Autumn Budget 2024

Lord Shinkwin Excerpts

Monday 11th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Shinkwin (Con)]

My Lords, as my noble friend Lord Johnson of Lainston said in his opening remarks, this is, in its effect, an unkind Budget. Its consequences are punitive.

As we have just heard, if you identify as a farmer, be prepared to be punished for investing in your farm so that you can feed us. If you are a pensioner, be prepared to be punished for putting money aside so that you can live independently and leave a legacy to your loved ones. If you are a disabled child and your family have sacrificed everything to send you to an independent school with smaller class sizes, prepare to be punished for having special educational needs. The Minister said that these are difficult choices. I agree—just ask a disabled child, forced to leave their school and join the state system, which the National Audit Office said very recently is in urgent need of reform.

These choices do not make sense, particularly given that the splurge in public spending makes growth even more important and, at the same time, even less likely. This Budget will, I am afraid, stifle growth. It could put the very sustainability of the welfare state, on which I and so many other disabled people depend, at risk. We cannot afford to accept the status quo—the pervasive view that the state must grow inexorably, and that the Government have the right to spend an ever-increasing share of people’s hard-earned money in that quest. They do not; it is not their money to spend.

Disability policy, particularly relating to employment, is an area that has for too long been bedevilled by a blinkered belief in the status quo. All parties, including my own, need to look beyond its constraints if we are to tackle the completely unacceptable and expensive disability employment gap, which remains stubbornly at almost 30%.

The last thing one would assume that an employers association with “disability” in its title would do is perpetuate a failed status quo. Indeed, when I was chair of the Centre for Social Justice’s disability commission, I was delighted that the chief executive of the Business Disability Forum—BDF—signed up as a fellow commissioner to challenge the status quo by calling for mandatory disability employment and pay gap reporting to be introduced. So I was mystified when the BDF, without warning, then performed a U-turn on the basis of research that it has to this day declined to publish in full. Suffice to say that findings published at the weekend by Disability@Work on BDF’s effectiveness in improving the experiences of disabled people in its member organisations does not cast it in a positive light.

I close with a question for the Minister. Given rumours that the BDF’s chief executive will be joining your Lordships’ House in the near future—and mindful of the Nolan principles of public life, particularly those relating to integrity, accountability and openness—can he assure the House that, as part of their due diligence, No.10 and all appropriate bodies will ensure that, before her appointment is recommended to His Majesty, BDF publishes in full the methodology of the research underpinning its sudden policy change on mandatory reporting? Can he also say whether they will ensure that its chief executive will be required to explain why this policy change coincided with an increase in its membership income by almost 50% between 2021 and June 2023, and why a corresponding increase of over 45% in its membership has had no positive effect in challenging the status quo and in decreasing the disability employment gap? Disabled people deserve better.