People with Disabilities: Employment

Viscount Younger of Leckie Excerpts

Tuesday 28th October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

We have indeed. Despite being a Minister, I have not yet completely calibrated the scale that runs from, at one end, “in due course”, to, at the other end, “very soon”, but it is very much not at the “in due course” end. Watch this space; it will be out very soon.

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

My Lords, I too pay tribute to the work of my noble friend Lady Monckton. In November 2017, my noble friend Lady May of Maidenhead set the UK Government a target to get 1 million more disabled people into work by 2027. In 2022, the Conservative Government hit that target five years early, giving 1 million more disabled people the opportunity of fulfilling employment. The noble Baroness spoke about giving opportunity and offering support, which is fair enough, but perhaps she could go further and say what practical steps Ministers are taking to support small and medium-sized businesses, especially those rooted in local communities, such as cafés and pubs, to accommodate these additional needs?

[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.