Think Work First: The Transition from Education to Work for Young Disabled People (Public Services Committee Report)

Lord Laming Excerpts

Tuesday 4th November 2025 Grand Committee

[Lord Laming (CB)]

My Lords, at the outset, I once again emphasise how greatly the committee was helped by hearing from children with a disability and their parents. They very generously helped us to have an insight and to understand something of their experiences. That was so valuable.

It is worth while constantly reminding ourselves that childhood is a time of very great change and individual growth. It is the foundation of personal development. That being so, I am sure we all agree that, as a society, our aim should be for each and every child to have every opportunity to reach their full potential. Of course, change brings with it uncertainty, so it is not possible to predict what the outcome for each child may be. That said, sadly, there is often the temptation in some areas to make an assumption about the future prospects of each child. This especially applies to a child with a disability. Indeed, for children with a disability, sad to say, it is not unusual for a catalogue to be created from a very early age of things that they will never be able to do or skills that they will never possess. That is tragic.

This is why we should put in place, at a very early stage in a child’s life, both a personal development plan and a programme of support, for the child and their parents. The parents of a child with a disability often face very real challenges, so they deserve our support and encouragement. Alas, the evidence from the committee shows that, at best, the services provided for children with a disability and their parents are, to put it mildly, very patchy. Indeed, it is right to record that in some places, the services offered to children with a disability and their parents were seriously inadequate.

The movement from education to employment is a milestone in the life of every child. In the case of a child with a disability, it is a key stage in their development. In too many places, however, the arrangements are unpredictable, unreliable and negative. The good news, though, is that the committee heard of some heartwarming and outstanding work with children with a disability at this important stage in their lives. In each case, the good work was based on a vision and the determination to ensure that each child matters. In some areas, there was a well-developed plan of preparation for the transition from school to work in place for each child. In other areas, there was nothing.

Sadly, in other places, parents described the transition when their child left school as being like facing a frightening cliff edge. Too often, no preparation had been made, no plan had been created and no discussions with the adult services had taken place, as if they occupied a different place in the world. Due to this, parents described it as being like starting from scratch all over again. Although children’s services and adult services are provided by the same local authority, incredibly, that did not mean that these services were interested in communicating with each other or able to do so.

Children with a disability and their parents deserve better, especially at this critical time of transition. It seemed that in some places it was assumed that a child with a disability would simply be regarded as unemployable for the rest of their life on leaving school. This approach must be unacceptable, and I hope the Minister will take this point very seriously. The reality is that across the country, the number of children with a disability who are helped into employment is remarkably small. That being so, we should all set ourselves a challenge to demonstrate that there is an increase in the number of these children with a disability moving into employment each year. I am afraid this is a rather neglected field.

We need to be altogether much more ambitious. However, we can take encouragement because, despite all I have said, there is good news. The committee heard some evidence that was both inspiring and instructive of what can be done. I will refer to just one example, which is simple but telling. We heard that in one local authority area, the children’s services and the adult services worked together to organise a hub meeting, in which local employers and young people soon to leave school could meet in semi-social circumstances. The employers described their work and the employment possibilities, and then the children set out their skills and hopes for the future.

In one such meeting, an employer described the work of his recently created business. In doing so, he acknowledged that, because he was mainly concentrating on securing more customers and making the organisation grow, he sometimes failed to carefully manage the details of things such as ordering stock, cost control, staff hours worked et cetera. A pupil responded by saying that, despite his limitations because of his disability, he loved working on spreadsheets. The employer indicated that he had no experience in designing or working with spreadsheets and did not know how to engage in that area of work. The employer invited the young man to visit the workplace and explore together what might be possible. It was good to hear that the young man was offered a job but even better to hear that it completely transformed the lives of both the employer and the young man. The lesson from this and from a great deal of what we heard is that it can be done because it is being done in some places. The challenge, and the challenge for the Minister, is that each of us should do all we can to make sure that this is working everywhere in our society. As a nation we must rise to the challenge for the good of everyone.

