King’s Speech

Lord Shinkwin Excerpts

Thursday 14th May 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Shinkwin (Con) [V]]

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Hunt of Wirral mentioned value for money. Taxpayers’ and businesses’ confidence to contribute to economic growth, whether through the consumption of goods and services, investment or job creation, must go hand in hand with the confidence that all government policy is developed and evaluated through the lens of value for money. Confidence in each are two sides of the same coin. At a time when the cost of living is, as we have heard during this debate, increasing inexorably, it is surely even more essential that taxpayers know that their money will not be wasted.

I hope we can all agree that, however many noughts there are, the principle remains the same: value for money, transparency and trust matter. That is why I am introducing a Private Member’s Bill on value for money in the policy area where, it could be argued, value for money has never been more important: disability. At a time when the disability employment gap remains at around 30% and the increasing cost of disability benefits threatens to bankrupt the very welfare system on which so many depend, my Bill will enable transparency, specifically in relation to what government departments are spending on employer disability membership organisations. It will provide for scrutiny of both the criteria used to safeguard value for money and the extent to which those criteria have been met.

At the moment, it is far from clear what those criteria are and whether they are being met. The Business Disability Forum is a case in point. This is an organisation which, according to analysis by Professor Kim Hoque at King’s College London and Professor Nick Bacon at Bayes Business School of more than 132,000 job adverts and survey data from more than 160,000 employees, is failing to deliver better outcomes for its members, whose members are less likely than non-members to offer guaranteed interviews in the recruitment process to disabled applicants, and none of whose members offer Braille, and just 3.6% of whose adverts offer reasonable adjustments on account of disability. Moreover, BDF members are proportionately no more likely to employ disabled people than non-members, and disabled members employed by BDF member organisations report poorer job-related mental health and lower job satisfaction than those employed by non-members.

Yet, bizarrely, according to the same research, government departments are among the highest contributors to the BDF, with the Cabinet Office spending £26,400 for its 2024-25 partnership-status membership, and the Department for Transport spending £25,200 of taxpayers’ money as well. In 2025 alone, the BDF earned £652,580 in government contracts. That is more than double the previous year. I would be grateful if the Minister could explain both how that represents value for money and how such an arrangement does not qualify as borderline corruption.

I do not use that term lightly and I am not accusing the Government of corruption, but I worry that they have got themselves into an invidious position whereby they are giving taxpayers’ money to an organisation—the BDF—that is at the same time seeking to influence government policy. Yesterday’s failure by the Government to honour, in the King’s Speech, their manifesto promise of legislation to mandate ethnicity and disability pay gap reporting by organisations of more than 250 employees provides a prime example of the BDF’s pernicious influence in favour of the status quo, to the disadvantage of both disabled people and the taxpayer.

Indeed, the research I have mentioned shows that a transparent mandatory reporting system would not cast BDF members in a particularly favourable light. Furthermore, the introduction of generic rules for organisations with more than 250 employees could also result in a dramatic fall in BDF’s income, given that it relies on charging members for bespoke solutions. The sustainability of its business model depends on the status quo and while this happens, the taxpayer foots the bill.

As a Conservative, I subscribe absolutely to the wisdom of, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. But no one could possibly argue that disability employment ain’t broke and doesn’t need fixing, urgently. It may not be a panacea but, on the basis that what gets measured gets done, mandatory reporting would help by injecting transparency and consistency into how we incentivise and reward employers to harness the untapped talent of disabled people and people from minority ethnic backgrounds, through recruitment and, crucially, career progression, to everyone’s benefit. It is a win-win situation, which is why Dianne Greyson, the founder of the #EthnicityPayGap campaign, and I are deeply disappointed that the legislation was not in the King’s Speech.

In closing, and on a cross-party basis, I ask the Minster to say what message he thinks the legislation’s omission sends to disabled people and people from minority ethnic backgrounds about this Government’s commitment to extending equality of opportunity. I ask him to confirm that its omission in yesterday’s King’s Speech does not preclude such a measure being introduced in this Session.