Neurodivergent People: Employment

Stephen Timms Excerpts

Tuesday 9th September 2025 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for Social Security and Disability (Sir Stephen Timms)]

I am delighted to serve with you in the Chair, Ms McVey; you have a long-standing record in this area. I congratulate the hon. Member for Ely and East Cambridgeshire (Charlotte Cane) on securing the debate and the telling points she made in opening. I am grateful to everybody who has contributed to a good debate.

We want to achieve an overall 80% rate of employment, as key to delivering the economic growth and widely shared prosperity we all want. To achieve that, the employment rate among disabled people, those with health impairments and neurodiverse people has to increase. The disability employment gap was first measured in 1998 and fell steadily from then until 2010, when it reached about 30%, but it has been stuck there more or less ever since. It moved around a little bit, down to 28% at one point, but it is pretty much where it was in 2010. That means, as we have rightly been reminded, that many people who have a great deal to contribute and want to work have been denied the opportunity to do so. That needs to change. We specifically need to get the disability employment gap back on to a downward track.

As we have been reminded, the picture is worse still for neurodivergent people. Only 31% of autistic people are in any sort of employment, compared with 55% of disabled people overall. There is a gap within the disability employment gap, to which the Buckland review drew attention. I join my hon. Friends the Members for Dunstable and Leighton Buzzard (Alex Mayer) and for Hertford and Stortford (Josh Dean) and the hon. Member for Mid Dunbartonshire (Susan Murray) in highlighting how big a contribution neurodivergent people are making and can make if they have opportunities and if the barriers holding them back are removed. We need to do much better to deliver the economic growth we need and because good work is good for health and wellbeing.

Like others in the debate, I have made a series of visits to look at initiatives supporting people with learning disabilities into work. It is great to hear so many examples read into the record. Last December, I went to New Warlands farm in Durham, to the North East Autism Society’s vocational training centre. I met autistic adults working on the farm doing interesting things, such as making superb juice from apples grown in the orchard. The farm also had programmes on woodworking and IT.

In April, I visited Little Gate farm near Rye, mentioned by the hon. Member for East Grinstead and Uckfield (Mims Davies) when speaking for the Opposition. I was also impressed by what is happening there. We looked at two social enterprises that equip adults with learning disabilities and autism with skills and pathways into paid work. In June, I visited Northwick Park hospital, which every year recruits autistic people for supported internships, many of whom go on to permanent roles in the NHS. The staff love that impressive programme, which the hospital has been running for years. The hospital chief executive made the point that NHS staff find it extremely rewarding to support the interns and they enjoy that part of the job.

In July, I visited DHL at Heathrow to see how the DHL UK Foundation works alongside charity partners to provide work placements to 16 to 25-year-olds with learning disabilities or autism who are currently out of work. Last month, I went to Yusen Logistics in Wellingborough to see how that global supply chain logistics company is working with Mencap as part of its interns and outcomes programme, giving practical work experience to young people moving from education into employment—a difficult transition as we have rightly been reminded—or on to further study. The colleagues of the person with a learning difficulty I met in Wellingborough emphasised to me both how good he was at his job and, notwithstanding the support he needed, how much they enjoyed working with him.

[Tom Gordon]

The Minister has outlined a plethora of different places he has visited. I invite him to visit some of the fantastic organisations in my constituency, such as the Artizan café, for people who have learning disabilities and neurodivergence; Horticap, a garden centre with a similar scheme; or Henshaws college in Harrogate. I wish to press the Minister a little. He talks about how these are all fantastic organisations and schemes; many of them are charities and they face an increase in employer national insurance contributions. Will the Minister outline how he might support these fantastic organisations in helping and supporting people with neurodivergence?

[Sir Stephen Timms]

Unfortunately, I cannot promise to visit all the employers that have been mentioned in the debate, but we certainly want to support them because they are doing a great job. I will say a bit more about what we are doing, and planning to do.

