There has been much talk recently of the need for politicians to reconnect with people’s aspirations. But there has also been a less noticed recognition that low expectations of people can reduce their aspirations and so both cause and result from disadvantage. Take the 10 million disabled people in Great Britain. While their chances of finding a job have improved, their employment rate remains 25 percentage points below the national average. Disabled people earn less than the average and they and their children are more likely to live in poverty. It is clear that, while the Disability Discrimination Act was a huge advance, there is more to do to make its vision a reality for all disabled people.
The continuing labour market disadvantage of disabled people is partly a result of poor skills. Today, one quarter of disabled people have no qualifications at all. These poor skills have a greater impact on disabled people: only 20% of unqualified disabled people are in work, compared to 60% of unqualified non-disabled people. Even worse, disabled adults are less likely to take part in Apprenticeships or skills development that might change this or aid their career progression. These entrenched inequalities too often drive down the aspirations of disabled people and compound this disadvantage.
This is a scandal and one that anyone aspiring to equality of opportunity would seek to address. But it harms national prosperity too. In the changing global economy, no country can afford to let the talents of any of its people go to waste. Yet disabled people represent one fifth of the UK’s working age population and remain cut off from skills and employment opportunity.
A new report by the Social Market Foundation (available at www.smf.co.uk) shows what the UK is missing. It estimates the UK economy would be boosted by £13 billion if we achieved employment equality for disabled people. Closing the skills gap disabled people will face by 2020 would deliver a net boost to the economy of £35 billion over 30 years, equivalent to 18 months additional economic growth over that period.
But we can only deliver that prize if all of us – Government, employers and individuals – raise our ambitions. The first step would be to commit to tackling skills disadvantage. We already have a Government target to narrow the employment gap between disabled people and the average. We now need a similar commitment to narrow the skills gaps that disabled people face.
But we also need a firm plan to deliver this commitment, based on partnership:
• Government, committing to making the participation of disabled people in skills programs a key measure of success and making far greater use of skills as a route back into work;
• Employers, taking more responsibility to ensure disabled people benefit from employment and progression opportunities; and
• Individuals, raised expectations of them from society, translating into a new culture of aspiration.
This is an ambitious prescription, but it builds on what we already know. For example, the best employers are already ensuring they make the most of their entire potential workforce and programmes such as Access to Work (providing financial support for workplace adjustments) and Workplace Health Connect (providing advice to small firms) help them do this. But these programmes remain relatively small-scale and outdated attitudes remain.
We need significant expansion of successful programmes like Access to Work in the forthcoming Spending Review. But if, even with this increased support, equality is still not seen as a core duty by all employers, we should not be afraid to require it to be so. The time has come to consider compulsory equality audits, requiring firms to report on the make-up of their workforce and access to skills and development opportunities.
The size of the challenge we face in improving the opportunities of disabled people is daunting. But the scale of the prize is huge and the cost of inaction mounting by the day through wasted talent. Over the next ten years, we need to raise our ambitions, agreeing a shared national mission that realises that equality is not just about fairness, it is about our economic prosperity too.