Buckland Review of Autism Employment

Debate between Robert Buckland and Stephen Timms

Thursday 25th April 2024 Commons Chamber

[Sir Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

I am very pleased to follow the right hon. and learned Member for South Swindon (Sir Robert Buckland); I congratulate him on securing this debate and on the report, which makes a very valuable contribution on this extremely important topic. The report does a good job of laying bare the obstacles facing autistic people in the workplace—obstacles that, as he rightly says, we need to overcome. I applaud the obvious passion that he has shown in presenting the report to us. I did not know about his own family link, and I am grateful to him for explaining that to us.

The Work and Pensions Committee has recently launched our own inquiry into disability employment, to follow up the report that we published in 2021 on the disability employment gap. We have just closed our call for evidence for that inquiry—I am glad that we have received evidence from Autistica, among others—and we will soon start to take oral evidence from disability charities and others. The review will help us to frame particular questions on autism employment in the context of that inquiry. As the review points out, the employment gap is much worse for autistic people than for disabled people more broadly.

A disappointing feature of the report for me, though, is the rather unambitious nature of the recommendations, which are along the lines of, “The Government ought to try a bit harder on this, and do a bit more of that.” There are no targets set out in the report, and nothing to help us to monitor progress. I fear that when, in two or five years’ time, we ask whether the recommendations have been delivered, the answer will be a bit unclear. I do not blame the right hon. and learned Member for South Swindon for that—no doubt Ministers would not have gone along with a higher level of ambition—but I fear that the Government will be able to accept all the recommendations without really changing anything. It does seem to be a bit of a missed opportunity.

The report rightly highlights the huge size of the autism employment gap. By how much should we aim to reduce it? In his speech a moment ago, the right hon. and learned Gentleman suggested that the aim should be to increase the rate of employment among people with autism at least up to the overall disability employment rate. That would have been a really substantial target against which to measure progress to include in the report, but it is not in there. My fear is that a lack of ambition has regrettably marked the Government’s efforts on disability employment for some time.

There was a moment not long ago when a higher level of ambition was announced. Government Members may well remember that they campaigned in the 2015 general election on a target announced by David Cameron to halve the wider disability employment gap. That gap fell sharply from 1998 to 2010 through the new deal for disabled people, but it has been stuck at around 30 percentage points ever since; it went down for a bit after 2015, but perhaps unsurprisingly during the pandemic it went back up. Unfortunately, the target of halving the gap was abandoned shortly after the 2015 election was safely won, which strikes me as the kind of move that gives politicians a bad name.

In our 2021 report, the Work and Pensions Committee called unanimously, on a cross-party basis, for that target to be reinstated. The report we are debating this afternoon refers in paragraph 2.7 to making progress on closing the employment gap, and I call on the Government, in responding to that report, to set an ambitious target for increasing the employment rate among people with autism—perhaps, as the right hon. and learned Member for South Swindon has just suggested, up to at least the overall disability employment rate. As the right hon. and learned Gentleman spells out with passion in his foreword, at the moment, we are

“missing out on the skills and energy that autistic people could be contributing, to the detriment of us all.”

He is absolutely right about that. The danger, I fear, is that without targets against which to measure progress, the report may not really change things.

[Sir Robert Buckland]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for engaging so closely. I absolutely agree that without a means of accountability, the work that we have done may well be lost. I think that the task group will play an important role; it will have the freedom to start developing some more hard-and-fast approaches where necessary, and to hold the Government’s feet to the fire—whatever that Government’s complexion. I hope that gives the right hon. Gentleman some reassurance.

[Sir Stephen Timms]

I am grateful to the right hon. and learned Gentleman for that intervention. Perhaps he could use his influence with the task group—I do not know whether he is a member of it; I am not sure how that will work out, but I am sure he will have influence with it—to urge it to adopt the target that he set out a few minutes ago, which I think could make a substantial difference.

I welcome the call in the report for

“processes and support mechanisms that enable autistic staff to be recruited and to succeed.”

In that context, I want to draw attention to a concept that is not mentioned in the report—I am a bit disappointed that it was not—but which has been referred to elsewhere, not least in our Select Committee report.

The concept of job carving means assessing a person’s skills and then tailoring an employee role to those skills. Catherine Hale, director of the Chronic Illness Inclusion project, told our 2021 inquiry that job carving was particularly effective in supporting people with learning disabilities; given the big overlap between autism and learning disability, I think that job carving could certainly help. The charity Mind says that job carving roles for people with learning disabilities can benefit employers by removing tasks from other employees and freeing up time. In its “Working Better” report, the Equality and Human Rights Commission described job carving as a

“a flexible way of managing a workforce, which allows employers to utilise their staff skills in the most productive way whilst enabling disabled people to make a valuable contribution to the world of work.”

Our 2021 report called on the Government as part of their then forthcoming national disability strategy to provide detailed guidance to employers and providers of employment support on how they could job carve roles for disabled people, and called on Jobcentre Plus to encourage local employers in their area to job carve. The Government’s response to our report did not pick up the concept of job carving, but Ministers could still pick it up in responding to the report we are debating this afternoon. I wonder whether the Minister, who I know takes a very close interest in this area, recognises that job carving could make a significant difference to the employment prospects of many autistic people.

One thing the Government response to our 2021 inquiry did refer to was the plan at that time to increase the number of places on the intensive personalised employment support scheme. IPES provides voluntary employment support to people with disabilities and complex barriers to employment. As we noted in our report, the guidance to IPES providers explicitly mentions job carving as an intervention that can help disabled people to find and stay in work. IPES is referred to in paragraph 2.11 of the right hon. and learned Gentleman’s report, which rightly points out that referrals to IPES have now ended, as our Select Committee heard in a one-off evidence session last week on the Government’s back to work plan. There will be no more IPES referrals.

We were told by providers at our evidence session last week that the work and health programme, also referred to in paragraph 2.11 of the report, is also coming to an end. Those are two programmes that the report rightly identifies as providing valuable help for people with autism to move into employment which are being shut down. The Minister may want to comment on this in due course, but, as far as I can tell, it does not appear that any of the newer employment support programmes, such as WorkWell and universal support, will provide support comparable to that which is being closed down, and which the report has rightly identified as very helpful. The fear is that, despite the laudable aims set out in the report, which I know the Minister will endorse, we are in reality going backwards. The provision at the moment, which has been there for some time, is being removed. It would be helpful if the Minister could tell us why IPES and the work and health programme are being closed down, and where the new initiatives are to close what looks like an emerging gap in provision for people with autism.

Employers are struggling at the moment to fill vacancies. The right hon. and learned Member for South Swindon is absolutely right that there is a big opportunity here to boost disability employment if we can just find a way to enable employers to tap into it. The hon. Member for Worcester (Mr Walker) is absolutely right that employers are willing to do so, if only they knew how—it is a bit of a closed book to them. I do not think there is a lack of willingness on the part of employers, but there is a lack of information.

It was very interesting to read in the right hon. and learned Gentleman’s review about Auticon, which I had not heard of before. It is an IT consultancy in which 80% of the workforce are autistic, highly talented IT consultants. The founders—I think they were in Scandinavia —recognised that many autistic adults have extraordinary abilities, such as pattern recognition, sustained concentration and attention to detail, which are valuable qualities in many employment contexts. However, autistic people need support to secure and maintain those jobs, and Auticon specifically provides that support, understanding the needs of its employees, and has built a successful business on that basis.