Disabled people not suspects

Mar 25 2008 by Kevin Rowan, The Journal

IN addition to the recommendations last week aiming to help prevent workers moving from employment to benefits, the Government is also consulting on plans to improve specialist employment programmes for disabled people, merging the Job Introduction Scheme, Work Preparation and Workstep into one.

There is concern about the UK’s low spending on employment services for disabled people compared with other advanced nations and suspicion that this move is merely about further cost cutting.

The TUC has long campaigned for disabled people’s right to work and believes they are fully able to contribute to society through paid work – provided they are not discriminated against or excluded by inaccessible environments and other barriers to equality.

But obligations to work in the absence of effective guarantees against discrimination and exclusion are unfair and no one should be forced into a job that would make a chronic condition worse or cause unacceptable pain, distress or fatigue. There is a great deal of evidence, including the Department of Work and Pensions’ research, that there is still labour market discrimination against disabled people and they face many barriers to work.

In 2005, the Chartered Institute for Personnel and Development found a third of CIPD members excluded people with a history of long term sickness or incapacity, even though this is likely to breach the Disability Discrimination Act.

In the public sector, where discrimination is less frequent, employers are excluded from utilising the Access to Work scheme that makes employing workers with disabilities easier. On top of low employment support for disabled people, the DWP is coping with severe cuts in budgets. There must be doubt the department has the resources to make mainstream services fully accessible to all disabled people.

Disabled people are capable of high and productive performance in the full range of jobs in our economy. But discrimination against them is still a serious problem and so it is unfair to treat disabled benefit claimants as “suspects” who have to be forced into jobs.

There is support for a more flexible service, focused on those disabled people with the most severe barriers to employment. This can only be done fairly if mainstream employment services are made more accessible to other disabled people, but without sufficient resources there is concern the department does not have anything like the capacity to do this effectively.

Kevin Rowan is regional secretary of Northern TUC