Reasonable Adjustments (Duty on Employers to Respond)

I beg to move,

That leave be given to bring in a Bill to make provision about a deadline by which employers must respond to requests for reasonable adjustments from disabled workers; and for connected purposes.

I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests and my proud membership of Unison. I thank the Minister for Social Security and Disability, my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Sir Stephen Timms), for being present today.

Before being elected, I was the national officer for disability equality at the country’s biggest trade union, Unison. I was also a shop steward for many years, where I represented workers who were having problems at work, and it was disabled workers more than any others who were facing problems. In fact, disabled workers made up about two thirds of my cases as a union rep. By law, employers have to make changes to help disabled people stay in their jobs. These are called reasonable adjustments. They can include changes such as a special keyboard to reduce arthritis pain, IT software to help workers with dyslexia, or a start time of 10 o’clock instead of 9 o’clock, after tablets have kicked in.

Unison’s research found that almost three quarters of disabled workers are turned down for such reasonable adjustments, and even where the employer has said yes, about a quarter of disabled workers wait a year or more to have the changes put in place. The most common story I heard from disabled workers was that they were just ignored by their employer—they never got a reply at all. For many, that meant that they had to do their job while in pain, or they were set up to fail, because they did not have the right equipment. Their manager would start to criticise their performance, because it is hard for someone to hit their targets when they are in constant pain. They would end up having to take time off sick. Before they knew it, they would be pushed out the door. Others just resigned because the pain or stress was too much. That was all because their employer refused to make those small changes that would have kept them in work.

Employers can get away with this because there is no legal deadline by which they have to reply to disabled workers’ requests for reasonable adjustments. That contrasts with other employment rights, such as flexible working requests, where the employer has to reply within eight weeks. There is no such rule for reasonable adjustments. That serious gap is leading to disabled people being pushed out of good jobs and on to benefits. My Bill would set a clear deadline for employers to reply to disabled workers making a request for reasonable adjustments.

There are already more than 5 million disabled people in work, but that represents less than 52% of disabled people, compared with 80% of non-disabled people being in work. That 29-point difference between the percentage of disabled people in employment versus non-disabled people is called the disability employment gap, and Governments have tried and failed to crack it for years.