We need evidence for policies to deal with the barriers that neurodivergent people face in getting into work and once they are in the workplace, such as those rightly highlighted by my hon. Friend the Member for Hertford and Stortford. We need evidence to establish and clarify the characteristics of successfully inclusive workplaces.

In January, as has been mentioned, we set up an independent panel of academics with expertise in and lived experience of neurodiversity, led by Professor Amanda Kirby. It is reviewing the evidence on neurodiversity in the workplace to assess why neurodivergent people have poorer experiences and a low employment rate, and what we can do about it. Its advice will also focus specifically on how employers can support neurodivergent people at work, which has rightly been an important theme in the debate. We need practicable strategies for employers that are simple for them to adopt, with low cost or no cost at all.

The panel conclusions will build on the Buckland review of autism employment, which focused specifically on autism. Together with my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Bromborough (Justin Madders), who was the Employment Minister until the weekend, I met Sir Robert Buckland after the election to discuss his valuable contribution to this policy area. I am looking forward to the panel’s findings and recommendations in the coming weeks—I think somebody asked when that would be.

[Mims Davies]

As well as the expert panel and the updates from the Buckland review, will the Minister undertake to use his good offices in the DWP and across government, including the NHS and other public sector employers, to ensure that the learning is used? As we have heard, it is tough in the wider labour market. Support is already given to care leavers across Government and by the Minister’s own Department; will he lead the way in the DWP?

[Sir Stephen Timms]

Yes, there are opportunities to do exactly that. We will look at the recommendations from the independent panel along with the results of the “Keep Britain Working” review, which is led by Sir Charlie Mayfield and is investigating how employers can reduce health-related inactivity. We want to bring all this work together to make a real difference. We are expecting the recommendations from Sir Charlie Mayfield in the autumn, so there will be a lot going on this policy area, with opportunities for improvement.

[Jim Shannon]

I thank the Minister for his response to all the requests we have made collectively and individually. I am very keen to show that we can have an exchange of views and share ideas. In particular, I want us to share some of those ideas with the relevant Minister in Northern Ireland, to ensure that the good things we do there can advise Ministers here, and vice versa. Does the Minister intend to ensure that will happen? If so, I would welcome it.

[Sir Stephen Timms]

I have had a number of opportunities to speak to my counterpart Minister in Northern Ireland and I am sure there will be more—I have always enjoyed those conversations. I have not yet had the opportunity to visit Northern Ireland but that might also be a possibility.

The new jobs and careers service that we are setting up is a key reform. To echo the points made in the debate, the new service will deliver much more personalised support than has been provided in the past, moving away from the one-size-fits-all, tick-box approach that far too many people think of as characterising Jobcentre Plus. We need to be different from that. The pathfinder we have set up in Wakefield is testing how a personalised offer could be much more responsive to different support needs, including those of neurodivergent people in particular. We are testing how to make the jobcentre environment more accessible for both jobseekers and DWP staff with support needs, including neurodiversity. The findings of the academic panel will also help us to shape the new service.

Our new Connect to Work service, which is being locally commissioned and will cover the whole country by early in the new year, includes a specialist pathway for those with particularly complex barriers, using the IPS—individual placement support—methodology and the supported employment quality framework, which has been overseen by the British Association of Supported Employment, which I think the hon. Member for St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire (Ian Sollom) mentioned. There has been close collaboration with BASE in drawing up Connect to Work, which I think will make a big difference over the next few years.

Participants in Connect to Work will be given a dedicated specialist employment support adviser to work alongside them, understand their career goals and help them to address specific barriers to employment. We are taking a very different approach. The methodology is being tightly defined—the IPS and the BASE framework—but the service is being commissioned entirely locally. The decisions about who to involve and which organisations will take part are being made entirely locally by, I think, 42 groups of local authorities around the country. I am hopeful that that increasingly devolved approach will allow us to make substantial progress.

[Mims Davies]

The Minister is being very generous in giving way. That commissioning model will be music to most constituency MPs’ ears. How will DWP monitor the local output and changes for people on the ground?

