EU Referendum: Immigration and Disability Employment

Neil Gray Excerpts

Tuesday 11th October 2016 Westminster Hall

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

I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on securing this debate. I cannot agree with everything he has said about immigration but, on the disability employment gap, I have to concur with a lot of what he said. Will he encourage his colleagues in the Government to bring forward the Green Paper on the health and work programme so that some of the issues we are discussing can be teased out further?

[Mr Harper]

Part of the reason why I started to have some of the conversations I have been having and secured this debate was to inform the wider debate. I think the Government are planning to publish the Green Paper in the autumn. Part of the point of discussing these subjects is to feed into the strands of thinking that will go into the Green Paper, which is of course a consultation document. As the Government listen to responses from employers, Members of Parliament and the charitable sector, they can include this debate as one thing they think about as they formulate the specific plans that will be published in a White Paper and perhaps, if required, in legislation.

The final thing I want to say to the Minister is that he should look at some of the help that the Government could provide to employers and at some of the help that is already in place, to see whether, if we were successful in getting a significant number of disabled people into work, it would be sufficiently flexible and scalable. I would like my hon. Friend to look specifically at the Access to Work programme, which is an excellent scheme, but not as well known as we would hope. One of my concerns is that, were we as successful as I hope we can be, we would run into a problem, because Access to Work is currently funded by the departmental expenditure of the Department for Work and Pensions. Were a lot more people to want to use Access to Work to help to fund the reasonable adjustments that employers might need to make, we would run up against a funding barrier. Scope has proposed that Access to Work should be funded from annually managed expenditure so that it can be scaled as necessary in response to demand.

In summary, the Minister should work closely with other Departments across Government, which is already happening but must continue; he should look at the Green Paper that the Government are going to publish and the feedback from it, and build in the ideas I have outlined; and he should look at the help that the Government already provide to employers to check that it is going to deliver in the new environment. If we do that and get that imagination and effort from employers, with support from Government, one thing that will flow from Brexit will be further opportunities for disabled people to get into work. To use the phrase of the moment, we can then truly build a country that works for everyone.

--- Later in debate ---

[Neil Gray]

We look forward to the publication of the Green Paper, but will the Government commit to putting forward any extra resources? A number of the areas that the Green Paper would seek to address, including helping people with learning disabilities or mental health conditions, would require a bespoke intervention and a bespoke service, which is obviously expensive. Is it possible for the Government to commit more funding to what will be proposed in the Green Paper?

[Mr Goodwill]

Of course, a review of resourcing will be part of the review, but let us not forget that getting people into work means that they will be less reliant on benefits and more able to contribute, not only to their own lives but to the economy through the tax they will pay.

By the end of this Parliament, we want to have shown that there are interventions that can meaningfully address the pay gap, and to be on the way to securing success. Addressing the gap is partly about ensuring that employers do all they can to fill jobs with people in the resident labour market, including disabled people.