Steve Darling

The hon. Member has clearly been reading my notes, because my next point was that someone cannot be a Disability Confident employer and not employ anyone disabled—she is spot on. I have made some inquiries in this area since getting elected in July, and the problem is that the Government do not measure Disability Confident employers. When I went to my local jobcentre, it said that it did not have to report up to top shop at all, and the Library was not aware of any monitoring by the Government. If we do not measure it, it does not count, so that is a real issue. Going back to my trip down memory lane to the Royal National College for the Blind, one of the issues I heard from former college friends was that we should not have to go out and champion the Access to Work scheme ourselves; Government should be doing that. It should not be one of Government’s best kept secrets, but sadly it sometimes is. People also described it as an overcomplicated system that had resulted in their not being able to employ support workers as agents. They said it was too complicated and there were too many delays in obtaining support through that scheme. I represent Torbay, and a resident there tells me that after 30 years of solid work for the national health service, she decided to change employment to Devon in Sight, an outstanding local charity that supports blind and visually impaired people across Devon. Sadly, though, it took three months for payments to come through from Access to Work, which left her with significant financial liabilities. Fortunately she had flexibility in her own finances, but if the next person was coming out of a period of employment and faced financially straitened circumstances, it could have resulted in their not being able to continue with their employment. I am also aware of a lady from the midlands who was recently made redundant by a large national charity, for which she was a rehabilitation officer. She is now looking to change to a local charity undertaking similar work, but Access to Work is only offering her a support worker one day a week. That is impacting on her personal wellbeing, as she is having to take up the cudgels and battle the scheme over what seems a bizarre offer of help. I would like to challenge the Minister on how we ensure that, when we design new schemes, we are working with people; I would welcome some assurances on that. I would also like assurances around a project plan for Access to Work. I mentioned that there are 55,000 people in the backlog. I would welcome assurances from the Minister on how we are going to tackle that, with a project plan to do so within a reasonable length of time. Have they done the sums around that? What assurance can the Minister give that it will be up to a 28-day turnaround? Finally, I would like some assurances around Disability Confident, so that it can be a scheme that is valuable, drives positive change and, most of all, drives positive culture change in our society, so that people who are blind or partially sighted can play the active part in our communities that they should be undertaking.