Disability Employment Gap

Oliver Colvile Excerpts

Wednesday 8th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[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.”

--- Later in debate ---

[Peter Heaton-Jones]

If the hon. Lady will forgive me, I will not give way for the reasons I have given. I am sorry.

The motion

“further notes that the Government is reducing funding”.

That just does not add up. We are increasing spending on disability support. In the last Parliament, spending rose by £3 billion. We are now spending £50 billion on benefits alone to support people with disabilities and health conditions.

Last Friday, I attended a meeting of the North Devon and Torridge disability access forum. It was an extraordinarily positive meeting. Yes, it has concerns about the people it represents, but it wants to have a positive way of working with me and, through me, with the Government. That is typical of the positive attitude in North Devon. In Ilfracombe just two months ago, I organised a Disability Confident event, which the Under-Secretary of State for Disabled People attended. It was an extraordinarily positive event that showed what can be done when people get together and work for the good of the majority of people. That is what we should be do doing.

[Oliver Colvile]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Peter Heaton-Jones]

I will give way.

[Hon. Members]

Oh!

[Oliver Colvile]

Does my hon. Friend agree that this issue affects the whole of Devon, not just North Devon?

[Peter Heaton-Jones]

It would have been remiss of me not to give way to a Devon colleague. I agree with him entirely, of course.

In the last two years, 365,000 more disabled people have moved into work. About £50 billion every year is being spent on benefits alone to support people with disabilities or health conditions. The Government will continue to spend more than Labour did in 2010 in every year between now and 2020. Benefits related to the additional costs of disability have been uprated every year.

We are well on our way to securing the Government’s manifesto commitment to halve the disability employment gap. This Government are doing more than the Labour party, which proposed the motion today, ever did. This is opposition purely for opposition’s sake, and we should consign the motion to the No Lobby where it belongs.

--- Later in debate ---

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

It is a delight to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Deputy Speaker.

I thank those on the Labour Front Bench for calling this debate on disability and the employment gap, because it is all very much part of what I hope we on the Government Benches stand for—that is, being one nation and ensuring that we talk about life chances, which were firmly included in the Queen’s Speech.

I am one of very few Members on the Conservative Benches to represent a totally inner-city constituency. I do not have a single piece of countryside in my constituency—with the exception, perhaps, of a rather wet meadow that is the Ponderosa pony sanctuary—although it has lots of parks and things like that. I congratulate my hon. Friends on the Treasury Bench on the excellent job they have done in reducing the deficit and encouraging growth in the private sector, which has meant that we can begin to turn our minds as a Government towards how we will help those people who are out of work for reasons of disability or whatever else.

In my Plymouth Sutton and Devonport constituency, the claimant rate is now down to 4% from 6.1% in 2010, when I was first elected. In Plymouth, we are now facing the problem of a skills shortage. Shortly before the 2010 general election, my city was thought to be one of the most vulnerable communities in the country as it remained dependent on the public sector. It has had high levels of deprivation and, as my hon. Friend the Minister knows, there is a difference in life expectancy of 11 years between the city’s suburbs and the more deprived communities such as Devonport, which is where the dockyard is located.

Plymouth is a low-wage and low skills economy, with more than 38% of people who are employed working in the public sector. That is mainly because of our relationship with the Navy. During the 1950s, Ford was going to come to Plymouth but the Navy stopped that happening because it did not want to compete on wages and for skills. At that stage, it employed about 10,000 people, which is a very large number. That figure is now down to 3,000—perhaps 5,000—people working in the dockyard and elsewhere.

The city was badly bombed during the war, but we have a great sense of resilience, which is incredibly important. The work that has been done by the Government, the local enterprise partnership and the city council—by both political parties, I must add—to ensure that we got a city deal that will deliver 1,500 new skilled jobs is very good. It is not the case that because someone is disabled they cannot do a skilled job. After all, people have lots of opportunities to do that.

I have been working with a man called Chris Leonard who runs an employment agency called Mego, which specifically considers the lower-skilled. We came to the conclusion that to bring the number of claimants down even further, we must focus on those people suffering from mental health issues, such as depression. Too often, we do not think about that. Issues such as alcoholism, drug taking, neurological conditions and, of course, smoking produce that, so we must work very hard to ensure that those people can be helped back into work. I am also very keen to ensure that people suffering from neurological issues and other such conditions have access to the pharmaceutical products that they should have.

Last year, quite a few people wrote to me about ESA and I had quite a lot of sympathy with what they were saying. It is important that we ensure that they are encouraged to get into work by becoming involved with voluntary organisations and so on. The Government have been doing a good job of encouraging people to get involved in voluntary organisations. If anybody living in Plymouth, in the constituency or the city, wants to go and help the hedgehog sanctuary, that would be a brilliant idea. As everybody knows, I am a great fan of the hedgehog and have been doing a lot of work in that regard.

The Government need to make sure that people will not be isolated. We should encourage them to get back into community life. I have been doing a lot of work with the local jobcentre and last Friday I met a gentleman there who came to see me. He was quite young and obviously had real issues to do with autism. In Plymouth we are campaigning for an autism pre-school, because we have to start early in people’s lives to get them used to the idea. That young man had no confidence before he arrived, but staff were deeply surprised that he learned to engage with people, and he had even learned to shake my hand when he left. It is extremely important to instil such confidence.

It is important to ensure that skills testing takes place and that people in schools take an interest in the community. I pay tribute to Stoke Damerel community college for the work it does on dementia, which has become a big issue in the city. The more we can do to make sure that people can get back into work, the better.