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Access to Work Campaign
We are demanding:
ATW is the cornerstone for equality of opportunities for disabled people in employments – and is as vital to public sector employees as to private sector employees. Trade unions should oppose the ‘playing off’ of one group of workers against another. Rather than withdrawing funding from public sector disabled employees to increase the budget for those working for small private sector employers, the overall budget for this extremely successful scheme needs to be increased.
The withdrawal of Access to Work funding takes place at a time when budgets are being cut across the public sector. It is hard to credit that the Government seriously believes in this hard financial climate that public sector job opportunities for disabled people who require significant additional support costs will not be severely affected.
It is also hard reconcile this change with the Government’s professed objective of transferring large numbers of disabled people from dependence on benefits to employment. These inconsistencies demonstrate the increasing gap between the political rhetoric of inclusion and the resources necessary to make inclusion a practical reality.
This change is effective from 1 October 2006. It applies to the funding of adjustments. Jobcentre Plus will continue to supply advice and assessment on in-work adjustments to central government and existing provision will continue in other parts of the public sector.
A change of this kind should have been carefully assessed for its likely impact on disabled people before roll-out (as would be required if the Disability Equality Duty was in force), drawing on evaluation of the experience of disabled staff within the Department for Work and Pensions, where Access to Work funding was withdrawn three and a half years ago
There will now be disincentives to employing disabled people with more costly support requirements or adjustments. This could include people with requirements for sign language interpretation, support for taxis to work, provision of part-time personal assistants or readers, and specialist ICT support.
Given that the Government is pressing ahead with this policy, there should be careful monitoring and review after one year, using the disability equality impact assessment process. The Department for Work and Pensions should:
Background
The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions wrote to his Cabinet colleagues on 2 May 2006 to tell them that from October 2006 Jobcentre Plus would not fund Access to Work support required by people working in a government department. There was no prior consultation with disabled people or unions on the likely impact of such a change.
Departments will, from October 2006, pay for new and ongoing disability adjustments out of their running costs.
Access to Work funding has been removed from DWP staff since April 2003. The department pays for the disability adjustments of its staff out of its running costs.
This is in line with Recommendation 7.10 of the ‘Improving the Life Chances of Disabled People’ Report (produced by No 10 Strategy Unit 2005). The recommendation also stated (page 173) “DWP to evaluate the likely impact…” and added that “the practical implications of such a change need to be carefully assessed – there must be no negative impact (even if only short-term) on the employment prospects of disabled people”. If the DWP has carried out such an evaluation it has not been made public.
The Life Chances report also suggests that ATW might ‘in due course’ be withdrawn from the whole public sector. This would be an unmitigated disaster for the employment prospects of disabled people. The costs of and mechanism for providing specialist disability support should not be a factor between any employer and employee.
The rationale for this move is that the public sector has a role in promoting equality for disabled people and therefore should include the costs of employing disabled people in their ‘expenditure baselines’. This would ‘free up’ additional funds for use by small and medium size businesses.
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