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Welfare Reform Bill

I accept that, but I tabled parliamentary questions to all Departments asking how many disabled staff in each Department received support from access to work. It is interesting that some Departments simply did not know, and that others provided figures. Indeed, one Department—the Department for Education and Skills—to its credit has an earmarked fund, the reasonable adjustments fund, to deal with such requests. All I am saying is that I would like to be assured that there will not be any incentive on line-managers not to appoint somebody because they have a disability. If half a dozen people are coming for an interview for a post all of whom can do the job equally well so that the decision as to which to appoint is a marginal one, if one person will cost more money to employ because they are disabled, I would be worried, even in respect of a Government Department, that there might be an in-built bias to discriminate against that disabled person. As long as the situation is being monitored carefully, I will happily accept my hon. Friend’s assurance that I have completely misunderstood the problem and that such situations will never arise—but I will still be looking for it, just in case. Ring-fencing funds for that purpose—which is apparently what the DFES does—might be a way around that. Where are the 1 million jobs to come from? I have only two minutes left, but let me make a few comments about the important role of employers. I attended a breakfast meeting with the hon. Member for Angus (Mr. Weir). [Interruption.] I attended a breakfast on Thursday morning along with one or two Members—I can recall one of them at least—with the New Beginnings coalition, whose aim is to identify and help to dismantle the barriers faced by disabled people in employment, and particularly to ensure that employers are engaged in welfare reform. It is an organisation that my Front-Bench Friends will be well aware of, and it does sterling work. A number of issues were raised in relation to the employers’ role, and I think that it is fair to say that there was a general feeling that most employers are not engaged in the welfare reform exercise very much at all. There was a comment to the effect that as employers to some degree interface with the Department of Trade and Industry, could we pass on the message that we know that the DWP has the major role to play in this, but the DTI might also put in some effort to using its good offices to persuade employers to adopt good practice in this regard? There is a range of issues to do with using the private and voluntary sector in pathways to work. I have said for quite some time that, sadly or otherwise, I have often found that there are private and voluntary sector organisations that are far better placed to give support than many of our Jobcentre Plus offices; that is the truth. There are some very good voluntary sector organisations, but they need to have good contractual arrangements. In an advertisement that I saw in SocietyGuardian last Wednesday—if I can mention The Guardian without the Whips getting too irate—for the new pathways to work contracts, the key contractors were offered contracts of three years-plus, but if there are subcontractors, I hope that they get more than mere one-year contracts under this system. Organisations that provide such support must be able to work in decent conditions, not least because the good ones employ lots of disabled people, which is why they are very good at providing the service.