but it also increases the chances of economic participation when a child reaches adulthood and reduces the need for costly adult services later in life.

We also need to continue the steady improvements in accessibility to our transport system. The less daunting it is to leave the home, the more disabled people will be able to participate in the economy by working and spending. I commend the Government for their Access for All scheme, I support the Changing Places campaign, and I would be grateful if the Minister applied pressure on the Mayor of London to prioritise transport accessibility and facilities for disabled Londoners. Last week, Mr Khan found £6 million for new toilets for bus drivers. I wonder if he might make those facilities available to disabled transport users and also improve lift access to the District line, which runs through my constituency and is one of the most practical routes for disabled users to access.

With the advent of new assistive technologies, there is greater scope than ever for disabled people to contribute to growth, as well as colossal opportunities for UK tech and medical firms. As the Financial Times suggested in a recent article, 1 billion people across the world

“have some form of disability. As people live longer, often with conditions that reduce their ability to use their hands or to co-ordinate, the market will grow sharply. Accessibility makes good business sense”.

British businesses are developing more sophisticated prosthetic limbs, accelerating stem cell technology, improving websites for disabled consumers and building the Canute, which is like a braille Kindle for blind readers. Such technologies will be vital not just to quality of life, but to making it easier for disabled people to participate fully in the workplace.

In recent years, disability sport has been critical in changing perceptions of those with disabilities, and I hope that technological developments will continue that positive trajectory. Our role as politicians must be to create an environment that not only facilitates technological development, but embeds it in everything we do—whether that is the setting of new buildings standards, the design of public buildings and information delivery, or the integration of public services with technology. I shall be most grateful to the Minister if she will update the House on how the Government are encouraging accessibility and nurturing firms and charities that are developing assistive technologies, and I would appreciate her views on the points raised about the importance of early investment and transport.

Child Poverty: London

Julia Lopez Excerpts

Thursday 22nd February 2018 Westminster Hall

[Julia Lopez (Hornchurch and Upminster) (Con)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Henry. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) for requesting the debate, which is something I supported.

Too often, London is portrayed within the national context as a rich and robust powerhouse, which gobbles infrastructure funds and brashly demands priority in debates on the north-south divide. As those of us representing London seats know, however, deprivation is threaded through every quarter of our city, and has been for centuries. None the less, the capital now moves at such lightning pace that its local authorities must at times meet gargantuan challenges in serving their populations, using budgets calculated on outdated demographic assumptions. That can make the challenge of addressing child poverty extremely tricky.

The reward for all its economic successes is that London is one of only three regions in the UK where tax receipts outstrip public spending. That means that every Londoner gives £3,070 more in taxes than they receive in Government spend. For those of us representing outer London boroughs, I suspect that effect on public spending figures may be even more pronounced. It has long been assumed that inner-London boroughs have the highest need. I believe we now desperately need to reassess those outdated assumptions and catch up with the growing pressures on outer-London boroughs such as Havering.

Havering is one of London’s lowest-funded boroughs, yet it has the oldest population in the capital as well as the fastest growing number of children of any borough for the past three years in a row. During a six-year period from 2010 to 2015, some 4,536 children settled in the borough, leading to a huge demand for children’s social care and services for those with disabilities and special educational needs. I am grateful to the Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond (Yorks) (Rishi Sunak), for the additional £2.1 million provided to the borough in the new funding settlement, but we now need a wholesale review of funding in London to keep up with the changing demographics. I shall be contributing to the Government’s consultation in that regard.

Population change also strains housing supply, which is causing rents to leap in Havering. The link between child poverty and workless households is well established, and the Government’s fantastic record on driving down unemployment should be recognised as the huge achievement that it is for the impact on individuals’ lives. For some families, however, a regular wage may not be sufficient to cope with rapidly rising housing costs. I have visited some of the temporary accommodation available in Havering for families and, while staff and council do a fantastic job in working with children who stay there, it is no substitute for safe, warm and high-quality homes.

Havering is champing at the bit to undertake an ambitious estate regeneration plan so that it can provide local families with the greater range of affordable—if I may use that word—housing options that they need. If we are serious about urgently tackling the housing crisis and child poverty, we need to unleash those councils that have sensible, financially sound plans to lead redevelopment themselves, not least as they can tolerate lower returns than private developers. I was glad to see the Budget lift the housing revenue account cap in high-demand areas to aid housing delivery plans, and I welcome additional support for those who are homeless or struggling with private rents.

