People with Disabilities: Employment

Lord Sikka Excerpts

Tuesday 28th October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Viscount for that really good question. We have a service called “support with employee health and disability”. We are not great at names in DWP, but it does what it says on the tin. That was developed directly with input from smaller businesses and disability organisations. The idea is that it gives employers step-by-step guidance on how they can support employees in common workplace scenarios involving health and disability. For example, employers using the resource may be asked, “Have you got somebody you are working with now?”, and if they say yes then it will ask them what the challenge is. It can support them in understanding what the law says and how to have difficult conversations.

Most people who either are working or want to work, and who have a health condition or a disability, are happy to have conversations to help the employer know how to go about moving them into a job. One of the reasons that the Connect to Work programme I mentioned works so well is that the specialist advisers will work with the employer to help answer all those questions; they will also work with the person who is trying to move into work and can help bring the two together. A person I was talking to recently, who is a lead in one of these programmes, said that small businesses especially just do not have the resources—they have not got a huge HR department and so might not know how to do it—but they are really up for hiring people in the local community, and just want to be supported in doing so. I am really looking forward to seeing how that works out.

[Lord Sikka (Lab)]

My Lords, last year, the TUC estimated that there is an average disability pay gap of £4,300 a year. Add this to the gender and ethnicity pay gaps, and then imagine the plight of disabled women from ethnic minorities. Can the Minister explain how many employers a year are investigated for persistently underpaying disabled persons and ethnic-minority females with disabilities?

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, if anyone is not paying the legal minimum then they are breaking the law, whatever the circumstances, and should absolutely be taken to task for that. However, my noble friend is making a broader point, which is that there are clear gaps in employment: for female employment, for the disability employment gap and in pay rates for a number of ethnic minorities, although the pattern is more varied there. One challenge in the whole strategy of trying to move to a more inclusive labour market is that it is not about trying to do something for its own sake but about recognising that if we do not use the talents of all our people, businesses are not getting the best people that they want to do the jobs, and we will not get the kind of growth we need or development in companies. One of the reasons we have had such a focus on working with combined mayoral authorities and local authorities is to try to make sure that they have local Get Britain Working plans which reflect their local populations, so that, as they develop them, everybody in the local area has a good chance to get into work. That is our approach.