Disability Employment Gap

Neil Gray Excerpts

Wednesday 8th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Crabb]

I have huge respect for the right hon. Gentleman. The truth is that in real terms, we are increasing the support that we give to disabled people. By the end of the Parliament, we will still be spending about £50 billion to support people with long-term health conditions and disabilities.

[Neil Gray (Airdrie and Shotts) (SNP)]

I struggle to understand how the Secretary of State could suggest that support for disabled people has gone up in real terms, when if someone who is currently on employment and support allowance and who is in receipt of ESA WRAG goes into work but then falls out, they lose access to that £30 a week. How can he possibly say that when he is looking at a person-centred approach to this debate?

[Stephen Crabb]

We can get on to that later in the debate. The truth is that ESA has not worked in the way that was intended when it was set up by the previous Labour Government. When John Hutton created ESA, it was with a view to seeing 1 million people with disabilities and long-term health conditions get back into work. It has not done anything like that. The truth is that for those people who are in the work-related activity group, there are better ways to get them the support they need and to help them back into work. The incentives are not in place.

--- Later in debate ---

[Neil Gray (Airdrie and Shotts) (SNP)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute to this important debate and I congratulate the hon. Member for Pontypridd (Owen Smith) on securing it.

We absolutely agree with the Government’s aim of halving the disability employment gap, but we have serious concerns about the actions they are supposedly taking to achieve it. With just three-and-a-half years in which to achieve their goal, they are failing. The Resolution Foundation estimates that halving the gap by 2020 will require 1.5 million people with disabilities to be supported into work. I agree with what the Resolution Foundation said in yesterday’s report, “Retention deficit”, in which it highlights that work

“is not right for everyone”

and that the Government could damage their aims by pushing work at all costs, but that there is an opportunity in the discussions on health and work.

Opposition Members have said on numerous occasions —during and since the passage of the Welfare Reform and Work Act 2016—that the Government are doing things in the wrong order and are, as a result, harming their own objectives. They cut off support from ESA WRAG and universal credit work allowance, and we will now be waiting even longer before the replacement system is up and running.

I welcome the reference in the Labour party motion to the frustration over the delay in the publication of the long-promised White Paper. However, while I remain sceptical about the Government’s real intentions in their change of heart, I welcome the announcement of the Green Paper on health and work—assuming that there is a genuine consultation process, a genuine listening on the Government’s part to stakeholders and a genuine investment in the resulting service—but why were those things not done before the cut to ESA WRAG and before the cut to universal credit work allowance?

The now not-so-new Secretary of State must quickly set out a timetable for the Green Paper consultation and for publication. We cannot allow the Green Paper to follow the White Paper. We in the SNP are deeply concerned that valuable time in which to make progress on disability employment is being lost as a result of this delay. The Tories cannot be allowed to kick this into the long grass. The Green Paper should be brought forward urgently, with real engagement with the community and voluntary sector, to shape the new framework. The Secretary of State must formally make a statement of his intentions and lay out a road map for the development of the new programme and time frame.

The Resolution Foundation also said yesterday that benefit off-flows do not always equate to sustained employment and that the Government’s policy is focusing too much on their rhetoric about getting people off benefits, while not supporting people who are currently in employment to keep them in it. The Resolution Foundation has made a number of recommendations, which I hope the Government will read and consider.

The Secretary of State rightly said he wanted to turn the discussion on social security away from statistics and towards the people involved, and I have some people who desperately want to be listened to and who have agreed to have their cases raised today. These people highlight the issues being faced by disabled people throughout the social security, access-to-employment and workplace processes. Their stories highlight how they are being let down.

At the end of last year, I was contacted by a young woman with autism, who was being forced through round after round of assessment, form-filling and evidence-offering. She was in receipt of PIP and had only recently taken part in the assessment process for it when she was told she would need to go through a work capability assessment and to submit evidence to receive ESA, which she was being cut from. She had to compile and submit all the same evidence a few short months after the same Government Department had requested it. She had to go through very similar and, for her, equally traumatic assessment processes for the same Department for which she had done it a few short months prior. For anyone, that would be an upheaval and an unnecessary burden, and it would result in increased anxiety, but for someone with autism, it is painfully traumatic.

Most galling for me, however, was that my constituent’s placement was put at risk by the decision over ESA. She would not be able to continue if she failed the WCA and was forced back on to JSA. That is why removing ESA WRAG is so damaging to the prospects of those who are on the cusp of finding employment, but who need that extra support and additional resource to get there—in the case of someone with autism, for instance, so that they can finance a familiar taxi, rather than use the daunting, potentially dangerous and unknown world of public transport—and to stay on a training placement, which builds their confidence towards the workplace.

The National Autistic Society has said that its research shows that only 15% of autistic adults are in full-time paid employment. It says the Government cannot rely on an improving economy alone to ensure that disabled people, including autistic people, share the same employment opportunities.

[Michael Tomlinson]

The hon. Gentleman is citing some good cases, as he always does when this issue comes up for debate, but does he not agree that the underlying problem with ESA was that only 1% of those on the programme actually went into work, when 60% or more wanted to find work? The programme simply was not working. Does he recognise that?

[Neil Gray]

Absolutely, but I also recognise that cutting off support cuts off the access to work available to some people, including the constituent I described, and puts the cart before the horse.

