§ 14. Dr. Phyllis Starkey (Milton Keynes, South-West)What progress is being made through the new deal to assist the disabled. [40046]
§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education and Employment (Mr. Alan Howarth)Young disabled people aged 18 to 24 in receipt of jobseeker's allowance are benefiting from opportunities for early access and the personal adviser service in the new deal for unemployed young people. The first contracts for projects in the new deal for disabled people will be awarded this month.
§ Dr. StarkeyI welcome what the Government are doing to help disabled people into employment, but I should like to voice concerns about a specific group, the mentally ill, that have been raised with me by Milton Keynes MIND, which represents and works for mentally ill people in my constituency.
My hon. Friend will know that 83 per cent. of people of working age with mental illness are economically inactive. They face particular problems getting into work because of the recurrent nature of mental illness: periods of health and ability to work are interspersed with recurrent episodes of ill health. Is the system being designed with sufficient flexibility to help such people get back into employment in the long term?
§ Mr. HowarthI am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising this issue. I know of the imaginative support she gives to Milton Keynes MIND and to the Milton Keynes and North Buckinghamshire disability network and of the important work done by both those organisations. She is right to say that people with mental health problems face great difficulties relating to employment and we are bringing in reforms to improve their opportunities for work and social inclusion. I mention the extension to 12 months of the period for which a person who has been on incapacity benefit can try out work without losing the right to return to the same rate of benefit if that should prove necessary; the removal of the restriction to 16 hours of the amount of voluntary work that a person on incapacity benefit may do without forfeiting that benefit; and the development under the new deal for disabled people of the role of personal advisers, who will give flexible and sensitive support to individual disabled people, including those with mental illness.
§ Mrs. Theresa May (Maidenhead)Does the Minister accept that the Government's own figures show that in this financial year £580 million is to be spent under the new deal on 118,000 young unemployed people whereas over the next four years £195 million is to be spent on 1 million people with disabilities who are unemployed? Does the Minister accept that for unemployed people with disabilities that is a poor deal compared with that for those who are young and unemployed and that the Government should try to put more money from the new deal into opportunities for people with disabilities? Will he guarantee that he will put pressure on the Chancellor of the Exchequer to ensure that any sums that are available under the new deal but are not being spent elsewhere will be spent on opportunities for people with disabilities?
§ Mr. HowarthThe hon. Lady knows that I shall try to secure as many resources as possible to support disabled people and to give them the opportunities that they ought to have to get into work, to stay in work and to thrive in work. Her figures are somewhat speculative and she 860 should bear it in mind that new deal for disabled people funding is in addition to a range of other programmes that already serve disabled people.
§ Mrs. Angela Browning (Tiverton and Honiton)Is the Minister aware that, like other hon. Members, I have been contacted by the person who is implementing the new deal in my area asking for my ideas? I had some ideas I wished to share in respect of people with disabilities because there are well-established schemes around the country, but I was alarmed to find that, when we opened up the discussion and I asked how many people in my travel-to-work area who were registered as having a disability might be eligible, the person did not know. When I asked what arrangements could be made to help people who had transport difficulties either because of lack of mobility or their needing to be accompanied to work, I was told that that matter had not been addressed. When I asked which disability benefits — not only incapacity benefit, but which other benefits—would qualify under the scheme, again I was told that the issue had not been thought out. I hope that, when the Minister leaves the Chamber, he will put the disabled and their part in the new deal at the top of his list, because it seems clear from the conversation I had with the person responsible for implementing the new deal that they are at the bottom of the list.
§ Mr. HowarthThe hon. Lady may have forgotten that the Government of which she was a member abolished the system of registering disabled people in their disability discrimination legislation. I am glad that she is willing to share her thinking and give her advice to the Employment Service and, in particular, to disability employment advisers in her constituency.
We are developing the new deal for disabled people in consultation with organisations of and for disabled people. A consultative seminar on 12 May will examine how we should design the personal adviser service. The hon. Lady is a little premature when she suggests that everything ought to be cut and dried at this early stage.
§ Mr. Dennis Skinner (Bolsover)I find it hard to believe what Tory Members are saying about the disabled. My hon. Friend knows, as do many of my hon. Friends who were Members at the time, that three years in succession we tried to pass disability Bills but the Tory Government filibustered and stopped them. The hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Mrs. Browning) was a member of that Government. We carried one of the Bills by 200 votes to nil, and her colleague, Nicholas Scott, was dragged to the House late one Friday to filibuster and stop it being passed. There was not a squeak from the hon. Lady and all her sidekicks on the Front Bench then. They stink to high heaven and they are hypocrites.
§ Mr. HowarthMy hon. Friend evokes some of the great struggles that we had on Friday morning after Friday morning, when the previous Government, to my great sadness, opposed and frustrated the Civil Rights (Disabled Persons) Bill for which he and I fought. At least we now have a Government who are committed unequivocally to introducing comprehensive, enforceable civil rights for disabled people.