Education has always provided a crucial ladder when it comes to poverty alleviation, and I am lucky to represent an area with some of the best primary schools in England, including in some of the country’s poorest wards. Local schools have done a fantastic job of offering children a window into some of the opportunities our city can offer them by building partnerships with universities, businesses and museums, engaging in such things as the Brilliant Club scholars programme and pushing hard on numeracy and literacy. Next week I shall be supporting the World Book Day 2018 literacy and development drive to encourage families to read with their children.

We must not let that progress slip in the transition to secondary school. The requirement to fill in a form for a child to be given a secondary place can unfairly disadvantage pupils on free school meals, as parents are often late or poorly informed, or they fail to complete the form at all. Consequently, too many pupils who have free school meals—especially white British boys—end up without a place and are served the left-over allocations. That can concentrate children in failing schools and entrench social problems. We should instead look at how best to remove the necessity of a form for pupils on free school meals, perhaps by local authorities automatically awarding them their local school unless a parent wants to exercise a preference.

In the past 20 years there has been an intense focus on how to enhance academic performance in inner-city areas, particularly among black and minority ethnic students, which has produced tremendous results. We now need to refresh the approach by looking with the same urgency at the new neglected groups. Perhaps a new Teach First should deal with white working-class areas that are falling behind, or there could be a major drive to improve the quality of pre-school provision by skilling up the nursery workforce, or the creation of dedicated core schools for excluded children. With the number of secondary permanent exclusions climbing for the fourth consecutive year, too many students are being taught in pupil referral units. Core schools would provide an alternative key stage 4 curriculum, with English, maths and science alongside two further technical qualifications. Close working with social services teams could give excluded children safety and stability and flag up problems in the home that can drive child poverty.

Finally, I have focused on the funding needs of outer-London boroughs, but I would caution against seeing child poverty alleviation as something that can be solved by Government money alone.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

I respect the hon. Lady for turning up for the debate. We did not have any Conservative Members in the child refugee debate. Does she think at all that £27 billion taken out of social security since 2010 has had any effect on child poverty in London?

[Julia Lopez]

We have to look at outcomes as well as methods and spending. I certainly remember that under the Labour Government there were some serious and entrenched poverty problems, because the benefits system was trapping people and there was not a belief that people could do more than they were given. I believe in people and that some of the Government’s reforms have fundamentally changed a lot of people’s lives for the better. Driving employment in households is an absolutely fantastic achievement. We have almost become accustomed to banking these incredible job figures, but they actually mean something to a lot of people. It is incredibly valuable for children to see working parents.

[Siobhain McDonagh]

Could the hon. Lady identify any word that I have said that suggests that work is not important? Work is important, but support and ability to earn enough to live are important, too.

[Julia Lopez]

I was not aware that I was attacking the hon. Lady, and I am sorry if that is how she felt.

I have been a councillor in Tower Hamlets and I observed meeting after meeting where councillors in that borough indulged in what I have to admit was an orgy of blame—not just Labour but other councillors, too—suggesting that every negative statistic that the borough racked up was down to Tory cuts, despite overseeing a budget of more than £1 billion, being in receipt millions of unspent section 106 contributions and being able to access all manner of special funding pots due to its poverty ranking. Rarely did councillors expend the same energy in the nitty-gritty of whether the borough’s programmes were effective and delivering results in alleviating poverty.

To give a small example, in my scrutiny of its youth services provision I found that Tower Hamlets was spending more than £1,000 on each young person with whom it came into contact at the extremely poorly attended youth services. That was equivalent to nearly £300 a head in the 13 to 16-year-old population, when Lambeth, Southwark and Greenwich, which are also Labour boroughs and have thriving services, were spending under £150. An attachment by adults to empty youth centres offering outdated programmes was cutting young people off from a much more modern approach to outreach that truly catered to young people’s ambitions. This is what I mean by the need to focus on outcomes rather than methods; there was a real obsession in Tower Hamlets about methods rather than whether results were being delivered—signalling politics rather than delivery politics.

Similarly, a former child services officer advised me that the council had been spending tens of thousands of pounds annually on one troubled family in the borough. It was only when budgets were tightened that officers were forced to review whether those interventions had been working; they realised that the family would be better off if the mother had the confidence to leave an abusive partner. Through very intensive one-to-one work with her, she built up the courage to leave and to get back into the workplace, giving her children the stability to start school again. The council was saved huge amounts of money.

I say this because two of the three national constituencies where child poverty statistics are starkest sit in the borough of Tower Hamlets—one of the most incompetently run corners of our capital. We cannot simply throw a blanket of taxpayers’ money over every problem. Resource is important—I am not denying that—but it must be accompanied by competent governance if it is truly to make a difference to driving down child poverty.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Henry. I add my congratulations to my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) on securing the debate, and on the way she has set the scene. She sets a real example to us all as a champion of her constituency and our city.