I commend the important messages in this report—sadly, some are negative and things need to be rectified, but some are very hopeful. We can do it because it is being done. Let us just get on and do it. I hope that the Minister and others will take from this meeting that there is, with great ambition, great hope ahead.

As I will shortly be stepping down from the Public Services Committee, so ably chaired by the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, I pay special tribute to the work of the administrative staff who are so competent and conscientious and such a pleasure to work with. I offer them my warmest thanks.

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.

PIP Changes: Impact on Carer’s Allowance

Lord Laming Excerpts

Monday 31st March 2025 Lords Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Baroness Sherlock) (Lab)]

My Lords, the one thing we can definitely agree on is that we support carers. We are grateful for the work they do. Society has reason to be grateful for the work they do. This Government have supported them. We have shown that by, for example, boosting the carer’s allowance earnings threshold by £45 a week to the highest level it has ever been since the benefit was created in the 1970s, benefiting more than 60,000 carers by 2029-30. The Government are making necessary changes to stem the rising costs and reform the focus of our sickness and disability benefits system. Those changes will affect some people on carer’s allowance.

The noble Baroness need not worry about reading leaks. All the details are set out in the Green Paper, which I commend to her as a good read for this evening, perhaps before she goes to bed. We are deliberately setting out to consult on how we can support those affected by any of the measures in it. I assure her that nothing will happen overnight. No one is going to lose their benefits overnight. Even when the new changes come in, nobody will lose their benefits until there has been a full and individual assessment of their personal circumstances.

[Lord Laming (CB)]

My Lords, I am sure the Minister will agree that our society, with an ageing population and keeping people with profound disabilities alive, is increasingly dependent on carers. Can the Minister assure the House that nothing will be done that will undermine the value we attach to carers’ responsibilities and make them feel that our society does not value them as a whole?

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord for that excellent question. I reiterate our absolute appreciation of the work that is done by both paid and unpaid carers. We are very conscious of the fact that, as a country, we have not been able to sort out the problems in our social care system. Adult social care has put extra pressure on to unpaid carers, which is one of the reasons—a clear reason—why we have asked the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, to produce a report by next year on the medium-term challenges, so that we can try to get a long-term fix by 2028. In the short term, I hope that carers will be reassured by the investment the Government are making to, for example, allow them, for the first time ever, if they are working alongside caring, which many are, to earn the equivalent of 16 hours at the national minimum wage before losing any of their benefit.

“Get Britain Working” White Paper

Lord Laming Excerpts

Wednesday 27th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Laming (CB)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for setting out the numbers of young people we are talking about who are not in employment or education. The Minister will know that earlier this year the Public Services Committee of this House set out a report based on a study of the transitional arrangements many of these young people experience as they move from school to employment, especially those with a disability or long-term health problems.

We had the extremes in the evidence. Some were simply brushed aside as being unemployable for a lifetime. For others, services and employers at local level got together and produced some wonderful opportunities to completely change the life chances of these young people. Could the Minister assure the House that the Government will look at this report and take forward the recommendations? They were considerable and intended to achieve some of the outcomes set out in this paper.

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for that intervention and also of course for his many years of experience and work in the field of social policy and social care. I very much feel that what he described is what we are trying to do, and I absolutely assure him that the report will be looked at in detail and we will go through the recommendations carefully. One challenge we have is that it is too easy to write off young people. Nowadays, they are judged: the assumption is that they are not trying very hard and the expectations are there. Actually, I do not meet young people who do not want to be out there building a life. It is just that, sometimes, the challenges feel too big. If we can find the right way to support them—if we can get proper mental health support in place and if we can help employers to know how best to work with people who have mental health challenges—we can get people into jobs and they can stay in them.

In the years that I worked with single parents, for example, one thing I learned is that if people have found it difficult to get a job, if they find one that works for them, they are the most loyal employees anyone could get, because they have found a way in and something that works, and it becomes a brilliant relationship. So I am grateful to the noble Lord for that and I will take a careful look at it.