The changed system should have been put before the House for debate and scrutiny before the cuts to ESA and universal credit were applied. That was simply ludicrous, and I suspect that we are now going to pay the price. Mencap estimates that

“less than two in ten people with a learning disability are in employment”,

despite, in its estimation,

“eight out of ten being able to work with the right support”,

and a majority wanting to work. The key phrase is

“being able to work with the right support”.

Mencap’s criticism is that the

“support is often not available or those giving that support often do not understand learning disability.”

My nephew and his parents have been through the wringer to get support for him for almost all his life. He is approaching his 17th birthday and is sitting his GCSEs in Lancashire—I wish him well as he goes through that. He has cerebral palsy, which limits his mobility but has not limited his communication skills—far from it. Getting the right wheelchairs, accessing school transport and getting additional support when he needs it at school has been a constant fight for the family, and now he is anxious about what happens as he transitions from school into work. This is what he said to me when I asked him, ahead of this debate, about entering the employment market:

“I’m not sure what I can ask of an employer, for example, if I want to work at an Apple Store but all the tables are too high for me to reach can I ask the employer to make the tables accessible to me? I also sometimes worry that employers may choose another applicant for a position because they believe it would be easier to employ them, even if I am the best person for the job. I would however like to say that when I went for the interview for my apprenticeship my school were very supportive, but that may be because they already know me and I’ve been there for the past five years.”

That tells me of the lack of confidence that many disabled people have about entering the employment market. My nephew is the most gregarious, confident and engaging young man you could wish to meet, yet he feels he will be held back at work. He feels—unsurprisingly because of the way he has had to fight for support throughout his life—that he will have to ask employers for help: that he will be a burden on his future employers because of his disability, and that that will lead to him losing out.

That tells me, and it should ring loud and clear to the Government, that for the employment gap to be halved and for people with disabilities get fair access to employment we need to address how we treat them in all areas of social security support. Making them feel as though they have to fight for help and support that should be their right and expectation damages their long-term prospects and confidence to enter the employment market.

[Oliver Colvile (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Con)]

Surely we should not just pigeonhole people who are suffering disability into individual areas but ensure that they have the confidence to be able to get into employment and participate in the wider community.

[Neil Gray]

I find nothing in the hon. Gentleman’s comments that I can disagree with, but the fact is that they do not have that confidence at the moment. That is clear from the examples I am giving and from the expert third-sector organisations. They do not have the confidence because of the way they have been treated throughout their lives in having to fight for appropriate wheelchairs and go through traumatic work capability, PIP and DLA assessments, which they find demeaning. The whole process reduces their confidence not just to enter the workplace but to maintain a dignified level in society. I take his point, but there is far more for us to do.

This view is echoed in many ways by Sue Bott, deputy CEO of Disability Rights UK, who said:

“It is bad enough that the government spends so much of its time and resources on finding ways to deny”

disabled people

“benefits and support but then not to put measures in place that would increase employment opportunities really is a double whammy for disabled people. The fact is that it is only when we see a government seriously committed to equality will we get progress.”

[Jo Stevens (Cardiff Central) (Lab)]

Last Friday, I saw a constituent, a 37-year-old man with Parkinson’s disease, who had gone through a PIP assessment. The assessment report described him throughout as “it” rather than “him”. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that that is an example of exactly how the approach he advocates is not being put into practice under this scheme?

[Neil Gray]

That is absolutely sickening, and it should reduce us all to shame. That goes to the heart of why we have said throughout the election campaign in Scotland that when we create our social security agency we will put dignity and respect at its heart for those very reasons. Sadly, in some cases—not all, but some—those things have been lacking.

There was another case that I wanted to highlight about the work capability assessment, but time is pressing. Suffice it to say that the failings of the assessment stage make it far more difficult for the Government to achieve their goal of supporting disabled people who, with the correct support and guidance, would be able to find employment. Jobcentres, which are there to provide such help and support, are dealing with people who are not capable of working because of their ill health and disabilities, but who have mistakenly been sent there as a result of the flawed ESA decision-making process.

Another disabled constituent of mine who is in work contacted me regarding problems with the progress of his DLA and PIP application. He informed me that he had had numerous problems with the process. Despite supplying detailed medical evidence of the effect the health problems had on his life and the type of support he requires—the evidence clearly highlighted why that support was needed—he was told that he had to attend an assessment with ATOS. My constituent requested that that be carried out at an assessment centre, but was sent a letter by ATOS telling him, in language that he found threatening, that it would need to be a home visit.

Given that my constituent is trying to maintain a full-time job, the unavailability of weekend appointments makes it very difficult for him to adhere to strict appointment times during the week. The assessor did not attend on the day that was eventually scheduled. When my constituent inquired about that, he was told that no appointment had been made for him. This led to ATOS stating that it would consider the application on the basis of the evidence that my constituent had supplied, which left him understandably confused about why that had not been done in the first place. Supporting people with disabilities who are already in work is essential to ensuring that the disability employment gap is not widened still further. The Resolution Foundation referred directly to that in its report yesterday.

In conclusion, I hope that the Secretary of State will reflect on the personal testimonies that I have presented, as others across the House no doubt will, as he progresses towards the Green Paper. SNP Members are committed to seeing disabled people supported into employment when they are able to be, but that can come about only through appropriate support, and not simply by honouring the rhetoric of getting people off benefits and into work.

[Several hon. Members rose—]