One of the myths my hon. Friend has buried today is that London is a rich city for the many, rather than just the few. We have seen that, in fact, London has the worst levels of child poverty of any region of the country. Indeed, as my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) indicated, what are often thought of as some of the richest boroughs in the centre of London—Westminster, Camden and Islington—are right up there in terms of child poverty levels.

My borough of Hammersmith and Fulham is not far behind: after housing costs are taken into consideration, 35% of children there live in poverty, and 33% do not reach the expected levels of speech and language skills at the age of five. Where children are on free school meals, that rises to 43%, and I have schools that have up to 70% of children on free school meals. If one looks at the worst-affected wards—in my case, the Wormholt and White City ward—the figure for children living in poverty after housing costs is 45%.

As has been said by a number of Opposition Members, housing is perhaps the most significant issue that makes a difference here. If one looks at Wormholt and White City, the figure is 30% before housing costs are taken into consideration—still very high—but 45% afterward. In some ways that is slightly counterintuitive, because it is a ward with high levels of social housing, where one would expect rents to be relatively low, compared with the very high market rents, let alone the cost of purchasing a property, in the area. However, as was indicated, in many ways, social housing is a thing of the past—not only because of the conversion, particularly by some housing associations, of social rents to affordable rents, but because of the sale of council houses, which are then not replaced. We have the obscenity of slum landlords owning sometimes dozens of properties on estates, and renting them out at—or in some cases above—the housing benefit cap, driving families into poverty, as well as making them live in extremely poor conditions.

It is not the case that nothing is being done to address that. I praise my council, Hammersmith and Fulham, which moved to Labour control in 2014. It has done what it can to revive and support Sure Start and, sadly in some ways, to support food banks and open new centres to support advice services. It has done what it can, given the vast local government cuts over that period, to try to alleviate the worst effects of child poverty. I praise the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, who has also been mentioned. He is trying to tackle low pay, improve childcare and build genuinely affordable housing—very different from his predecessor. They are pushing water uphill, however, given the cuts that have been made.

In an intervention, I said £27 billion had been taken out of social security programmes since 2010. That is a phenomenal sum of money. We have seen the effect across a whole raft of Government policies, deliberately introduced by the coalition Government, and continued by this Government: the two-child rule; the benefit cap; the benefit freeze; and now universal credit.

One figure that caught my eye in the excellent briefings we were given for this debate was evidence from Southwark Council that the average council rent account is £8 in credit; but for universal credit recipients, it is £1,178 in arrears. People are being evicted and are struggling to make ends meet because of the effects of universal credit, particularly the housing elements. Until we see a change in Government policy, or better still a change of Government, the situation will not get better. The prediction is that it will get worse, and that average levels of child poverty will be back well over 40% in a few years’ time.

I conclude by referring to a debate I had in this Chamber on Tuesday, on regeneration and social housing in an area called Earl’s Court and West Kensington, in my and the neighbouring borough. It is billed as the largest onsite development in the world outside China. There, 760 affordable homes and council homes are to be demolished without the promise of a replacement home for all the people living there. Some 7,500 homes are to be built, with not one additional social rented home on that site. When such policies are pursued, it is no wonder that we are dragging people into poverty and not giving any hope to children who are growing up in overcrowded, appalling conditions. That was not an accident or market forces, but the deliberate policy of a Tory Secretary of State, Tory Mayor and Tory council leader, conspiring to ensure that we got fewer genuinely affordable homes.

[Julia Lopez]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Andy Slaughter]

I do not have time, I am afraid.

The Minister knows that, because he was a deputy Mayor for London at the time, so he might want to address his record, as perhaps might some of the other Members who have spoken. I am afraid to say that the right hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Sir Edward Davey) might want to address his record in government, because that is when this dates back to.

I have 20 seconds left in which to speak, and I would not like to refuse courtesy to the hon. Lady, so I will give way.

[Julia Lopez]

I think it should be agreed that housing supply issues are failures of successive Governments. I recall that, between 2000 and 2010, there was a buy-to-let boom, the arrival of huge sums of foreign cash, extremely loose monetary policy, extremely loose borders, the forced divestment of council housing stock to arm’s length management organisations or housing associations, and a very low level of social housing being built—in fact, lower than in the Thatcher years. The hon. Gentleman should have the good grace to take responsibility for that.

[Andy Slaughter]

I will never be accused of not having good grace. I leave the hon. Lady with one fact: in the last three years in which the Conservatives were in power on Hammersmith and Fulham Council, they actually managed to reduce the number of social homes. That is quite some achievement.

