Queen’s Speech

Lord Addington Excerpts

Thursday 29th June 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington (LD)]

When I was anticipating speaking in this debate, I was expecting to talk about the creation of grammar schools, as many other people were who have an interest in education, and I was relieved but also slightly annoyed that it had not got in, because I thought it would be a little way in to looking at how the education system deals with those with hidden disabilities. I had hours of thought about how you would devise a system that selects people for grammar schools, or grammar schools plus, which takes the best, a system that takes into account those with dyslexia, dyspraxia and the other neuro-diverse conditions. How do you have something that conforms to the Equality Act and allows people to get through? Indeed, I got fairly far along this path and further and further away from the idea that a test that you take once should decide your future. But as that is not in the Queen’s Speech, I thought that we could look at another aspect of how the system and the systems generally across government affect this group. Once again, I make the House aware of my interest in this field.

One area that we have not really addressed here and are not going to address in any of the speeches, although there is a kind of second-hand reference to it in the Queen’s Speech, is the Government taking further steps to increase—I am sorry, but I have discovered that having middle-aged trombone eyesight is a bigger problem than dyslexia. I might have taken a step forward. The Speech refers to the idea that we will remove disability in life generally—and we have a two-year Parliament. To go back to the group to which I referred earlier, we have two years to start doing the boring bits: the fine detail in all forms of disability legislation and all legislation that addresses equality.

I say that, because I am undertaking some work with Barry Sheerman MP in the House of Commons through a group called AchieveAbility, whose work is based on dyslexia and the other neuro-diverse conditions such as dyspraxia, dyscalculia and autism. It is about how you get further in life. We are looking at recruitment, and the big thing that we have discovered is that, with modern recruitment practices, big recruitment firms and the larger firms that are dependent on them really do not know how to recruit the best people with these conditions, because they do not have systems that are flexible enough. The modern recruitment pattern asks whether you would do everything to get in, whether you would be thrown if you had to man a phone for the day, and so on. People in that group cannot say yes to the question whether they have all those generic and wide-ranging skills, so either they do not declare their condition and get into trouble, or they declare it and do not get through the process. That was the first revelation. Having dealt with disability for many years, I know that when it comes to the more obvious disabilities, such as movement impairment and wheelchair access, the bigger firms are better, because of investment. But when they suddenly get a group that they do not understand or know about, those people do not get through. Recruitment for people like this is in smaller firms, where you can interact with the person in the first place and get referred along.

So there is this group of people who they do not understand and who do not go through. We need reassurance that the means to get through are readily available. There are examples, such as in education, where the situation is not perfect but is improving for many. There is better awareness coming through, so we will actually be able to take steps. It is when the big machine does not understand its responsibilities that we make mistakes. Also, these larger firms are turning down opportunities, because these groups can do these jobs. The advert at the start usually bears no reference to the actual job. Can you man the phone? Yes, but you are doing something miles away in a big organisation and you probably will not have to do that. There is technology that will help you, but they do not know about it. I therefore hope that over the course of this Parliament we will start to take the small, boring steps that mean that we look at how we implement and get the best out of this group so that they can get through, taking best practice from one section and applying it to another.

AchieveAbility’s most recent discussion was with the DWP. We had one wonderful moment that made me quite worried, because we were told that almost every job centre has one expert on disability. My rather glib reply was, “Well, that’s almost good enough, then, isn’t it?”, which may have been a little unfair to the individual, but the point was made. In education, what we have discovered, which should be applied across the piece, is that having one trained person, a SENCO, who understands this is no substitute for having teachers who have some understanding and who know how to use the SENCO. In other words, unless you get somebody who understands the problem and what somebody is talking about, you will not access the other support.

So I hope that over the next two years when we are not dealing with Brexit that we will take time to look at the implementation of policy that we have all agreed to. Let us get into the fine detail. In the absence of large Bills, and given that we might want some light relief from discussing major changes in international law and trade patterns, we can look at how we implement things that we have all agreed to. The area of disability in which I am interested is only one facet of it, but if we get into this area and take on some activity, we may have a real legacy to take away, which no matter what else we do will make lives better for a large section of our society and, indeed, for those who have to live and work with them.