Child Poverty: Benefit Cap

Lord Laming Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

I am very grateful to my noble friend for the absolution and for the thought that I am among friends. Nerds are my people.

She makes an important point. We have a lot of evidence, but there are real gaps in it. The commission will gather the evidence that is there, listen to how people are experiencing these things on the ground and look at the impact of policies across government. To give one small example, she mentions disability. In the benefit cap, households are exempted if they get a whole series of benefits. If they are getting universal credit because of a disability—if they are getting the UC care element, carer’s allowance, PIP or ESA—they are exempt from the benefit cap, but that does not take away the problem that there is still a massive disability employment gap. We want people to get into work. If we are to hit that 80% employment target, a challenge is to look not just at the kind of jobs that are out there but at how we close the gap between people who want to work and employers who want employees. That is part of what we will do in the evidence process.

[Lord Laming (CB)]

My Lords, in respect of child poverty, will the Minister do all that she can to ensure that estranged parents, especially fathers, pay their proper maintenance agreements?

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

Absolutely, my Lords. It is not only an area of my responsibility in the department but one of long-standing concern. A significant amount of money changes hands already but we are looking at each stage—how do we make the Child Maintenance Service operate ever better than it does at the moment? An awful lot of money changes hands, mostly relatively smoothly. There are challenges with some non-resident parents and some who simply do not wish to pay, so the Child Maintenance Service is constantly updating the range of powers it has to go after them.

We all take the same view: you may separate from your partner, but you do not separate from your children. We need to find ways to make sure that both parents contribute. We have a consultation out, which we are looking at. We are also reviewing the child maintenance calculation. We are committed to making sure that the service works well and that the principles are up to date, but no one gets away from the fact that you may leave your partner, but you do not leave your kids.

Autism Employment: Buckland Review

Lord Laming Excerpts

Tuesday 10th September 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord for that question, and I pay tribute to his many years of work with Motability, a scheme which has helped many people. He makes an important point. I sometimes think that our system has had trouble, in that what looks like bad behaviour is in fact something quite different. One of the challenges for public sector professionals in all areas is to get the kind of training to understand what they see in front of them. If we do not have the experience or understanding, it is not unreasonable to misinterpret a pattern of behaviour we see. That is why DWP has put so much effort into trying to improve and develop the training. In any organisation, if we take the time to ask, we will find that many of our staff have relevant experience to bring and to share with their colleagues. I have no doubt that similar work is being done elsewhere. I know that my colleagues at the Department for Education are looking carefully at how the Government can better support SEND and children who are in that position.

I thank the noble Lord for that question—it is an important opportunity to highlight something about which there is too much misunderstanding. Many of the conditions we have talked about today are highly stigmatised. It is hard enough for people to deal with the consequences of a complex condition, without a total failure of the society around them to understand it.

[Lord Laming (CB)]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that the transition from school to employment is critical in the lives of many of these young people; that there are some outstanding examples of how that transition is being managed, but, unfortunately, they are few in number; and that the real challenge is to make sure that what is exceptional becomes general across the whole country?

Care Leavers: Universal Credit

Lord Laming Excerpts

Monday 13th May 2024 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

We do not have any such plans, although the noble Lord will know that we keep all these matters under review. I have already outlined a number of initiatives that we have taken to help this important sector and to be sure that care leavers are given a better start in life, where they might have had a challenging and troubling start.

[Lord Laming (CB)]

My Lords, the Minister will well understand that, sad to say, the vast majority of care leavers leave care much younger than 25. It must be really rather frightening to find themselves in that situation at a young age, often with few educational qualifications and little to rely on in terms of future employment prospects. Does he agree that we as a state have a responsibility for those children who have been in public care, and therefore that we need to do everything we can to support them at a critical stage in their lives?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

That is absolutely right and I could not have put it better myself. That is why it is so important that at particular stages of life—that is, from the age of 14, and particularly 16, until the age of 25—initiatives are taken forward to look after this often very vulnerable group. I have outlined a number of those, and the initiatives are kept under review. I do not think I have yet mentioned the DWP Youth Offer, which is designed to help work coaches to support young people aged 16 to 24 and to encourage them to get into work as soon as possible.

