Access to Jobs: Disabled People

Justin Tomlinson Excerpts

Tuesday 12th January 2016 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Disabled People (Justin Tomlinson)]

As your parliamentary neighbour, Mr Chope, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Wrexham (Ian C. Lucas), who made a passionate speech on this incredibly important subject. I have already have some dealings with the hon. Gentleman in the course of his work on the all-party group on spinal cord injury. It was a real credit to him that he took time out of his busy schedule to come and engage on that.

I will cover the Remploy issue, and I would be happy to meet to discuss what more can be done in the specific case of Margaret and on the broader subject of disability employment. First, I want to answer some of the questions asked by various Members in what I thought was a constructive debate. As a Government, we are very much in listening mode. We are looking at ways in which we can make changes to improve the situation, and there are many ideas that we will look to take from today’s debate.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard) for his kind words, and I would be happy to continue in this role. He demonstrated a huge knowledge of the proactive work that needs to be done. It has been a real pleasure to work with him on a number of different areas of my role, and he is a real credit to his constituency.

It was a pleasure to attend the all-party group on disability, which the hon. Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Dr Cameron) chairs so ably. We crossed paths on several occasions that day, when we went to a number of different meetings. She mentioned the work of Changing Faces. I met that organisation, which is doing a huge amount in a very important area. I am a big supporter of its “What Success Looks Like” campaign, which is an important part of the wider work that we need to do.

I echo the comments on self-employment. I had my own business for 10 years, and the careers advice that I always give to sixth-formers was, “If you are good at what you do, do it yourself. If you are not very good at what you do, be paid to be not very good.”

My hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth South (Mrs Drummond) is doing a tremendous amount of work in her constituency. I was excited to hear about the work of the Beneficial Foundation, and I would be interested to visit and see that at first hand. I think that there are some lessons that we can learn.

It is always a pleasure to listen to the hon. Member for Islwyn (Chris Evans), who is easily one of the best speakers in Parliament. His suggestions about Jobcentre Plus were constructive. We are bringing forward a White Paper, which gives us an opportunity to look at how we can improve the situation. What he said about thinking outside the box was crucial. Some brilliant ideas have been put forward, and I encourage him to be very proactive, because there are some lessons that we need to learn.

It is also always a pleasure to hear from the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon). I do not think that I have responded to a single debate to which he has not contributed, and I am glad that he has not had another meeting that has clashed. It is good to exchange ideas, because if there are areas of best practice anywhere, we need to look at them. As I have said, the White Paper gives us a huge opportunity to change the support we offer, and I will discuss that further.

The personal passion of the hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Mike Kane) shone through. I am grateful for the huge amount of work that was done in the Disability Confident event. I was disappointed to hear some of the negatives but it is important to raise them. We have addressed some of them and I will talk about that a bit more later. I would appreciate an opportunity to discuss them further because it is an important part of the work we are doing.

[Mr Robin Walker (Worcester) (Con)]

I apologise for missing some parts of the debate but I was listening closely to the feedback of the hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Mike Kane) on his Disability Confident event as I want to ensure that we have a Disability Confident event in Worcester. I ask the Minister to engage with the issue of the follow-up to the events to ensure that we make the most of the opportunity they represent.

[Justin Tomlinson]

That is perfect timing because later in my speech I will highlight our drop-in event for parliamentarians. We are also producing a pack, which I will discuss later, and I would be delighted if my hon. Friend engaged with this because I know that he has done a huge amount of work engaging with employers, particularly with apprentices and at jobs fairs. We definitely need to recruit him to the campaign.

A comment was made about the role of the media and role models. I am doing a huge amount of work on that because it makes a big difference. The hon. Members for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson) and for Banff and Buchan (Dr Whiteford) covered relatively similar points regarding the ESA work-related activity group. Let us not forget that only 1% of people in the ESA work-related activity group were coming off that benefit each month. Rightly, it was highlighted that people want to get into work. Clearly that system was not doing that right. We can discuss in another debate how it will be done.

