Shortage of Workers

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Wednesday 6th July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)]

I am very pleased to tell the noble Baroness that that is exactly what we are doing. For older workers—those over 50—there is a £22 million fund to boost employment support. I can assure the whole House that we are not looking at people as being idle; we are looking at them as people with potential and the ability to add value to an employer. We are working very carefully with them to get them in a position to do that.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, I hope my noble friend will stay in post whatever happens. She will know that there are many thousands of people with a disability who are none the less capable of filling some of the vacancies now available. While the Government have an excellent record with their Access to Work scheme, could they do more to unlock the talents of disabled people by beefing up some of the other schemes, such as the Work and Health Programme and the Disability Confident employer scheme?

[Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)]

Again, I am pleased to respond to that question, because we set a target to have 1 million more disabled people in work between 2017 and 2027. By Q1 2022, we had 1.3 million, so we have smashed the target and are not stopping now. I assure all noble Lords that we are working to get disabled people into work, because they have great skills and employers are taking them very seriously.