Child Poverty

Lord Laming Excerpts

Tuesday 26th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

Setting such a strategy and targets can drive action that focuses primarily on moving the incomes for those just in poverty—just above a somewhat arbitrary poverty line—while doing nothing to help those on the very lowest incomes or to improve children’s future prospects. Therefore, we have no plans to reintroduce an approach to tackling child poverty focused primarily on income-based targets. Having said that, perhaps I can reassure the noble Baroness that my Department for Work and Pensions consistently works across government to support the most vulnerable households.

[Lord Laming (CB)]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that this figure from the department graphically indicates the importance of the school meal service? Would it be better to go back to a position in which the head teacher, rather than some large external body that is unknown to the school, is responsible for the quality and delivery of the service?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

I note that the noble Lord has raised this point in the House in the past, and the Government certainly support the provision of nutritious food in schools. It ensures that pupils develop healthy eating habits and can contribute to concentrating and learning in the classroom. As he will know, we have extended free school meal eligibility several times and to more groups of children than any other Government over the past half a century. We provide free meals for 2 million disadvantaged pupils through the benefits-related criteria.

Carers: Financial Support

Lord Laming Excerpts

Tuesday 16th May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

Again, there is more to be done to highlight the enormous amount of tremendous work that carers do. We are working on this, particularly in tandem with our colleagues in DHSC. I have certainly noted this and will take it forward. If there is something that I can write to my noble friend with, I will do so.

[Lord Laming (CB)]

My Lords, the whole House will recognise that, at any time, the whole lifestyle of any of us could be changed by a dramatic illness of a close relative. As indicated, the position of unpaid carers is largely not recognised or sometimes ignored, so that, when they are concerned about their relative and get in touch with one of the agencies, they are often disregarded because they are not the patient, and their views are not sought, even though they are providing a huge amount of care. Can the noble Viscount assure us that everything is being done to improve the recognition of unpaid carers’ contribution?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

Absolutely, and this ties in with my noble friend’s question. I reassure both the noble Lord and my noble friend that we are improving the recognition, identification and involvement of unpaid carers, particularly in local areas. There are new duties in the Health and Care Act 2022 around involving carers, including in hospital discharge, and new guidance has been prepared for the integrated care strategies, as well as new SCIE guidance for commissioners on breaks for adult carers.

Youth Unemployment

Lord Laming Excerpts

Thursday 15th October 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)]

On young people on universal credit receiving help to get work, I say that we do not compartmentalise any age groups. We are doubling the number of work coaches and we have the job finding support service. We have a £150 million support fund that can be used flexibly to meet the needs of people going into work. The support that young people will get will be second to none and we will turn every stone to get them into work. The noble Baroness will know that lots is being said about universal credit at the moment. I will not add to that but it is being looked at all the time to see how we can make life better for people.

[Lord Laming (CB) [V]]

My Lords, does the Minister recall a saying that I often heard in my youth: “Idle hands make light work for the devil”? We all know that the years between the ages of 16 and 24 are a period of a transition—but, for many, a transition to what? Services for this age group have been severely cut. We worry about their mental health, drug abuse, county lines and knife crime but, if we do not put in place a robust and effective range of services, these young people are in danger of being left behind. Do the Government have in place an action plan for these young people?

[Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)]

The Government have an action plan that we are putting into action. It is our Plan for Jobs, which is grossed up into a £30 billion fund. I have already mentioned some of things that we are doing with that money; I do not want to repeat them. I take the point about the devil making work for idle hands, I really do, but what is different here is that young people will get a work coach—a personal coach—who will stick with them. We will do everything we can to make sure that young people transfer into work, achieve their destiny and do not fall into activity that we do not want to see them involved in.