Disability Employment Gap

Owen Smith Excerpts

Wednesday 8th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[Owen Smith (Pontypridd) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House regrets the Government's lack of progress towards halving the disability employment gap; further regrets that the Government has not yet published its White Paper on improving support for disabled people; notes with concern that commitments made in the Autumn Statement 2015 to help more disabled people through Access to Work and expanding Fit for Work have not materialised; further notes that the Government is reducing funding for specialist support for claimants with health conditions and disabilities through the Work and Health Programme; and calls on the Government to reverse cuts to the work-related activity component of Employment and Support Allowance and Universal Credit work allowances that risk widening the disability employment gap.

In my opinion and that of Her Majesty’s loyal Opposition, the Government are failing disabled people in Britain—failing to support them into work and failing to support those unable to work—and they are doing so deliberately, with calculation, care and even premeditation. It was entirely premeditated to go into the election boasting about cutting a further £12 billion from social security but forgetting to mention it would come from disabled people and those on low wages in need of tax credits and universal credit. I would like to say that we do not know why the Government are doing this, but we do know, because the Secretary of State’s predecessor told us in his tearful goodbye:

“we see benefits as a pot of money to cut because they don’t vote for us”.

It still shocks me to repeat that demolition of the Government’s one nation credentials—indicted by their own words.

I welcome the successor Secretary of State to the Dispatch Box, because all too often the last one failed to turn up in the House to accept scrutiny or difficult questions on issues such as this one, the Women Against State Pension Inequality Campaign or the bedroom tax. I welcome the decision he took on his first day in the job to stop the plans to take personal independence payments away from people unable to dress themselves or use the toilet unaided, and I also welcome the fact that in the same speech he said that there would be “no more welfare cuts”, but I deplore the fact that he must have known, even as he made that statement, that the deepest cuts had already been made. The cuts from disability living allowance to personal independence payments, the cuts to employment support allowance, the cuts to the Work programme, the cuts to universal credit: all those sharp incisions had already been made. The effects were yet to be felt, but now, a few months down the line, the pain is evident, the harm is clear and these things can be measured in the widening gap in employment between disabled people and the wider population.

[Michael Tomlinson (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman take a step back from the rhetoric and have a look at the facts for a second? Does he not welcome the 365,000 more disabled people in work over the past two years, and the 3.3 million in total who are in employment? Will he not welcome those facts?

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[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.

[Joan Ryan (Enfield North) (Lab)]

Is my hon. Friend as concerned as me about the effect of the Government’s welfare changes on access to the Motability car scheme? Is he concerned about how many people have had their applications for the higher rate of the mobility component of PIP turned down only to find after many months and the loss of their car that the decision has been reversed because of problems with the assessment procedure in the first place? This affects people’s ability to get to work and to hold down and keep their jobs.

[Owen Smith]

Of course it does, and I am going to say something about that straight away, because the first of the cuts that I want to discuss—cuts that are making it enormously more difficult for disabled people to get into and stay in work—is the PIP cut. As we know, PIP is a system of support that helps disabled people to deal with the extra costs of being disabled and to play a full part in life, which includes going to work. Eventually, when they have all been shifted across from Labour’s disability living allowance, 3.5 million people will be on PIP.

As I said earlier, the previous Secretary of State baulked at taking £1.2 billion out of PIP by changing the eligibility criteria in respect of washing and dressing, but he knew that he had already saved £2 billion by tightening the criteria relating to the move from DLA to PIP. One of the ways in which he tightened those criteria involved the mobility component of PIP, versus DLA. Crucially, he changed the measurement of people’s mobility—how far they were able to walk—from 50 metres to 20 metres, the net effect of which was, quite simply, that fewer people were eligible for the mobility component. As a result, 17,000 specially adapted Motability cars have been removed from people. [Interruption.] The Secretary of State says that I have got my stats wrong. He can tell us what he thinks the stats are shortly, but first I am going to tell him what Muscular Dystrophy UK has said, because it has an interest in the matter. It has said that it is deeply concerned about the fact that between 400 and 500 specially adapted cars a week are being taken away from disabled people, which is an extraordinary statement. Does the Secretary of State think that is right? Does he think for a second that it is even cost-effective? More important, what does he think about the impact on real people?

