Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Welfare Reform (Disabled People)

Margot James Excerpts

Tuesday 28th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con)]

I very much wanted to take part in this debate so I greatly appreciate being called to speak given that I must apologise to the House for not having been here for all the opening speeches. I was at a meeting with the Home Secretary that could not be changed. First, I add my congratulations to the newly elected Member for Heywood and Middleton (Liz McInnes) on her very good maiden speech. I associate myself with the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Ben Gummer) about the importance of her victory, which virtually the whole House will celebrate.

I am surprised that the Opposition are continuing their witch hunt against Lord Freud. I did not agree with the form of words that he used, for which he has apologised. I would have thought that after the drubbing the shadow Leader of the House, the hon. Member for Wallasey (Ms Eagle), received on “Question Time”, they might have learnt their lesson about the pursuit of this individual for some remarks that he made in answer to a question by a family member of someone who was affected by this distressing issue without rephrasing their words. I think that is about the sum of it. I have spoken to him about this. He in no way marks down the worth of people with disabilities that have nothing to do with the economic value that they might add to an enterprise in the workplace.

We have to face the fact that while many people desperately want to work—to find an occupation where they can be of some value and make a contribution—there is sometimes an issue about whether their value can be recognised economically, and that might call for more Government intervention. The Opposition have not addressed that. My hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard) put this very well, and he reminded the House that only 10% of people with learning disabilities are in work. We should all be ashamed of that and seek an answer to it rather than conducting a witch hunt against a man who is giving his time, without any remuneration at all, to try to help people with disabilities.

The Opposition have a track record in this area. For 10 years, before 2008 or thereabouts, almost 1 million people with disabilities were more or less parked on various incapacity benefits—out of sight, out of mind, with no review.

[Kate Green]

I want to put the record straight. People were parked on incapacity benefit going right back to the 1980s, and in the early 2000s the Labour Government began to explore policies that ultimately led to the employment and support allowance and work capability assessment, which were endorsed by both parties. It is not right to say that Labour policies parked people there only over the past 10 years.

[Margot James]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention, which was slightly premature, because I was going to carry on to give the Opposition some credit for what they belatedly started to do in government —with, I must tell the House, the help of Lord Freud, which is an irony not lost on me.

We must not forget some of the things that the previous Government did. They appointed Atos. They left this Government with the legacy of a fairly draconian system that made no allowances for people with mental health issues who took part in work capability assessments in the early days. Some of those people had fluctuating conditions that meant that if they went for their assessment on a bad day, they might get somewhere, but if it happened to be a good day, they would not. No account was taken of that. This Government brought in Professor Harrington, who conducted a number of reviews that have humanised the system considerably. Now we are looking to find a new provider that will take the place of the Atos, which, as I have said, we inherited from the previous Government.

The previous Government did try to start getting people with disabilities into work, but they needed to will the means as well as the ends. It was not enough just to go round closing day centres and pushing people into the community. Their mantra was that everybody had to be in work before they could set about tackling discrimination, tackling the fact that a lot of businesses were ignorant about how to employ people with disabilities, and trying to change public attitudes. As a result of this Government’s more painstaking approach, some of those issues have been tackled at source, working with industry and employers. The number of disabled people in employment is up by 116,000 this year. Over 35,000 people with disabilities have been helped by the Access to Work scheme. I accept what was said earlier about the possibility that not everybody on the Work Choice programme is a proper candidate for it, but that is down to implementation, which all Governments wrestle with. The majority of the 27,000 people who have been helped have been eligible.

The companies that have been brought on board by the Government’s Disability Confident campaign have made a real difference. I pay tribute to Sainsbury’s and Waitrose in my constituency. Nationally, Sainsbury’s has employed 2,000 people with disabilities through its You Can initiative. I pay tribute to the Government for changing the whole ethos—seeing what people with disabilities can do. It really is a credit to the Secretary of State and his team that they have improved those people’s chances of finding work. The results are there for all to see.