Disability Employment Gap

Maria Caulfield Excerpts

Wednesday 8th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[Owen Smith]

Let me give the hon. Gentleman the facts. I welcome every job provided for a disabled person, and I welcome every opportunity for disabled people to get into work, but the facts are that the Government have gone backwards on the target for disabled people. When our Labour Government left office, the disabled employment gap stood at 28%; today, it is 34%—an increase in the size of the gap between ordinary able-bodied people in work and disabled people. That is the truth of these circumstances. [Hon. Members: “Ordinary?”] What a ridiculous point. I mean the gap between able-bodied people without disabilities and disabled people. That stands at 34%— increasing on the Secretary of State’s watch and under this Government.

I will give this Secretary of State and his Government credit where it is due. I credit them for setting this difficult target to halve the disabled person’s employment gap. It was a clear pledge in the Conservative manifesto at the last election. On page 19, it said that the Conservatives would

“halve the disability employment gap…transform policy, practice and public attitudes, so that hundreds of thousands more disabled people who can and want to be in work find employment”.

That is a genuinely laudable aim. Labour fully agrees that if disabled people can find work and want to work, we should do everything we can to encourage and assist them in doing so. It would be good for all of us: good for them to be in work; good socially for our workplaces to be more integrated and rounded places; good economically, as reducing the gap by 10% would add £45 billion to our gross domestic product by 2030.

Unfortunately, a year on from that promise, the Government are either reneging on it or just failing to take the action needed to meet it. The volume of people currently employed who are not disabled stands at 80%, but the figure for those who are disabled stands at 46%—a gap, as I said a few moments ago, of 34%. The House of Commons Library, the Resolution Foundation and the TUC have all carried out analysis to show that the Government are making little or no progress towards the target. To hit it, they will need to get 1.5 million disabled people into work.

On the basis of the current state of activity by this Government, I cannot see how they are going to achieve it in a month of Sundays. I cannot see how they are going to get it back even to where it was at the end of the last Labour Government at 28%. It is a worse performance by this Government than that of the last Labour Government. What is even worse is that it is becoming more difficult for disabled people to get into work and stay in work because of the cuts that the Government are making. That will be my next theme.

[Maria Caulfield (Lewes) (Con)]

Is it not true that under the last Labour Government, by the time someone was 26, they were four times more likely to be out of work as a disabled person than they are under the current Conservative Government?

[Owen Smith]

I have repeatedly said that the last Labour Government were performing better in terms of the disabled person’s employment gap than this current Government, and I shall say so again in a few moments.