Only this morning, Muscular Dystrophy UK highlighted the case of a woman called Sarah, aged 29, from Norfolk. She has myotonic dystrophy, which means that her muscles are progressively wasting. None the less, she works as a nurse in a local hospital, although she needs a specially adapted car to get to work. We could all celebrate that, could we not, were it not for the fact that the Department for Work and Pensions has taken her car away.

Sarah says:

“The ‘20-metre rule’ does not assess how someone’s mobility is affected by their condition. Occasionally I may be able to walk 20 metres, but on other days…I could fall…decreasing my mobility further…I could…choose not to work, but…As a nurse, I make a difference in my role, but it seems like the DWP is trying to prevent me from doing so.”

That is the human effect of the changes that the Secretary of State is overseeing.

[Chloe Smith (Norwich North) (Con)]

I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman will retract his earlier choice of words, when he separated hard-working people like Sarah of Norfolk from other—in his words—“ordinary workers”.

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[Owen Smith]

That was a slip of the tongue, and I regret making it. In this of all areas, we should be extremely careful with the language that we use. I did not mean to imply what the hon. Lady suggests that I was implying.

[Neil Coyle (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the Department for Work and Pensions has a duty to monitor the impact of the PIP roll-out, given the projection by Disability Rights UK that it could cause about 55,000 disabled people in work to lose their Motability vehicles and thus their ability to work?

[Owen Smith]

I think it is absolutely shameful that the Government are refusing to monitor that properly. It is clear to all of us in the House that if people lose the cars that allow them to get to work, it will be harder for them to stay in work or seek employment. That, surely, is as plain as the nose on the Secretary of State’s face.

Does the Secretary of State think that taking Sarah’s Motability car away from her helps or hinders his mission to halve the disability employment gap? It seems to me that he should know the answer to that. I ask him to bring forward the review of PIP, and to think again about the 20-metre rule in particular. I ask him to look at what Atos and Capita are doing and reform their management of the system, because it is not working, and people such as Sarah are paying the price.

[Jim McMahon (Oldham West and Royton) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the real problem is the fact that the assessment process is so dehumanising for a lot of people? This is not about human beings or about realising their full potential; it is about treating people as numbers.

[Owen Smith]

My hon. Friend is completely right. As we all know, the truth is that there was a set of targets for savings to be made from the social security budget. Those targets were set by the Chancellor and passed down the road to those at Caxton House, who have set about carving up disabled people’s benefits in order to meet those targets. It is frankly shameful that people are being dragooned into this process, being treated poorly and demeaned by it, and at the end being less likely to stay in work or find work. That is very clear.

[Mrs Caroline Spelman (Meriden) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Owen Smith]

I will give way in a moment. I just want to make a few more points about universal credit, then I will happily give way to the former Minister for disabled people.

Let us move on to the work allowance under universal credit. This is another way in which the Government are penalising disabled people in work. One million low-paid disabled people will be on universal credit when it is fully rolled out, and thanks to the cuts to work allowances that this Secretary of State has introduced, they will all be about £2,000 a year worse off than they are at present. What does the Secretary of State think that cut will do for the life chances of those people? What does he think it will do to help him achieve his mission of halving the disability employment gap? Does he think that earning less will make people more or less likely to stay in work? I think I know the answers to those questions, which is why Labour is clear that we will reverse those cuts.

[Mrs Spelman]

The fact is that the Government spend £50 billion a year on benefits to support people with disabilities and health conditions. Does the hon. Gentleman not want to turn his attention to how we are going to reform the system, rather than simply harking on about how much money is being spent? I think he knows better than that.

[Owen Smith]

I said 20 seconds ago that one way in which I would reform the system would be to reverse the cuts to the work allowances under universal credit. That would clearly make work pay for 1 million disabled people in this country. I would start there, and I shall mention myriad other things later that the Government could do.

I would also reverse the cut to the support for disabled students. Getting qualifications is even more important for disabled students than it is for non-disabled people in this country. This summer, disabled students will be looking at their options and considering whether they can afford to go on to higher education, and they will be grossly disappointed to learn that the Government have already made it harder for them to do so through the decision to cut the disability student allowance which supports nearly 70,000 disabled higher education students.

