Welfare Reform and Work Bill — House of Lords, 2016-01-25
Topic: Labor
Jane Susan Campbell (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I have returned today to ask the Government again to include this amendment in the Bill. It would impose a requirement to report annually on the progress made towards their manifesto commitment to halve the disability employment gap. If the Government do not have a disability-focused reporting methodology embedded in their strategy, there will be no robust way of analysing what exactly is preventing disabled people from working, and of putting it right Once again, the so-called disability unemployment problem will be passed around to some official or some department to resolve. I have seen this again and again throughout my career. We tinker at the edges, running pilots, employer awareness campaigns and support programmes with short-lived funding and we wonder why the figures remain abysmally low. Halving the employment gap is a very ambitious commitment, which has not been achieved by any Administration in my lifetime. It will take a well-informed, cross-government strategy that addresses the barriers specific to different impairment groups to understand what lies behind the barriers to work In response to my amendment in Committee the Minister said that, "as progress against the disability employment gap commitment is a key factor of our overall commitment to full employment, these", reporting, "amendments are not necessary, as that progress will be reported in the annual report on full employment".—[Official Report, 14/12/15; col. 1941.] I am afraid that I am not confident that generic annual reporting on full employment will receive the detailed attention that is necessary to understand the obstacles that have dogged disabled people since I began work in the 1980s. The employment rate for disabled people is currently 47.6%, while for non-disabled people it is 80.5%. That is a gap of over 30 percentage points, and it has remained at that level for over a decade. The Government need to radically think again and put a specific reporting obligation in the Bill. I know that departments will then give it higher priority, and everyone concerned will see that the Government’s commitment in their manifesto is genuine In Committee the Minister argued that setting up such a reporting mechanism is costly and will delay universal credit. None of us wants to see this, but I cannot believe that this would further delay its introduction. Reporting is not a difficult task. Indeed, it would help the Government to identify those who encounter the biggest barriers to work, ensuring better targeting of resources for support. It would also give far greater clarity on where the role of academics, disabled people, their charities and employers can help the Government to realise their very exciting commitment. No one sector and no one Government can expect to do it alone My experience of working with Governments on challenging initiatives is that they work when they have legislative priority, detailed analysis, appropriate piloting and good reporting mechanisms. The community care direct payment scheme was a prime example. The collaboration between government, social care professionals and disabled people and their organisations turned a culture of formal care dependency into one of independent living and civic participation. The establishment at that time had always maintained that disabled people could not operate their own care—a bit like the way people think that most disabled people cannot hold down a full-time job. Professionals at that time developed an expensive industry telling us how to live a passive life. It took a very bold Government—a Conservative Government—to turn this around. We can do this again with the employment gap—of that I am sure—but not without a whole-system change that is tracked and reported on regularly so that we can all scrutinise it.