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Disability Policy (Economic Downturn)

Thank you, Mr. Olner. I acknowledge what the hon. Member for Castle Point (Bob Spink) said; it would not be a Westminster Hall debate if he did not make an intervention. We need to be bold in tackling the problems of economic inequality and poverty for people with disabilities, and doing so should motivate hon. Members from all parties. Leonard Cheshire's 2009 disability review, which is an excellent document, shows that 42 per cent. of respondents found it difficult or very difficult to manage on their personal income. Some 63 per cent. of respondents were in fuel poverty and 55 per cent. did not have any savings. Leonard Cheshire's 2008 report, "Disability Poverty in the UK," found that disabled people are twice as likely to live in poverty as non-disabled people. Many of those issues have been exacerbated by the recession. We need to consider ways to increase employment further, reduce discrimination, improve educational provision and ensure that the welfare system works effectively for disabled people, who are, in many cases, unable to work. Although employment is not the panacea for ending all disability inequality, it plays an important role in reducing social, economic and cultural barriers by providing many disabled people with that vital sense of meaning and independence. The employment rate for disabled people has increased from 38 per cent. in 1998 to 48 per cent. in 2008. However, only 10 per cent. of all people with a learning disability work, which is why the extension of targeted Government programmes, such as the Jobs First pilot scheme, is essential. The recession has made finding a job much harder for everyone in society, and people with disabilities start at a clear disadvantage.The unemployment rate for disabled people increased from 8.1 per cent. in October-December 2007 to 10.4 per cent. in October-December 2009, and the economic inactivity rate of disabled people at the end of last year was 44.1 per cent, compared with 16 per cent. among people without a disability. Sadly, stigma and discrimination are still present. More than half the respondents to Leonard Cheshire's 2009 report believed that they had been discriminated against in the workplace, which is totally unacceptable in any circumstances. The Government are working hard to increase employment opportunities for people with disabilities, and that needs to continue with even greater ferocity in the post-recession climate. Pathways to work, which has helped more than 180,000 people into work, should continue to be delivered robustly and fairly. Indeed, £1 billion of investment has been promised for the period between 2008 and 2011. However, payment by in-work results, a key part of the programme, can occasionally result in the most able jobseekers being creamed off and the least able clearly being neglected. It would be wrong to ignore those who face the most challenging obstacles to employment. The access to work scheme has also proved a great success, helping some 44,000 people into employment. There is an ambitious Government promise to double the budget from £69 million to £138 million by 2013-14, which I hope will be achieved. Access to work provides support for adapting premises and people travelling into work, but there is more to be done to highlight the scheme to employers—ensuring that portability is built in and forcefully making the moral and economic case for employing people with disabilities. Earlier, I mentioned benefits. Part of the programme for encouraging employment has been to reclassify incapacity benefit as employment and support allowance. That has been supported by disability charities as a much-needed change that judges people by their potential and removes the expectation that certain people with disabilities cannot work. Continued safeguards are required to ensure that the work capability assessment does not force some disabled people on to jobseeker's allowance, which can fail to meet their longer-term needs. Inequality and discrimination are not only present in the economic sphere. Great steps have been taken to extend equality legislation to people with disabilities, the disability equality duty in 2005 being just one example of the Government's legislative commitments. However, problems and challenges remain. Of all adult protection referrals to social services, 15 per cent. involve crime or abuse against people with learning disabilities. In order to deliver real disability equality in the economic upturn, disabled people need more than economic rights, vital though those are. Significant cultural changes are also required. We need to tackle in no uncertain terms disability hate crime, which is currently the subject of a formal inquiry by the Equality and Human Rights Commission; the lack of political representation; and a cultural refusal to integrate disabled people fully into many aspects of modern society. That is why the Equality Bill, which has been welcomed by the Disability Charities Consortium, is so important. The Bill will put a new equality duty on public bodies, use public procurement to improve equality and extend the use of positive action in political life, which has been welcomed by the great united voice of those involved in disability who rightly make their views known to us as parliamentarians. In the post-recession climate, it is incredibly important that the Government should enforce the relevant provisions of the Equality Bill so that service providers do not adopt a policy of doing the least possible. It is by delivering those wide cultural, social and political changes, alongside a legislative programme for social care reform and economic assistance, that disability policy after the recession can bring about real change for disabled people. That is the hallmark of a caring society and of a modern and inclusive Britain.