[Chloe Smith]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Owen Smith]

I am going to finish this point. I might give way to the hon. Lady later.

Can the Secretary of State tell us how many fewer disabled students will go to university this September? I would be really interested to know, but I am not sure that the Government gather statistics on that. It would be good to know whether the cutting of that grant will mean fewer disabled students going to university. Can he explain how putting up barriers to disabled students is going to help his mission to halve the disability employment gap?

The biggest barrier that this Government have raised for disabled people seeking to enter the workplace is the cut to the work-related activity group under the employment and support allowance. That is a cut of around £1,500 a year for 500,000 disabled people whom the Government are meant to be helping into employment.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

I am glad that my hon. Friend has mentioned the fact that the cuts to the employment and support allowance will leave 500,000 disabled people £1,500 a year worse off. Those measures were passed by this Parliament only once the former Secretary of State had given an assurance to this House—and particularly to Conservative Members—that there would be a White Paper on a settlement package for disabled people before the summer recess. Is my hon. Friend as disappointed as I am that that White Paper does not appear to be forthcoming?

[Owen Smith]

I am deeply disappointed. I suspect that lots of Government Members, many of whom were sold the ESA cuts explicitly on the promise that the White Paper would come through, will be deeply disappointed. In fact, I may find it in my speech to mention a few of them in a couple of minutes’ time.

[Mark Spencer (Sherwood) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Owen Smith]

I am going to make a bit more progress and may give way in a minute.

Let us talk about ESA. Here is what the experts, not MPs, think about the cuts to the WRAG under ESA and how they will affect employability. Parkinson’s UK says:

“The cut to the WRAG will push people…even further from the workplace.”

Muscular Dystrophy UK states that the cut

“will widen the disability employment gap rather than reduce it.”

Mind’s chief executive, Paul Farmer, said

“Implying that ill and disabled people will be motivated into work if their benefits are cut is misguided and insulting.”

I could not agree more. It is grossly insulting to disabled people. I know that many Government Back Benchers feel the same way, because that is why they were so loth to give their votes to the Government on the ESA cut. In fact, many of them—[Interruption.] I am going to finish this point. Many of them did so explicitly because the Government promised to beef up support for disabled people. Let me quote a few Government Members and then I will give way to the hon. Member for Sherwood (Mark Spencer).

I will first quote the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Heidi Allen), who said before abstaining on the vote:

“To secure my trust, I need to believe in the White Paper and that the £100 million will go some way to help those people. That is my warning shot to the Government.”—[Official Report, 23 February 2016; Vol. 606, c. 215.]

The hon. Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy) said that the

“White Paper is incredibly important to the matter we are discussing, because it is the replacement for what the Government are proposing to remove.”—[Official Report, 23 February 2016; Vol. 606, c. 222.]

The hon. Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Nadine Dorries) said

“I was about to vote against ESA cuts when he”—

the previous Secretary of State—

“sought me out - he personally and angrily begged me not to”

and that he

“Promised me he was introducing a white paper which guaranteed enhanced and more easily accessible benefits for the seriously disabled”

in this country.

[Nicola Blackwood (Oxford West and Abingdon) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Owen Smith]

I will give way to the hon. Lady and then to the hon. Member for Sherwood.

[Nicola Blackwood]

The shadow Secretary of State mentioned experts and then descended into partisanship, so I thought I might try to bring him back to the experts. He has not yet mentioned the Sayce report, so what are his views on that? It discussed many aspects of employment support for disabled people and highlighted the positive aspects of the Access to Work programme, stating that it

“should be transformed from being the best kept secret in Government to being a recognised passport to successful employment”

and that the Government should double the number of people who are helped. Does he agree with that? How would he propose that the Government go about achieving it?

[Owen Smith]

I agree with lots of it, but the truth, as I have been describing, is that we have seen nothing but cuts. The shift from the Work programme to the Work and Health programme involves an 80% cut in support. Access to Work is dealing with fewer people this year than last year: 31,000 versus 34,000. Those are the facts, and the Government really need to check them. When the Secretary of State was the Secretary of State for Wales, he welcomed the Fit for Work scheme, but he has now scrapped it in my constituency. It is another scheme that is meant to be helping people, as Liz Sayce described, but it is being cut on the Government’s watch. That is the truth of the matter.

