How does limiting the Access to Work Scheme get more Disabled people into work?

Surely the Government should be hailing the growth in the use of the Scheme as a major success.

Surely the Government should have increased the budget for Access to Work, as part of its spending commitments in the Getting Britain Working White Paper.

It has done neither of these things.

Instead, the Minister for Social Security and Disability has said:

“The problem is that there has been an enormous surge in applications for Access to Work”.

“There’s been an enormous surge in applications for Access to Work and the department has done its level best to keep up.”

"So I think what we’re going to need to do and we will touch on this in the green paper [due to be published next month], I think we’re going to need to make some fairly significant reforms to Access to Work, look again at the whole approach we’re taking, look at whether actually employers could do more.”

“There are legal obligations on employers to make reasonable adjustments. I’m wondering whether there’s more we can do there.”

Instead of celebrating the greater number of Disabled people using Access to Work, the Government is viewing an increase in applications to the Scheme as a problem. It is reducing packages of support, insisting on enforcing out-of- date and unfair eligibility rules, presiding over unacceptable delays and exhorting employers to do more.

The conclusion I draw from the Government’s contradictory messages is that it only wants some Disabled people to work, rather than all Disabled people. For those of us who need expensive access technology and or a support worker, job aid or BSL interpreter, Access to Work is our only option. If we can’t rely on Access to Work, we will find ourselves excluded from the workforce, as our support needs go beyond the reasonable adjustments required by the Equality Act. Limiting or refusing us Access to Work, will exclude us from work and open us up to increasing levels of employer discrimination.

There is no logic to saying that more Disabled people should be in work and rolling out a new employment programme “Connect to Work” with the aim of getting 100,000 Disabled people into work, at the same time as cutting Access to Work support. If the Government wants more of us to work, it needs to align its policies and increase the Access to Work budget.

Fazilet Hadi MBE

Head of Policy at Disability Rights UK