We will be spending an extra £60 million providing support this year, rising to £100 million by 2020. We should remember that no existing claimants will lose out on the cash. The proportion of people in relative poverty who live in a family in which someone is disabled has fallen since 2010. Without opening up a debate on disability living allowance and the personal independence payment, let us not forget that under DLA, 16% of claimants were on the highest level of benefit whereas, under PIP, the figure is 22.5%.

I turn to the issue of Remploy before moving to the broader issues. In March 2012, the Government confirmed that it accepted the Sayce review’s recommendations to focus support on individuals through services such as Access to Work, and away from specific workplaces or facilities such as Remploy in order to significantly increase the number of people who could be supported to access the labour market—it is that point about being in the mainstream. I understand that that is not what Margaret wishes to hear but I will come to more specific points.

The background to the case is that the 54 Remploy factories operated at a loss of £49.5 million, amounting to about £22,500 a year to support each disabled person working in a Remploy factory. That is in contrast to the average Access to Work award to support a disabled person in mainstream employment at £3,100. I understand that it is a lot more complicated than that. That debate took place in 2011 and 2012, and there was clearly a disagreement on what should happen. Following that, all disabled Remploy staff affected by the exit of Remploy factories had access to tailored support from an £8 million people help and support package for up to 18 months to help with the transition.

The final statistics of 21 August 2015 confirmed that just over 1,500 former disabled employees had received support through personal caseworkers, 867 were in work and a total of 1,182 jobs had been found. I accept that the point is what has happened since then. I do not know whether I can find that information but I will look into it.

In broader terms, ultimately we want as many people as possible to have the opportunity go into work. The Prime Minister personally committed the Government to halving the disability employment gap, and that was widely welcomed by all. In the past two years, there has been significant progress with 339,000 more people with disabilities going into work. A number of strands will help to make the aim a reality.

First, many Members have mentioned Access to Work. There is roughly a £100 million budget at the moment helping a near record 37,000 people. We have had four years of growth. Following the spending review, by the end of this Parliament we are looking to spend about £123 million and we would expect a further 25,000 people to be supported through that. We now have record numbers of people with learning disabilities, people with a mental health condition, and young people.

We have more specialist teams providing specific advice, including the visual impairments team, and other teams for hearing impairments, self-employment, large employers, and the hidden impairments specialists. Broader unique opportunities are also presented. We are looking at further ways to improve Access to Work, particularly raising awareness among small and medium-sized businesses, which would most benefit and could remove the most barriers. We are also looking into how we can simply provide more advice through that service. A number of speakers said that employers would be worried about whether they had the skillset to support somebody with a disability. Access to Work could be an opportunity to provide that.

Today we had our first Disability Confident taskforce. The hon. Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams) has rightly asked what more we can do to push that. We had a number of the great and the good from a huge wealth of backgrounds including recruitment agencies and groups that support people with disabilities to get into work, including the Federation of Small Businesses, Clear Company, the Business Disability Forum, the Shaw Trust and a number of others. There was a collective brilliance around that table. I told them that I am very much in listening mode and I want them to challenge us and to identify ways in which we can take advantage of the Chancellor increasing the funding.

The whole point is to make more businesses aware of the huge wealth of talent out there. That is being underpinned through our Disability Confident campaign, which is there to share best practice, bust myths and signpost businesses and potential employees to the help and support that exists. Underlying all this is ensuring that people understand that it is a positive benefit. We are not asking businesses to do something that is not right, but to take advantage, often through making small changes, having greater recognition or understanding that a huge network of support is available. We will push that, with a real emphasis on small and medium-sized businesses.

[Mike Kane]

The Minister is making a good case for Disability Confident. Does he agree that we need measurable outcomes for those events?

[Justin Tomlinson]

Absolutely. I am coming to that, and we will be having that further meeting.

More than 300 organisations are signed up but that is not enough, which is why we will be doing a lot more promotion this year. The digital sign is now up and we are keeping more records of that. We will go back and challenge, particularly those larger businesses, to find out what more they can do with their supply chains and what further questions can be asked. That point was raised as well.