The Tories promised a White Paper on improving employment for the disabled. Instead, the situation is worsening
![Disabled people miss out on work compared to people without disabilities [Image: Getty].](https://voxpoliticalonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/160518-wheelchair-getty.jpg)
Disabled people miss out on work compared to people without disabilities [Image: Getty].
The Conservative Government promised a White Paper on improving employment prospects for the disabled, but on the day the ONS announced the “disability employment gap” has actually widened, the Queen’s speech failed to mention the disabled at all.
As Shadow Minister for the Disabled Debbie Abrahams put it in a tweet: “Driverless cars, drones & spaceport to feature in Queen’s speech. Where’s promised disability/employment White Paper?”
Thanks are due to ‘Cost of Cameron’ on Twitter for providing the evidence to support Ms Abrahams’ comment – a speech by Tory disabilities minister Justin Tomlinson on March 14 this year:
The Government is going backwards in meeting its own main target for improving disabled people’s lives, new official figures suggest.
Ministers say they want to halve the so-called “disability employment gap” by 2020 – the difference between the number of people in work with disabilities work and the number of people without them.
This would mean getting 63 per cent of disabled people into work by the end of the Parliament.
However new figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show it is making reverse progress on the metric.
While the number of disabled people in work is up 121,000 since last year, non-disabled people are the main beneficiaries of employment growth and moving into work faster than their disabled counterparts.
The employment rate for people who are not disabled increased by 0.9 per cent compared to 2015, while disabled people’s employment only increased by 0.6 per cent.
As a result, rather than closing, the gap is widening – up by 0.3 per cent to 33 per cent.
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Were it comes to disability the conservative government have not got a clue how to deal with disability issues,They don’t know the meaning of consultation because they are going to have there promises and white paper will fail. We as a group of people are being rail rolled with no consultations, So until they start to listen we will always come of as second or third class citizen. And what a joke Ian Duncan Smith trying to become our robin hood trying to help the disabled yet he is the one who put all these policies into place that are affecting the most vulnerable in society. We must make sure we as a group of people stick together in the disability field.It just shows the discrepancies that there are in the meaning we are all in this together, what a load of rubbish the richer get richer and the rest of us can either sink or swim. with this AUSTERITY program we as a group of people have never had it so bad.
There have been numerous reports of disabled people who are already in work having their Motability cars taken from them as a result of PIP assessments. This has meant these people have had to give up their jobs since without the car they were unable to travel to work.
I myself face this possibility in the near future as I await the fateful day the DWP get around to calling me in for this dreaded assessment. I’m actually 66 yrs old now but still have to work in order to make ends meet, since I only have a small state pension. Since my workplace is 50 miles away and virtually inaccessible by public transport – which anyway I’m not able to access because of my disability – I will be forced to give up employment as will the blind university lecturer my job is to support in his job including driving him to and from work. So two productive disabled members of society will be further disabled and unemployed. And in order to save the fifty odd pounds my Motability car costs them every week the government will have to pay more than double that when I’m forced to claim Housing and Council Tax benefits.
How is this “improving employment prospects” for the disabled?
Everything for the disabled and sick, the tories have made worse, deliberately worse!