Work, Health and Disability

Marsha De Cordova Excerpts

Thursday 30th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Marsha De Cordova (Battersea) (Lab)]

Let me begin by giving apologies from the shadow Secretary of State, who is unable to be here today.

It is welcome that the Government have finally brought this statement before the House. We have waited years since the Work and Health programme was first proposed, with the Green Paper published a year ago and the consultation closing in February. The programme was initially supposed to be launched this autumn.

During the long wait, the Government have dropped the ambition to halve the disability employment gap by 2020. Sadly, today’s statement reflects only the weaker ambition set out in their recent manifesto, reducing the number of disabled people they hope to support into work by up to half a million compared with their previous aims. We should not be surprised by this disappointment, as throughout the Government’s seven wasted years of austerity, it is disabled people who, time and time again, have borne the brunt of their cuts.

The Work and Health programme is no different in this regard, with only £130 million a year set aside for its funding—a fraction of the billions spent on its predecessor, the Work programme. Indeed, the Local Government Association predicts that, with the current levels of funding, the programme can support only 110,000 claimants annually. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation is, unfortunately, more pessimistic, estimating that around 65,000 will be supported under these plans.

That is the reason for the Government’s strategy suddenly needing 10 years. They had promised to halve the disability employment gap by 2020; now it seems they promise to not halve it by 2027. The Government handing themselves an extended deadline to meet a weaker target will be very familiar to anyone who watched the Budget last week.

No doubt due to the Government’s new, relaxed approach, today’s announcement offers little in the way of commitments. It is, sadly, an attempt to kick the issue back into the long grass, with vague statements on pilots, a commitment from the Government to carry on doing what they are currently doing, and some minuscule sums for investment in training. This does not go nearly far enough.

There is a wealth of evidence about what support is necessary to deliver labour market outcomes for disabled people. Why do the Government need to do another round of pilots? We know, for example, that Access to Work is popular among those who use it, focused on the vital issue of retention for those in work, and effective in its results. Yet Inclusion London reports that, instead of expanding the scheme, the direction of travel from the Government has been to reduce the value of Access to Work packages. Will the Secretary of State commit now to expanding the funding for the programme as part of the wider Work and Health initiative, rather than simply saying that the Government will look at enhancements? The evidence has been available for years.

The statement instead praises the Government’s existing Disability Confident programme, yet produces no evidence of concrete results from it. Can the Minister confirm how many additional disabled people have found work as a direct result of the programme? Can he also confirm how much Government money has been spent on Disability Confident per additional person employed as a result of the programme? I suspect he cannot. Once again, we see the Government talking a good game but delivering nothing beyond warm words.

Of course, we welcome the vague nod to a reformed statutory sick pay, although the devil will surely be in the detail of that announcement. Yet another consultation will have to keep us content for the time being. The Government clearly like to listen; it is taking action that they find much more difficult. When will the Secretary of State bring forward details of the consultation, including a timeline for action?

The Government propose to publish a report on local partnership and better integration of health and wider support, but we will have to wait until 2019 for it—two years into their 10-year strategy, and only a year before the 2020 deadline for halving the disability employment gap. That simply is not good enough.

Madam Deputy Speaker, you will remember that when the Government cut £1,500 a year from disabled people by slashing the employment and support allowance, that was justified as being for the sake of an effective Work and Health programme. Today’s statement is clear evidence that they have broken that promise. I hope that Government Members will recognise that this is not what they were promised, and work with the Labour party to demand a stronger programme of support for disabled people. Should the Government be unable to deliver that, they should stand aside and let the Labour party get on with the job.