[Sir Stephen Timms]

The hon. Member raises a good point. What we will need to do, and what we are committed to doing, is to publish the outcomes from all 42 different programmes so that everybody can see how they are getting on. I am sure that some areas will do better than others, and where there is a problem, we will be able to provide additional support.

[Daisy Cooper]

We would all welcome a framework for monitoring the outcomes and the results, but we have heard today that people face many barriers in trying to access these kinds of schemes. Will the Government consider requiring service level agreements, so that when people apply to the schemes or engage with them, they know what they are going to get, how they are going to get it, and how quickly they are going to get it?

[Sir Stephen Timms]

I need to correct myself: there are 47 areas, rather than 42. It will be for each local area to work out how best to engage people and establish the kind of confidence that is needed. I hope Members will watch closely what happens with Connect to Work, because it is a big opportunity.

A number of Members understandably raised Access to Work. There are problems with Access to Work, reflecting the substantial surge in demand for the scheme over the years—I think last year it went up by 30%, and I think it went up by a larger proportion in the year before and the year before that. We have put well over 100 extra staff on to administering the scheme, to try to get on top of the growing delays and waiting lists, but they have continued to grow, so in the “Pathway to Work” Green Paper, published in March, we consulted on the reform of Access to Work. How can we do a better job, hopefully supporting a larger number of people, and certainly without the lengthy delays that people are suffering at the moment? We have set up a collaboration committee, which includes representatives of disabled people’s organisations, to work with us on the proposals. We are currently working on the consultation responses with that committee, and I look forward to bringing forward proposals for reform before too long.

Tailored support is crucial for young people. There are nearly a million people not in education, work or training, which is more than one in eight of all young people. A significant number of them are almost certainly neurodivergent. Our “Get Britain Working” plan includes the new youth guarantee for 18 to 21-year-olds, to ensure that young people can access quality training, apprenticeships or help to find work, and eight trailblazers are testing localised approaches to support young people, including neurodivergent young people who are likely to face additional barriers and who need further support.

A number of Members rightly reminded us of the crucial role of employers in all this, and we heard some great examples of employers committed to providing support for neurodivergent employees. The Government have a range of support in place for that. My hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase (Josh Newbury) was absolutely right to make the point that employers can find it difficult to know what they are supposed to do. It can be quite nerve-racking for conscientious employers who want to do the right thing. Our digital offer is support with employee health and disability, and tailored guidance on supporting employees, including how to effectively support those who are neurodivergent or have learning disabilities. My hon. Friend the Member for Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket (Peter Prinsley) rightly highlighted the importance of that support.

I hope we are going to see more job carving, whereby an employer takes an existing role and reshapes it to suit the skills of a particular individual. One example that the Department knows of is a firm that had three vacancies for legal secretaries. It wanted to address the under-representation of disabled and neurodivergent people in its workforce, so it created a new support role across the team for tasks that did not require legal expertise, and that role was filled by an applicant with autism. That person did a great job, and other team members said afterwards said that the initiative made them want to stay with the firm. There is an important point here about the support from employees generally for doing the right thing for neurodivergent employees and would-be employees.

The disability confidence scheme that the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for East Grinstead and Uckfield (Mims Davies), referred to encourages employers to create disability inclusive workplaces. I think we can improve it. We need to make the criteria for accreditation more robust, and the Department has been consulting a wide range of stakeholders, organisations and individuals on ideas over the summer. Look out for more on that over the coming months.

In our ambitious programmes of strategic reform—the “Get Britain Working” White Paper, the “Pathways to Work” consultation, the “Keep Britain Working” review and the neurodiversity panel—we are starting to set a new course. We are keen to continue to work across Government—a point rightly raised—as when we jointly provided evidence to the House of Lords special inquiry Committee on the Autism Act 2009 earlier in the year. We all have a part to play—every Department of Government—and I look forward to seeing the report and the recommendations from that Committee on the development of a new strategy later this year.

This subject matters to every single neurodivergent person who has been denied the opportunity to thrive and achieve their best in the past—but it also matters to every one of us, to the whole economy and to our whole society. I hope we see substantial progress in the years to come.