We don’t talk enough about the power of the disabled workforce to kickstart the nation’s ailing economy. Barely a week goes by that we don’t lament our flatlining productivity, with pundits and politicians often portraying disabled people as a contributing factor.
And yet we fail to notice the unused levers that can help to stimulate growth, in particular the positive potential of the disabled workforce to stimulate growth – provided the right support is in place.
Earlier this month, The Disability Policy Centre released a timely new report on exactly this issue. ‘Access to Work: Employment that works’ makes a compelling case for increased investment in one of the government’s existing flagship work schemes for disabled people.
The report shows Access to Work helps keep up to 50,000 disabled people in work and that it’s highly cost-effective, saving the taxpayer nearly £70 million in government costs which would be seen without it.
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For those who don’t know, Access to Work is a publicly funded employment scheme that helps disabled people start or stay in work by offering workplace equipment, money towards travel if public transport is inaccessible, or an interpreter or support worker.
And it’s a scheme I have personal experience of as someone who has directly benefitted from it – so I know what I’m talking about here when I say that Access to Work, when properly funded, can be the difference between working and not working.
The Disability Policy Centre go on to show how favourably Access to Work compares to alternative schemes, too. For example, the average annual Access to Work payment is estimated to be £4,000 and the average grant £7,200 to help keep a disabled person in a job. This is compared with the government spending over £25,000 per ‘job outcome’ created (or sustained employment) on new employment initiatives for disabled people.
Overall, this comes to £1.8 billion and four to six times more per job outcome. What’s more, modelling in the report shows a potential additional cost to the NHS of £910 per person per year if someone with a health condition becomes economically inactive, as well as additional Universal Credit costs of £7,386 per person.
Despite these obvious benefits, reports have started to gather over the past year of unofficial changes to Access to Work guidance in the Department for Work and Pensions, which has seen a sharp increase in cuts to people’s support. And the National Audit Office claims there are more than 32,000 outstanding payments, which of course puts customers in serious financial distress.
This report shows that, far from being bereft of ideas, Whitehall already has a functioning lever to pull to increase disabled employment: the Access to Work scheme. Crucially though, as the report makes clear, this scheme only works if the government provides the investment it needs, instead of gradually eroding resources.
In this era of gloom about growth, I believe we have, in fact, reason for great optimism. We need to be ambitious about disabled people working. We need to be ambitious about creating ‘good work’ that improves health outcomes. We need to be ambitious in ensuring we have a country that works for everyone.
I hope the government reads this report and sees that by investing in Access to Work, we can help disabled people get into and stay in the jobs they love, whilst reinvigorating our national economy.
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