Welfare Reform Bill

moved Amendment No. 27: 27: Clause 8 , page 6, line 8, leave out ““by”” and insert ““on the grounds of”” The noble Lord said: In moving AmendmentNo. 27, I wish to speak also to Amendments Nos. 39 and 84 and make passing reference to Amendments Nos. 57 and 58. My amendments in this group attempt to make some provision for those claimants who are on ESA, not because of their own limitations but because of the attitudes of some employers. This is unfortunately not an unlikely obstacle to employment, but is instead one of the major barriers to work that disabled people continue to face, despite the Disability Discrimination Act as amended. The Cochrane review found that 58 per cent of people with schizophrenia can work with the proper support yet, according to the DWP’s report, 75 per cent of employers believe that it would be difficult or impossible to employ someone with that disability. Why are the Government not taking the opportunity this Bill offers to address this? We are currently debating a new system specifically designed to help disabled people move towards employment. What is the point of the ESA if, after considerable effort, time and investment on the part of the claimants and the organisations involved, employers are still unwilling to employ disabled people through lack of information or support? Our amendments therefore seek to ensure that the Bill addresses some of the supply-side problems disabled people can face. The first two amendments are to appreciate that a disabled person’s ability to work can be limited because no employer will hire them, even if they are perfectly capable of doing the work and, indeed, want to do the work. Such discrimination, whether deliberate or unintentional, is common and no less an obstacle to work than the disability itself. Can the Minister tell me how many disabled people are employed in non-government business now compared with 1997? Despite the Disability Discrimination Act and its amendment that I just mentioned, can the Government claim any credit here? It is instructive to learn the record of the Minister’s own department. In a recent Written Answer in another place I discovered that in 2005-06, 34 new disabled people were employed in the DWP but 500 left. Going back to the foundation of the DWP in 2002-03, the statistics are much the same. To illustrate the problems of disabled people seeking employment, I refer to one of my correspondents who had a very bad experience in an inner-city area. He is a highly intelligent man who had just completed a computer accountancy course, even though he had produced a computer program for one of his son’s schools at which he was a parent governor. He applied to the city council for a job. This individual is partially sighted with a degenerative disease and has now reached the point where he walks with a white stick. When he turned up for the interview, for which he reckoned he was qualified—and clearly the council officials reckoned he was qualified, on paper anyway—he was told to go away because he was carrying a white stick. That is illustrative of the sort of problems that can, and, I am afraid, do occur, and should not. I have to confess that that happened before the recent amendment to the Disability Discrimination Act. If that Act is working properly, such a situation will never occur again. It could easily occur in the private sector, however, which is something one does not want to happen. My other amendment is to encourage the Government to complete the policy that is set out in this Bill regarding making claimants ready for work by improving awareness among employers. There is much that could be done to educate them, not only in the capabilities and strengths of disabled people but in the support already available, such as the disability facilitation grant. Do the Government have any plans to improve awareness of that grant? What other means of support is currently offered to employers with disabled employees? To form an effective policy for improving employer attitudes to disabled people would involve considerable input from the DTI, as well as from the Minister’s department. What co-ordination is there currently between the two departments on this issue? After such a comprehensive review of the disability benefit system, it will be deeply disappointing if the hoped-for improvements for disabled people are not achieved due to lack of sufficient co-operation between the two departments. I hope that the noble Lord will assure me that that will not happen. Various ideas are floating around as to how that might be done but, before mentioning them, I should like to hear the Minister’s response to what he would like to see done, and we will see if we can coalesce. I beg to move.