‘We need a national strategy to close the disability employment gap’

Disability employment is once again high on the agenda – and rightly so. As co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Disability Employment, it’s an issue I care deeply about, and one I’ve been thinking about a great deal.

In recent months we’ve heard a lot about the number of people who have been ‘written off’ from work, and about the strong moral case for changing that. I welcome the focus Secretary of State Pat McFadden has brought to this vital issue.

We’ve rightly heard about the difference good work makes to people’s lives. The next step is to look just as closely at what needs to change in the system and in the job market to make that a reality for everyone.

For me, the big question is this: how do we remove the barriers disabled people face getting into work – and, just as importantly, staying in it?

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A new report from the disability equality charity Scope, Work Without Barriers: A blueprint for employment equality, points to exactly where I believe the government can make the biggest difference to the disability employment gap – by removing the structural barriers that make it so hard for disabled people to find and keep a job.

Barriers like inaccessible workplaces, the denial of workplace adjustments, a lack of flexible working. Backlogs in getting Access to Work funding so someone has the right support and equipment to do their job. Employers who simply don’t feel confident about hiring a disabled person.

The report tells the story of one disabled worker who thrived in a supermarket job because their employer offered flexible shifts, adjusted their duties and gave them practical support through periods of ill health. When they moved jobs, those adjustments disappeared, their health worsened, and they were eventually forced out of work altogether. This was never about their desire to work – it was about a workplace that failed to adapt.

Scope’s research found that more than a quarter of disabled workers or jobseekers have had requests for adjustments at work denied or not put in place over the past ten years. Many were pushed out of work as a result, or saw their health decline.

It’s little wonder, then, that the disability employment gap – the difference between the employment rates of disabled and non-disabled people – has been stuck at around 30 percent for more than a decade.

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Successive governments of all colours have worked to close that gap, but for too long progress has been slow. We now have a real opportunity to be more ambitious – and that is precisely why the APPG for Disability Employment was set up, and why its work matters.

For too long the debate has leaned heavily on benefit conditionality – on the idea that we can move disabled people into work chiefly by tightening the rules. But unless we tackle the barriers in the job market first, we risk asking people to walk through a door that isn’t yet open.

This is where I believe we can and should go further.

What we need is a national disability employment strategy, focused squarely on removing these barriers so that disabled people can get into work and stay there.

A plan that brings every part of government together, developed with disabled people, with clear outcomes and a genuine ambition to halve the disability employment gap. It should be overseen across government – spanning employment, business, education, health, benefits, and national and local investment – rather than sitting with any one department alone.

We also need to reform the Access to Work system, which exists to help disabled people work, and make sure people can get the adjustments they are legally entitled to, including flexible working.

Employers are central to the solution, too, which is why I’d like to see the government build on and strengthen the Disability Confident scheme. I’d also like us to go further and introduce mandatory disability workforce reporting for larger employers – just as we now expect on gender – so that transparency drives real accountability and change.

Do this, and we can start to make work without barriers a real possibility for disabled people – and finally begin to move the dial on the disability employment gap.

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