Disability and Employment

Published in Bottomline, Spring 2007

There are about 3.6 million disabled people between the ages of 19 and 59 in Britain.  Less than a third of these people are employed compared with three-quarters of non-disabled people in the same age group.  These starting figures highlight the fact that unemployment and the consequent loss of income for disabled people is an issue that urgently needs to be addressed.  In this article we report on the findings of a Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) research report (No 298) entitled ‘The employment rates of disabled people’.  A key point is that although government policy is addressing disability discrimination in the labour market, policy initiatives focus on disabled people as an identifiable group in which some can work and others can’t.  However, the research on which report No 298 is based shows that employment rates vary between different types of disability and that there is no clear dividing line between disabled people who are impaired and cannot work and those who can work.

Education and training

Report 298 highlights a strong interaction between demographics, economics and disability; namely, the research found that severely disabled people with higher education and living in high-employment areas are not that much less likely to be in employment than mildly disabled people, or non-disabled people.  “The reasoning behind the concept of incapacity is thrown into reverse: far from being incapable of work and insensitive to economic forces, severely disabled people are capable of work if they have the right educational background and labour market opportunities,”  Rather than having negligible effect on employment prospects economic and demographic factors can seriously influence the probability of a disabled person being employed.  These findings emphasise the need for disabled people to be offered the maximum possible training and educational opportunities.

Definition, and range of disability

The Disability Discrimination Act 1995 is the main piece of legislation which makes it unlawful to discriminate against a disabled person in terms of employment, promotion opportunities, by dismissing them or by subjecting them to any other detriment.  In addition there are various statutes and regulations covering disability including The Disability Discrimination Act 2005.  For the purposes of the Act for someone to be defined as disabled there must be a mental or physical condition which has substantial and long-term adverse affect on the employee’s ability to carry our normal day-to-day activities.  Long-term means that the condition must last, or be likely to last, for more than 12 months.  Given the relatively broad definitions set out by the legislation, it is not surprising that the term ‘disabled’ covers a wide range of conditions (Table 1).

Table 1 :Proportion of disabled people in employment according to type of impairment

The DWP research report No.298 found that by far the most serious condition from the point of view of employment was mental health problems.  This finding is supported by the data in Table 1 from the Shaw Trust which shows that only 11% of people with a mental health problem, phobia, panics or other nervous disorder were in employment whereas 67% of people with diabetes where in employment.  These statistics highlight a second key finding of Report 298: when comparing the employment disadvantage associated with disability, in other words disabled people’s actual experience and what they might have been expected to experience if disability had not been a source of disadvantage, there was an average reduction of around 40% in the rate of employment.  However, this figure disguises a considerable range of impact and in fact, employment rates vary so widely between different types of disability that there was no clear dividing line between disabled people who are impaired and cannot work and those who have little difficulty finding employment.  Further, it contradicts the stereotype that the main variation in terms of employment is between disabled people and the ‘able-bodied’.  These are clearly important findings in relation to government policy on increasing the employment rate among disabled people. 

Incapacity Benefit

The Government aims to take one million people off Incapacity Benefit (IB) and into employment.  Part of their strategy includes a rehaul of Incapacity Benefit and the focus of the rehaul is to encourage a work centred approach.  Planned reforms will not apply to existing claimants and will not be fully introduced until 2008.  However, the first steps to reform have already been taken in the form of Pathways to Work  which has introduced mandatory personal advisers for existing IB claimants who have been on the benefit for up to three years as well as a £20 a week job preparation payment.

To replace Incapacity Benefit three new benefits are to be introduced Rehabilitation Support Allowance and Disability and Sickness Allowance and a Holding Benefit.  Prior to being assessed through the personal capability assessment (PCA), claimants will receive a ‘holding benefit’ paid at the jobseekers allowance (JSA) rate of £59.15 a week.  It is envisioned that the PCA should take place within twelve weeks, after which time, those with ‘more manageable conditions’ will receive Rehabilitation Support Allowance, others with ‘the most severe health conditions or impairments’ will receive Disability and Sickness Allowance.  Those who are considered able to return to work with the right support and who are claiming the Rehabilitation Support Allowance will have to participate in work-focused interviews and activity to ‘prepare for a return to work’ such as vocational training and basic skills courses.  Although the basic rate of the Rehabilitation Support Allowance is at the JSA level, if claimants satisfy the new conditions it will be topped up to a level slightly higher than the present long term IB rate of £81.35 a week.  The work-focused interviews and return to work activity will also be offered to the claimants receiving Disability and Sickness Allowance but on a non-compulsory basis and they will receive approximately £80 a week.

The criteria the PCA is going to use and how it is going to be decided which claimants receive Rehabilitation Support Allowance and which receive Disability and Sickness Allowance are still to be addressed.  The research presented here raises the question of how these criteria are going to be set when available data shows no polarity between those able to work and those unable.  Further research into disability and employment which focuses on reasons behind the substantial variation in employment rates of disabled people rather than disabled people as a group is needed on which to base decisions about the criteria which will be used in the PCA.  A further issue is whether claimants leaving sickness benefits to start work will be able to sustain their employment.  Links back into the benefit system need to be set up to ensure that claimants feel secure in taking up the support available and making that transition into the labour market and it has been proposed that there be a two year ‘linking period’ for claimants who have been in receipt of the higher rate of IB during which they would automatically requalify without having to reapply.