Baroness Sherlock (Lab)

My Lords, I share the noble Baroness’s desire to find more opportunities for people with learning disabilities, severe autism and other conditions to get the benefits of work, of which money is but one. I pay tribute to the work she has done in creating Team Domenica and the work it has done in supporting learning-disabled people into work. I am sure the whole House would share in that. Having said all that, successive Governments have taken a view that the best way to support disabled people into work is not necessarily by changing the rules around national insurance or the minimum wage. The noble Baroness is absolutely right that the level of employment for disabled people is only around 50% and for those with autism around 30%, and, as she says, it is vanishingly small for those with learning disabilities. We believe passionately that disabled people are vital to the UK’s workforce. The way we have approached this is with the priority of providing opportunities and support for disabled people to thrive in work. That is why we commissioned the independent Keep Britain Working review, which will be published shortly, to understand how we can create and maintain the kind of workplaces that want to support disabled people and enable them to thrive. It is why we are reforming employment, health and skills support, to tackle rising economic inactivity and get people into good jobs. We want the same thing; we are doing it in different ways, but we are determined to make things better.