Employment Gap for Blind and Sight-impaired People

Question

Asked by

To ask His Majesty’s Government what plans they have to close the employment gap for blind and sight-impaired people, and by when.

My Lords, this Government are committed to providing high-quality support to disabled people, including those who are blind or visually impaired. This group will be supported to enter and stay in work through our pathways to work guarantee and our connect to work supported employment programme. Our progress is monitored through the Get Britain Working outcome metrics, which include indicators such as the health-related economic inactivity rate and the disability employment gap.

My Lords, if you are blind or sight impaired, in the UK currently the employment rate is just 27%. If you are not disabled, it is 83%. Therefore, if you are sight impaired you have only around a one in four chance of being in work. This cannot continue. Will the Minister strongly consider establishing a taskforce to look at the issues and identify scalable solutions to close this pernicious gap that blights individual lives and scars our economy and society? To be clear: this is not a party-political point. No Government have gripped it. Will this one? Here is the rub: currently, if you are blind or sight impaired in the UK, talent is everywhere, opportunity is not.

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for that question and agree that it is not political. I know that his approach to this is not. I am grateful for how he approaches these issues. There are different views on the statistics. We can have a conversation elsewhere. A lot depends on how the definitions are made but, either way, the disability employment gap is far too big and needs tackling. As the noble Lord will know only too well, things got worse during the pandemic and have not really recovered.

This Government have made a real commitment to engaging, investing significant additional sums of money in supporting people with a range of disabilities and health conditions, including blind or visually impaired people, back to work; lots more tailored support; investment in supported employment programmes; and making sure that there are specialist disability employment advisers and coaches who understand how they can help people. We are also working with employers. I can talk more about that if it is helpful.

I am not in a position to announce a taskforce today, but we have announced the Independent Disability Advisory Panel. The membership will be announced shortly. The Government are taking very seriously the need to listen to the voices of disabled people, including blind and visually impaired people, as well as talking to the organisations that support them. I would welcome having further conversations with the noble Lord about how we can get this right.

My Lords, the Minister acknowledges the sight-loss employment gap. How many full-time equivalent disability employment advisers are employed by the DWP—and do all DEAs have specific sight-loss training? Do access to work assessors and jobcentre staff have sight-loss training and, if they do not, will the Government seek to remedy this?

I am not sure we have any published statistics, but my best understanding at the moment is that there are more than 800 disability employment advisers and DEA leaders. The Government’s aim and commitment is that every work coach will have access to a specialist disability employment adviser. The DWP provides particular learning for those who come into that DEA role, and that includes specific content relating to blindness and visual impairment. It is intended to give awareness of the challenges that people with sight loss who come to us may face, highlights the support we can offer, and explains what the DWP’s responsibilities are. As an organisation, we are looking specifically to improve that. The Government have recognised that we need to be investing more. We are going to put more money in over the rest of this decade, investing more money in hiring, improving the quality and the quantity of support providing help to disabled customers. We aim for it to be tailored to each individual circumstance, and that is what we ought to do. The answer is yes, we are investing in training as well as in having people on the ground who can help.

My Lords, I have been registered as partially sighted since December 2020. While I absolutely agree with the point of the Question regarding the need for employers to be more alert and more open to doing things differently—artificial intelligence plays a major part in helping blind and partially sighted people to see and proceed—I wonder whether the Minister will take away the point I wish to make, which is that there is a great deal of room for improvement in this House itself. There are many people who are very helpful but, overall, the system is completely dysfunctional. I thank the Lord Speaker for the work he has done in trying to bring this to the attention of leaders of various departments in the House, but there is no overall programme; there is in all the Civil Service departments but not in the political wings of our work. I hope the Minister will take that message away with her.

I am grateful to my noble friend for raising that and for bringing her personal experience to the fore here. My department is responsible for disability in government, and we work very hard to be as accessible as possible. We have significant numbers of staff and colleagues who themselves have a range of disabilities, including sight impairment, and we work constantly to improve what we do and what we offer in that space. On Parliament, I think she makes a good challenge. The fact that Parliament is not subject in the same way as other employers to some of the legislative requirements does not mean that we should not do just as good a job as other people and try to make it better. I am very happy to talk to the House authorities on her behalf about how we continue to make progress in that area.

My Lords, is the issue here not that the Equality Act applies to the staff in this House but not to the Members? Should that not be sorted so that Members are given the kind of support that we see in other parliaments—such as, dare I say, the European Parliament—where they are given the support to carry out their activities?

I have always known the noble Lord as a good European—I am glad to hear him speaking up for the European Parliament today. To be honest, I am not sure we can use that as an excuse. We do not have to be made to do something to do it, and the House should look at it.

My Lords, I had an aunt who was blind from birth, was funded to train as a physiotherapist—that was on careers advice at school—and worked for 43 years full-time. Is consideration being given to ensure that young people who have long-term permanent sight problems get the right career advice?

I am grateful to the noble Baroness. Like her, I have had the benefit of a physio- therapist who is herself blind and is very good indeed. The noble Baroness makes an important point. We have been working really hard with our colleagues who work with the young people who come in. The reason we try to have tailored advice is to work out what works for that person. Just because it worked for the noble Baroness’s aunt, it might not work for her next-door neighbour in the same circumstances. It is about trying to find out what somebody is able to do, wants to do and has a passion for, and how we can give them skills and support.

One of the great joys of having my noble friend Lady Smith join us as Minister for Skills in the DWP as well as the DfE, getting the remit for adult skills, is that it is helpful to join up what we are doing to try to find opportunities for and support individuals, with them having the skills to enable them to follow through on that.

My Lords, the Conservative and Liberal coalition Government did away with Remploy. At the time that they abandoned Remploy, many of us said that it would leave the disabled exposed. Is it not the case that they did not make any provision for those people who were previously employed through Remploy?

My Lords, I cannot speak to exactly what happened at the time that was abolished. What I can say is that this Government are absolutely committed to supporting people. I talk to brilliant, inspiring disability advocates in my organisation—advisers who have customers who come in and start out thinking there are not things that they can do and end up having jobs found for them and being supported into them. I want to do two things: enable people to get all the help they can, and persuade employers, many of whom want to hire disabled people but do not know how, that they can hire them and that they can thrive and be a real asset to the organisation. We should all get behind that.

My Lords, to the Minister’s point about employers, I remember that in government we offered all employers up to £52,500 per year for every person with disabilities to be supported into work. What has happened to that offer?

I am not sure what the noble Baroness is referring to but, if I can find out, I will be very happy to write to her. We now have something called the support with employee health and disability service, which was developed with input from smaller businesses and disability organisations. It gives employers tailored step-by-step guidance as to how they can support employees in common workplace scenarios involving health and disability. It helps employers to understand their legal obligations and what reasonable adjustments may look like, and it even goes down to helping them feel confident having sometimes tricky conversations, either with a new member of staff or somebody whose health or disability may be changing. We know that lots of employers want to do the right thing; our job is to help them to do it well.