Disability Employment Gap

Debate between Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford and Stephen Crabb

Wednesday 8th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Crabb]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. I am clear, as is my whole ministerial team at the Department, that the challenge of mental health is enormous and profound. We must do far more to understand it and its interaction with employment. We will be spending tens of millions of pounds in the coming years on pilots to try to understand what interventions can make a positive difference for people with mental health conditions, and I can assure my hon. Friend that we are determined to see positive change in that regard.

We are expanding Access to Work, so that 25,000 more disabled people by 2021 will be helped with the additional costs they face from working. We are ensuring that disabled people are part of our plans to increase apprenticeships, with an accessible apprenticeship task force which is providing advice on how potential apprentices with learning disabilities and other hidden impairments can take these up.

[Nicola Blackwood]

The Secretary of State is generous in giving way. On Access to Work and the fact that we are increasing spending on it, that increased spending will be of little value if it remains, as Liz Sayce said, the “best kept secret” in the DWP. How can we ensure that the most vulnerable and the smallest businesses, which would benefit most from it, hear about it and can gain the full value of that scheme?

[Stephen Crabb]

The slightly glib answer that I could give is that there is a role for all of us in this House to promote Access to Work in our communities and constituencies, but there is a broader challenge for the Department and for the Ministers as to how we get that information out. My hon. Friend the Under-Secretary, who has responsibility for disabled people, is taking the lead on that and will refer to it in his closing remarks.