After just a week, Labour’s Keep Britain Working plan for the employment of disabled people is already in tatters, condemned by disability charities and trades unions, whilst the unemployment rate hits a four-year high.
The “Keep Britain Working Review” led by former John Lewis boss Sir Charlie Mayfield, was a major pillar of the Pathways To Work Green Paper.
It’s aim is to “focus on what employers and government can do to increase the recruitment, retention and return to work of disabled people and people with long-term health conditions.”
The report was released last week, with the government announcing that it will work with 60 “Vanguard” employers over the next three years to create a “healthy working lifecycle” to reduce sickness absence, improve return-to-work rates, and increase disability employment rates. The government will work towards developing the programme into a voluntary certified standard by 2029.
Amongst the Vanguard employers, many claimants will be unimpressed to see the names of:
- Capita
- Maximus
- Unum
These are all companies that are now, or have in the past, been heavily involved in assessing the fitness for work of claimants on behalf of the DWP.
The report was quickly condemned by Disability Rights UK who argued:
“Yet another government-commissioned report blames Disabled people for not working. Mayfield's report has a focus on "fixing Disabled people", but you can tell he wasn't listening to our community because it's so rife with medical model-focused language . . .
“The report comes at a time when the government is cutting schemes like Access to Work, which we know support us into the workplace . . .
“This review fails to unpick just how broken our economy is. Just 2.5% of those off work as long-term sick move into work every year, and they are predominantly in jobs that are poorly paid, strenuous and insecure, such as couriers, domestic cleaners, bar staff, coffee shop staff, security guards, warehouse operatives and farm labourers. None of these jobs are the ones the government is shouting about in its growth strategy - yet, in towns and cities across the country, especially in deindustrialised areas, they are all that exist.”
And the PCS union, whose members work in Jobcentres but who were not consulted at any time by Mayfield, was equally damning:
“The report advocates handing over significant powers to employers, written entirely from an employers' perspective it pays no regard to how pressures of work can contribute to ill health; no mention of workplace stress, insecure work, or employers paying such poverty pay that workers are reliant on benefit payments.
“The report further fails to address critical factors such as NHS waiting lists for physical and mental health conditions, the high levels of poor quality and overcrowded housing, and actual levels of poverty across society.”
But perhaps most disastrously of all, todays unemployment figures, as reported by the Guardian, have reached 5% - their highest level in four years.
So, far from increasing the “recruitment, retention and return to work of disabled people”, Labour is failing spectacularly to keep Britain working in any way at all.
In reality, the “Keep Britain Working” scheme is already well on the way to being another tick-box, voluntary programme, like Disability Confident. It will make employers look good, whilst doing absolutely nothing to change the reality for disabled people hoping to move into, or stay in, work.
