People with Disabilities: Employment

Lord Laming Excerpts

Tuesday 28th October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for sharing her circumstance with us. I am really optimistic about Connect to Work. For noble Lords who do not know, Connect to Work is a specialist voluntary support and employment programme. It is for anyone who is disabled or who has a health condition or other barrier to work, such as homelessness. Local authorities, supported by DWP, are developing programmes. The reason it works—there is international evidence that shows what works in this space—is that it incorporates helping someone to work out what they want, engaging with employers and job-finding. A specialist adviser works with an individual and with local employers, and connects an individual to an employer, gets them into conversations, and then gets them into work and carries on supporting them in work. Crucially, they help the employers know how best to support people. Recently, I was talking to the head of this programme at one of the south coast councils. She said that lots of employers want to do the right thing but often they do not know how to —they may lack knowledge or be worried about how to have the necessary conversations. We have to tackle this on both fronts, but I am positive about it.

[Lord Laming (CB)]

Does the Minister recall the Public Services Committee’s report on the transition of young people with a disability from education into adult services? The evidence showed that there was a remarkable divergence. In some parts of the country, local authorities demonstrated quite inspiring work in getting young people with disabilities into work; in other parts of the country, the parents described it as like facing a cliff face. Does the Minister agree that we should set targets for every local authority, to make sure that, year on year, the number of young people with a disability going into employment is increasing? The noble Baroness, Lady Monckton, can demonstrate that very well.

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord, who makes a very important point. There has been an issue for some time—I am not telling him anything new; he knows it better than I do—around the transition between the support for young people when they are in school and the support when they get out of school. The bit that we can do something about is around funding to local authorities, which we are providing. A couple of weeks ago, we announced further funding of £167 million to roll out Connect to Work to nine further areas in England, and we expect all areas to be open by early next year. We are working with them to look at what they are providing, how they provide it, and how they tailor it to their local populations and job markets. If we can make a difference and get young people into work—I thought the example of Tom working in Waitrose, until things went wrong, was so interesting—then what is gained from them working is certainly money, but also self-respect, teamwork, a peer group and the chance to make a difference. If we can do that, it can be transformative.