Disabled people’s organisations have been kept “firmly on the outside” of a key government programme to improve workplace health, raising fresh questions about ministers’ commitment to co-producing disability-related policy.
Disabled people’s organisations (DPOs) spoke out this week after the government published draft plans for Britain’s first “workplace health system” which ignored key suggestions from leading DPOs.
The report comes from Sir Charlie Mayfield, the business leader who – alongside four secretaries of state – chairs the government’s Keep Britain Working programme, which aims to keep disabled and ill people across the UK in work.
The report describes progress on plans to encourage more inclusive workplaces, better workplace health provision, and improved data on health and inclusion, through what it calls a “Workplace Health System”.
But although the report says Sir Charlie’s taskforce has been “building and testing” his plans with “employers, providers, places, unions and disabled people” and remains “committed to ensuring that the voices of disabled people continue to inform, support and challenge our work”, there is little evidence of that in the report.
It includes no details of the views of disabled people and DPOs on Sir Charlie’s emerging ideas, and ignores key suggestions made by DPOs to Sir Charlie’s team in areas such as creating more flexible part-time roles, tackling discrimination, and enforcing existing employment rights.
The words “equality” and “discrimination” do not appear in the report.
The government’s Access to Work (AtW) and Disability Confident schemes only receive passing mentions, even though MPs says the AtW scheme is plagued by multiple failings, including lengthy delays – which risk disabled people losing their jobs – poor communication, and an inaccessible process, while the much-criticised Disability Confident scheme was described by Sir Charlie in his initial report last year as “lacking accountability and ‘teeth’”.
A press release issued by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) quotes a string of supportive mayors and employers, and the CBI business group, but no comments from DPOs.
DWP insisted this week that the employers working with Keep Britain Working included DPOs, but a list it provided suggested there could be as few as two DPOs out of nearly 200 “vanguard” employers.
One leading DPO said yesterday (Wednesday) that it had been forced to turn down an invitation to be involved in the programme as a vanguard employer because the government refused to provide any funding.
The new report sketches out details of what Sir Charlie’s taskforce believes needs to change around “managing health and removing barriers in the workplace”.
It comes 10 months after the publication of his Keep Britain Working review, which focused on what employers and government could do to address links between ill-health and economic inactivity, but almost completely ignored the views of sick and disabled people, and the risks of forcing someone back into work when they were not well enough.
The new progress report says the aim is not “to eliminate illness, ‘fix’ disabled people or return all 2.8 million economically inactive people to work” but instead to “better support people to be better in work, prevent a modest proportion of avoidable work loss, remove barriers, improve sustained return to work, and narrow the employment gap experienced by disabled people and people with health conditions”.
The ideas in the report include employers offering early conversations with employees about their health; workplace adjustments to be agreed promptly and put in place quickly; and for there to be regular contact with employees during health- or disability-related absences.
Sir Charlie said: “We’ve had a National Health Service for almost 80 years. We’ve never had a Workplace Health System.
“That is why the same people appear on the welfare bill, on NHS waiting lists and in the productivity figures without anyone being able to join them up.
“It’s also why we are missing the best moments to help people. The new Workplace Health System would change that.”
He added: “Ten months of building and testing with employers, mayors, providers, unions and disabled people have made us even clearer about what needs to change and more confident that a new system that helps to drive economic growth is within reach.
“The task now is to build it.”
His aim now is to test the ideas described in the plan with employers, employees, disabled people, trade unions and other organisations.
But as well as the failure to co-produce the changes, or even engage closely with disabled people and their organisations, Sir Charlie’s plans do not include any attempt to tighten enforcement of the Equality Act, despite frequent reminders of the workplace discrimination facing many disabled workers.
Last week, Disability News Service (DNS) reported on a government study that concluded that a lack of knowledge about reasonable adjustments – among both employers and employees – was causing problems for a “significant minority” of disabled workers.
But Sir Charlie has previously suggested to MPs that he does not believe stricter enforcement of the Equality Act is the way to address disability discrimination in the workplace.
Leading DPOs told DNS yesterday that the government had kept them “firmly on the outside” of the review and provided “few concrete measures” for how employers can support disabled people to stay in work.
Svetlana Kotova, director of campaigns and justice for Inclusion London, said: “While there are many positive aspects to the report, we are disappointed to see that it contains few concrete measures for how employers can support disabled people to stay in work.
“Disabled people and DDPOs* who engaged with the review asked for action to create more flexible part-time roles and more accessible workplaces, tackle discrimination, and enforce the existing employment rights of disabled people.
“Moving forward, we would like to see the commitment to listening to disabled people’s voices translated into genuine co-production with DDPOs.”
Alex Pearl, policy and campaigns officer for Disability Rights UK, said: “We and other DPOs were prepared to be vanguard employers, given our extensive experience of working with disabled trustees and colleagues, but we made it clear that we couldn’t participate without funding, and this was not forthcoming.
“DPOs are firmly on the outside of the Mayfield review; we’ve been invited to two update meetings over the past year.”
She criticised the failure to do more to involve DPOs “despite the fact that only disabled people can truly know what works to keep us in employment”.
And she said the report “contains little in the way of concrete actions aimed at supporting people to stay in employment after acquiring impairments or health conditions”.
Caroline Collier, chief executive of the Campaign for Disability Justice, said: “We are, of course, in favour of constructive support to help people avoid dropping unnecessarily out of work, although we shouldn’t forget that some workers with progressive conditions may need a supported work exit strategy.
“We have two main reservations: Keep Britain Working has had only limited engagement with disabled people and stops far short of anything that might be called co-production.
“This will restrict its reach and effectiveness.
“Secondly, it is essentially about job retention, rather than job creation, or initial access to work.
“The main challenge for disabled people is how to obtain accessible employment in the first place.
“This is the key area where government and employers need to step up.”
DWP claimed this week that it regularly gathered views on Keep Britain Working from the leading national DPOs, disability charities and organisations, and disabled individuals.
A DWP spokesperson said: “Disability inclusion is a priority for the Keep Britain Working programme as it tests and builds the Workplace Health and Support System.
“That’s why the advisory board supporting the Vanguard Phase includes disabled people and, wherever possible, individuals with lived experience of disability are included in all our workstreams.
“The programme also draws on the input of DWP’s Independent Disability Advisory Panel and has engaged with the individuals from the government’s Disability and Access Ambassadors.”
*Deaf and disabled people’s organisations
Picture: (From left to right) Caroline Collier, Sir Charlie Mayfield and Svetlana Kotova
