DisabledPeople - The Forgotten Army

Ian Charlesworth, ManagingDirector of Shaw Trust, a national disability and work-focused charity asks thequestion

Just who will championBritains forgotten army and bring to an end the unchecked discrimination and prejudicein the labour market which disabled people have faced for the last 50 years?

With the fluctuations of theeconomic cycle during the last 30 years, various groups of unemployed peoplehave become political priorities and had resources directed their way. In the 1970s and early 1980s, it wasredundant workers. The restructuring and decline of the manufacturing sectorsaw wholesale redundancies amongst the skilled and labouring classes who it wasthought, at that time, might decide an election. The latter part of the 1980ssaw concentration on the long-term unemployed, as unemployment continued at ahistorically high level. Many of thesocial problems of the day were attributed to the growth in long-term unemploymentand life without hope for those without work.

As unemployment declined in the 1990s, young people became the prioritygroup and New Labour entered into power with their New Deal for Young Peopleand their guarantee that no young person, who wanted to work, would be deniedthe opportunity to do so.

As the number of young people without work has reduced to almost nil,(apart from job changes and those who consciously decide not to work), theGovernment has added New Deal for 25+, the over 50s, Lone Parents, EthnicMinorities and, finally, Disabled People.

Most significant, however, was the paltry amount allocated for the NewDeal for Disabled People from Chancellor Browns Windfall Tax on oil companyprofits that raised 3.5b. Only 195m of the 3.5b was allocated to the NewDeal for Disabled People. At firstsight this seems very surprising when one looks at the bare statistics ofunemployment and non-working.

3.3m disabled people, of working age are not working (1:2), whilstthere are only 700,000 non-disabled people registered as unemployed.

However, one should not be surprised at how little has been allocatedto help disabled people get back to work, since for 50 years following the wardisabled people have been discriminated against in terms of employment byprejudiced and discriminatory employers, civil servants, politicians and thepublic at large. Even well meaningparents, teachers social workers and medical professionals have been guilty ofplacing further barriers to employment for disabled people by declaring themunfit for work, or constantly providing negative conditioning by emphasisingan individuals inabilities in relation to work.

A good example of the discrimination by politicians and civil servantsis that in the last 50 years only six cases were taken against employers whodid not abide by the quota system for disabled people, with a maximum fine ofonly 2,000. The Civil Service, LocalAuthorities, Health Authorities and all large industrial and commercialorganisations generally ignored the quota system and in almost all cases wereguilty, but went unpunished.

Therefore, it is no surprise to learn that the Governments own unit,set up to deal with social exclusion, should not see fit to identify disabledpeople and their lack of work opportunities as an example of social exclusion.

The cynic in me suggests that disabled people are unlikely to riot,burn their bras, chain themselves to railings, or disrupt parliament and thejudiciary as we have seen in the case of ethnic minorities, women andhomosexual groups - so are not taken seriously.

No political party has taken up the cause of disabled people and theirlack of work opportunities. The TradeUnions, at best paternalistic and at worst totalitarian, approach of lockingdisabled people away in exclusive workshops has meant that the rampantdiscrimination and prejudice of employers, civil servants and politicians hasgone unchallenged.

A disabled person is now eight times as likely to be unemployed as aperson without a disability. A disabledperson who is unemployed is likely to take five times as long to find a job asa non-disabled person.

Only one in five people with a mental health problem are in work andonly two in five people with a learning disability can expect to work duringtheir life.

Despite all the barriers, (abenefit system which still works against people leaving disability benefits andmoving into work and a tax credit system which still fails to make work formost disabled people an economic option) the negative conditioning, the prejudiceand the discrimination, half of those people with a disability would and couldwork given the right support and economic benefits.

What is perhaps most difficult to understand is how successiveGovernments have continued to ignore the economic issues concerning disabledpeople and employment.

The cost of benefit payments to disabled people and their carers nowstands higher than the total cost of the NHS service and more than twice thecost of schools. Surely this argumentalone should have persuaded a cynical, prejudiced and discriminatory TreasuryDepartment that real money needs to be invested in this group to getthem back to work.

However, the evidence of the New Deal for Disabled People seems toindicate that this is not the case. Anargument I have heard from some Government officials is that the 3.3m disabledpeople are made up of two groups. One,which consists of 750,000, moved from Job Seekers Allowance to IncapacityBenefit (and hence disappeared from unemployment counts) by the lastConservative Government in the run up to the General Election, and the rest arepeople who either cannot ever work or will find work without any additionalhelp. Such an analysis is totallyflawed and erroneous.

The 750,000 who were moved from JSA to IB were long term unemployedworkers, largely shaken out of manufacturing jobs, as their industries declinedand who generally had real muscular, skeletal, cardiac and breathing problems,such as emphysema and bronchitis.

In addition, because of years of unemployment many of this group havesubsequently developed acute depression and other forms of mental ill health.

As for the other groups, New Deal For Disabled People has demonstratedthat even people out of work for 36 years and who had repeatedly been told theycould never work, have been helped to achieve sustained employment.

This does not come easy for those who face almost insurmountablebarriers and what New Deal For Disabled People and Workstep (the Government'sreplacement for Supported Employment) have demonstrated is that a considerableamount of help is needed for disabled people to overcome the barriers to work.

Even today most people reading this article will think that I amtalking about somebody else, but with one-fifth of the UK working agepopulation having a long term disability or health problem, with one in fouremployees experiencing some form of mental ill health in their working lives,are they sure its not them I am talking about? Certainly if it's not them, then it is someone close to them orsomeone within their immediate family.

If the economic case on its own is not sufficiently strong as anargument for positive action, then surely the social cost of leaving such alarge percentage of our society excluded from arguably the most importantsocial mark of distinction and social interaction, that is, the workplace, isundeniable

The current reluctance of New Labour to invest properly in this groupsuggests to me that a further 50 years of prejudice and discrimination may wellbe the future for disabled people.

New Labour has done some good things since coming into power -implementing and extending the Disability Discrimination Act, setting up theDisability Rights Commission and piloting the New Deal for Disabled People aswell as modernising the Supported Employment Programme. However, the numbers claiming long-termsickness and Incapacity Benefits continue to rise inexorably and these moves inthe right direction need to be complemented by real investment.

With the birth rate and numbers entering schools falling, how muchlonger can employers continue to ignore this potential group of workers who,according to all reliable research, have less time off sick and are bettertimekeepers than non disabled people?

So again, I ask the question.just who will champion Britainsforgotten army and bring to an end the unchecked discrimination and prejudicein the labour market which disabled people have faced for the last 50 years?

Ian Charlesworth, ManagingDirector, Shaw Trust