UK Parliament / Open data

Welfare Reform and Work Bill

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 69, tabled in my name, and to which I am delighted to see that my noble friends Lord Addington, Lord Low of Dalston and Lady Grey-Thompson have added their names in support. I also support Amendment 68, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Young, and Amendment 68A, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Nye.

My amendment is intended to address the particular barriers faced by disabled people wishing to enter apprenticeships. It places a duty on the Secretary of State to lay before Parliament a report on the number of disabled people aged under 25 who are seeking apprenticeships in order to identify the barriers that prevent successful take-up. The amendment also requires the report to set out examples of good practice by employees and apprenticeship providers that remove such barriers.

I welcome the Government’s commitment to create 3 million apprenticeship opportunities over this Parliament. Apprenticeships provide an excellent opportunity for disabled students wanting to engage in vocational education alongside their non-disabled peers. For many disabled people, it will be the first time they experience mainstream employment and education. Apprenticeships introduce disabled people to the world of work in a supportive learning environment, which is much needed by young people who are facing additional barriers to entering the world of work. In addition, apprenticeships are crucial to the Government’s commitment to halving the disability employment gap—a central plank of their incredibly ambitious aim to cut the welfare budget.

In 2014, Disability Rights UK with the support of Barclays published a guide called Into Apprenticeships. It demonstrated through case studies that apprenticeships provide opportunities for young disabled people to secure training for employment. Such schemes also help employers to become “disability confident”. Noble Lords will recognise that this is also the name of a current campaign being supported by the Minister for Disabled People in another place to encourage employers to remove those disabling barriers. This will boost employment outcomes for disabled people. However, as I said when speaking to my previous amendment, I am sure that the Minister appreciates that awareness and education alone will not shrink the significant employment gap between disabled and non-disabled people. There must also be regular reviews of progress. Existing barriers that prevent disabled people from accessing apprenticeship opportunities must be removed. This is echoed by the Equality and Human Rights Commission in its recent report, Is Britain Fairer?

The requirement for non-specific industry qualifications to access apprenticeships is one of the greatest barriers. In Peter Little’s 2012 report, Creating an Inclusive Apprenticeship Offer, he says: “Apprentices with LDD”—learning difficulties and disabilities—

“are often disadvantaged due to the fact”,

that functional and GCSE,

“qualifications are assessed out of context. Thus an Apprentice working to the vocabulary and numeracy associated with a particular job may find it difficult to relate to a completely different set of language and numbers presented during assessment”.

There is substantive evidence that significant numbers of disabled people, especially people with learning disabilities, are prevented from gaining an apprenticeship certificate because they have not got GCSE maths and English. These requirements could so easily be replaced by the successful completion of work-related requirements such as the relevant industry-accepted vocational qualifications. The National Voice for Lifelong Learning, which has been working with the Government on apprenticeship placements, has said:

“Some learners are more than capable of achieving the competence and knowledge based elements of an apprenticeship but, due to their learning difficulty are unable to achieve English and maths at the required standard. Until there is a relaxing of this rule disabled learners will continue to be disadvantaged in work and training”.

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In evidence submitted by the Alliance for Inclusive Education to the Lords post-legislative committee on the Equality Act and disability, it gave an example of a horticultural college reluctant to,

“allow [horticulture] students on the course because of the functional skills aspect. To me, this seems to discriminate against students with LDD, especially one who is working on a level 2 standard in his vocational subject”.

In a progressive labour market, I believe such artificial barriers to apprenticeships miss out on talent and stigmatise certain groups of disabled people as unemployable. Recently, I was captivated by a TV series, “Kitchen Impossible with Michel Roux Jr”, in which a group of disabled people were recruited on an apprenticeship programme by one of the finest chefs in the country. At the end of the apprenticeships, four of the candidates entered the world of work. The programme did not in any way contrive to be something that it was not. It took place in a restaurant with paying customers. Of the experience, Michel Roux said:

“It wasn’t perfect, but they grew from that and that’s the thing, because they were given the chance and also because I was fairly strict on them and treated them like I would any other apprentice. It was a privilege to work with these guys ... it’s certainly opened up my eyes to disabled people”,

in the hospitality industry. Disabled people have so much potential. Most candidates did not have GCSE maths or English at the required grade.

The apprenticeship route provides a great opportunity for the Government to meet their objective of enabling more disabled people to secure long-term, paid employment. This aim can be achieved only if the Government have the appropriate information on the uptake of young disabled people’s participation in apprenticeships. The Government then will be able to

respond by removing the barriers that prevent those young people from accessing such an important route into education, training and employment.

This amendment is a cost-neutral initiative. It is an enabling amendment whereby the Government could genuinely make a difference to young disabled people’s apprenticeship experience and their chance of a job afterwards. I am sure that the Minister in the other place would see this amendment as giving added value and the information that he needs to bring disability confidence to apprenticeships as well as to work. I look forward to the Minister’s response to this amendment.

Type
Proceeding contribution
Reference
767 cc1950-2 
Session
2015-16
Chamber / Committee
House of Lords chamber
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