Disability Confident Scheme

Julia Lopez Excerpts

Wednesday 10th January 2018 Westminster Hall

[Julia Lopez (Hornchurch and Upminster) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Ochil and South Perthshire (Luke Graham) on securing this very important debate.

This Government have a breath-taking record when it comes to getting people into employment—a record for which they get insufficient credit. It is easy to see joblessness simply as an economic challenge, but for the individual concerned, securing a job can have a major impact on their sense of self-worth and confidence, allowing them to lead a full, independent and rich life. I can only imagine the intense frustration many disabled people feel in knowing that they have ideas and energy to share in the workplace but facing practical barriers in securing work.

It is stating the obvious to suggest that people with disabilities have huge wells of talent to tap if we can collectively find a way of addressing some of those barriers. Other Members have referred to the disability employment gap, which has remained persistently high for decades. Were such a gap present in other parts of the working population, there would rightly be uproar. This problem is every bit as urgent as other workforce diversity challenges.

I commend the Government for the Disability Confident scheme, which marks an important step in helping to change perceptions among employers about taking someone on with a disability. I recently met representatives from Leonard Cheshire and learned about Change100, its graduate placement programme that secures talented disabled graduates paid placements at some of the UK’s best known companies. Leonard Cheshire highlighted to me some of the simple steps that help to build a disabled person’s confidence in making a job application, such as a prospective employer displaying Disability Confident accreditation, offering flexible hours and home working and having an awareness of the Access to Work scheme, which can fund building adaptations and specialist equipment. Leonard Cheshire recommends that the Government endorse an independent evaluator to monitor the success of employers in recruiting and retaining disabled staff, beginning with Disability Confident employers. Results could then be published to see how employers compare and to encourage improvement, increasing the speed of change.

What I most want to raise is the needs of people who are unemployed and have less visible disabilities, whether mental or developmental. In the six months that I have been the MP for Hornchurch and Upminster, I have had two cases brought to my attention by the parents of young men with autism who have been desperate to secure long-term, meaningful work suited to their specific skills. Both gentlemen are very skilled and anxious not to spend the rest of their lives isolated at home.

The first, Richard, has Asperger’s and has engaged with the jobcentre but considers that disability advisers do not adequately understand and consider his employment needs. He has been seeking paid work since 2005, and the jobcentre has frequently encouraged and assisted him by facilitating work placements and courses, rewriting his CV to reflect that additional experience. However, much of that has just been box-ticking, without meaningfully improving his job prospects. Richard has still not secured any suitable long-term paid opportunities and has twice been referred to employment support services, which subsequently told him they would not be suitable for someone of his needs, which knocks his confidence again and makes it even harder for him to make the next approach in the workplace.

Those sentiments are shared by Drew, a politics graduate with autism who has struggled to find employment since 2004. Drew similarly laments the lack of personalised support in various Access to Work schemes for those with disabilities, noting that those on the autistic spectrum need not only a chance but an integrated way of ensuring that that chance pays off for them. In Drew’s case, an employment opportunity was found, but it soon became unsuitable due to difficulties in getting transport at the required shift times. When the opportunity collapsed, Drew had to reapply for unemployment benefits, forcing an individual with organisational difficulties to navigate a complex system and knocking his delicate confidence levels.

Drew’s parents recently came to my surgery and described how he gets very costly support that is not properly designed. That money would be much better spent if the jobcentre or his support workers had a focused approach at the beginning of the journey into work, helping him to establish relationships with his employer and in future with his colleagues, and helping him with his journey. If that support is focused right at the beginning, it might pay off with a much more viable job opportunity, rather than just putting a person on course after course, without any real structure to the process.

I would be grateful if the Minister could tell us whether she has looked at the specific skills that some people with autism have—for instance, IT and tech skills, which both Drew and Richard display—and whether any approaches have been made to bodies such as the National Cyber Security Centre or techUK, where those kinds of talents are really needed in the workplace but have not yet been found in sufficient numbers. I would also appreciate her thoughts on refocusing support away from courses and work placements and on to the initial stages of employment opportunities, as I have described.

[Dr Cameron]

The hon. Lady is making a very thorough speech. As chair of the all-party parliamentary group on disability, I have had a lot of positive feedback about the Access to Work programme. Does she agree that it is really important for that programme to be made more visible, so that there is greater awareness of it and the people who need it, just like the constituent she spoke of, are able to access it?

[Julia Lopez]

One of the important things about this debate is that we need to raise awareness across the board. MPs can help to do that by continuing to have debates, whether here or in the main Chamber—that is an important part of the process. A lot of employers simply do not know about these schemes and therefore do not have the confidence to access them.