Special Educational Needs: Employment Support

Lord Touhig Excerpts

Monday 24th April 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The Department for Education is piloting the use of the adjustment passports in a number of settings. We started with higher education, and we are now looking at supported internships and apprenticeships. We need to understand how useful they are in that setting, and then we will look at whether they will apply more widely in future.

[Lord Touhig (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as vice-president of the National Autistic Society. Just 29% of autistic people are in paid work, and a recent IPPR report revealed that nearly one-third of unemployed 18 to 29 year-olds are autistic. The Government have a £151 million Access to Work budget intended to encourage employers to engage people with a disability. Can some of that funding be used to expand schemes such as supported employment and supported internships, which will directly benefit autistic people seeking work?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

First, I thank the noble Lord for his work in this area. On Access to Work, as the noble Lord knows, this is a demand-led and discretionary grant for disabled people. My understanding is that in some cases, autism is defined as a disability and in others not, so there may be eligibility criteria. On the noble Lord’s wider point, he will be aware that Robert Buckland is leading a review of employment for people with autism, trying to understand the barriers and to raise the figure from the 29% to which the noble Lord referred.