Where is this fabled White Paper? Where is it, the one that we have been waiting for all these months? Perhaps the hon. Member for Sherwood knows where the Government have it hidden and can tell us all about it.

[Mark Spencer]

I am grateful to the shadow Secretary of State for giving way. He talks about how strong the feelings are on the Government Benches and how much compassion there is around the issue of trying to get disabled people into work, but it is worth noting that the number of Government Members here to discuss the matter is more than double the number of Opposition Members. The number of Back Benchers here to support him in this debate has just gone down to single figures, which says quite a lot.

[Owen Smith]

Low-brow, low-ball comments such as that really do not help the debate. This is a serious debate. I am taking it extremely seriously on behalf of the Labour Front Bench, and I would expect better from even Tory Back Benchers than that sort of nonsense.

Where is the White Paper that we have been expecting? I will tell the House. A former Employment Minister—the right hon. Member for Witham (Priti Patel) may still be on the Front Bench, but I never seem to see her there any longer because I suspect she is too busy campaigning on Europe outside this House—promised it by the spring. The Secretary of State’s predecessor then turned spring into summer. This Secretary of State went one better and turned a White Paper into a Green Paper, kicking urgency, clarity and specificity down the road. It is another insult to disabled people who are seeing their incomes cut and their Motability vehicles taken away. In my view, it is yet another insult. After disabled people have been knocked from pillar to post with the cuts to ESA, PIP, universal credit, student grants and the Work programme, the Secretary of State, for all his warm words, is putting legislation to put some of those things right on the back burner. That is the undeniable truth behind the shift from a White Paper to a Green Paper. It is failing disabled people.

Her Majesty’s loyal Opposition will support the Government when we think they are getting things right, but we will stand up and be counted when they are getting things wrong. We applaud the establishment of the bold and ambitious target to assist disabled people into work, but we will call it a lie—a cruel lie—if that promise is revealed to be a pipedream without the resources and the will to make it come true.

The Secretary of State says he wants to start a new dialogue with disabled people. Well, we are waiting to hear it. More importantly, he says he intends to make a difference and halve the gap in employment that they face. Well, I am waiting to see it.

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[Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)]

I shall keep it quick, Mr Speaker. It is a pleasure to be called to speak in this debate. I was genuinely pleased when I saw that the Labour party had selected the disability employment gap as the topic of its Opposition day debate, because it seemed so out of character. Why would the Labour party try to have a consensual Opposition day debate when it is all about hurling insults at each other? As ever, the shadow Secretary of State did not let me down. He did not talk about the disability employment gap at all. He gave his usual speech about disability, and he mentioned all the points that he tends to make about disability. The debate could have been called simply “Disability”. He started to refer to what he called the disability gap, and I have no idea what that even meant. It could have meant almost anything. It was a peculiar avenue to go down.

The shadow Secretary of State is quite right, on one level, to hold us to account for a manifesto pledge, but there is a certain irony in the fact that he is holding us to account for a pledge that the Labour party chose not to make in the last election. It was not clear from his speech whether the Labour party has made a commitment to halve the unemployment gap.

[Owen Smith]

indicated assent.

[Paul Maynard]

I am pleased to see the shadow Secretary of State nodding his head. It is a little churlish of him to criticise us for not narrowing the gap in the first year since the election. He is quite right to point out that the gap has broadened—[Interruption.] It really annoys me that the Opposition Front-Bench team always think that the best way to address any speech by a Conservative Member is to sit and give a running verbal commentary on everything we say—a monologue to their imaginary friends sitting on the Front Bench. [Interruption.] Will the hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner) be quiet for a minute? I am sorry to have to shout at her. I listened very patiently and quietly—[Interruption.] I do not want a conversation with her; I am asking her to listen to my speech. I sat patiently and listened to the shadow Secretary of State. I did not engage in a running commentary. [Interruption.] If she wishes to step outside and argue with me now, then we can do so. All I am asking is for the hon. Lady to show me a common courtesy and to listen to what I am saying, not issue a running commentary. [Interruption.] Yes, I know that my time is running down, but I place great importance on standards of politeness in this Chamber. If I choose to use my time in trying to enforce those standards, that is my choice and it is not for her to comment on it.