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Mr. Tim Boswell (Daventry) (Con): To put it neutrally, it may be a consequence of the timing of this debate on the day of major elections, but the Minister started with a rebarbative speech. I do not intend to follow her in that. Perhaps I can give an alternative take from my own experience as a Minister, although not in the Minister's Department, at the time of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 and, subsequently, as someone who has had—I choose these words advisedly—the pleasure of shadowing her in her current responsibilities for a number of years.

My take on the House's attitude to disability is that is it not one of Ministers against the rest. I understand that the Minister is subject to constraints: first, the parliamentary timetable and the business managers, a point to which allusion has been made already; and, secondly, the wider issues of resources and the impact of costs falling on the economy, which are entirely proper for Ministers to consider.

My concern is not that there is a lack of will among individual Ministers or the Government, let alone my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Mr. Goodman), who spoke with such eloquence from the Conservative Front Bench. We all understand that there is a job to be done and hon. Members on both sides of the Chamber have made fascinating contributions about how that should be discharged. No doubt, there will be further such contributions.

My biggest worry is that, even when it is not election day, the hon. Members who engage in disability issues are relatively small in number. Of course, every hon.
 
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Member has them in his or her constituency postbag, but it is difficult to achieve the national profile, and that, in turn, reflects itself in the way in which the Government treat the issue.

Over the years, we could make a perfectly plausible case for saying that, as in many areas of social advance, different Governments have made their own contributions at the appropriate time. In addition to those that have been mentioned, I am very pleased and, to some extent, proud to have been associated with the disability manifesto—the first of its kind—that the Conservative party produced for the last election, although we did not do as well as other parties in that election.

So the business moves on, and rightly so because, as has been said, if we round up the figures—certainly if we allow for more than one disability per person in many cases—more than 10 million of our citizens are directly involved as disabled people. We cannot touch on every issue of concern to them, so I shall endeavour to be selective.

I shall deal with the rights issue first. Although I did not agree with everything said by the hon. Member for Aberdeen, South (Miss Begg), I did agree with her that rights are important because they help not only to make safeguards for the individual, but to change attitudes and culture. I hope that, in turn, she acknowledges that those changes in attitude and culture now have to drive the agenda forward for very good reasons, as the hon. Member for High Peak (Tom Levitt) said.

I shall comment on the specific issues in an area in which initial concerns about a single commission for equality and human rights have been dispelled. We are getting there, but I wish to touch on one or two outstanding issues. The first is that I hope that the disability strand will continue to be adequately resourced. It is very complex—discrimination and remediation for discrimination are difficult issues. Expertise must not be lost.

Secondly, there are important interactions with the wider human rights agenda. For example, I understand that there is no proposal at the moment to enable the Disability Rights Commission or its successor to assist individuals in taking suits on human rights grounds. There is also a degree of uncertainty, and indeed anomaly, between the entitlements to avoid discrimination between the different strands, as the Minister will know.

One issue that I have mentioned in debates in the past has not been touched upon, but I feel strongly about it. It is what might be termed the functional unevenness in the enforcement of the agenda already mentioned. In the exchange in which I implied criticism of the Minister, I made the point that there was already a substantial employment tribunal load in relation to article 2 duties. That arose straight from the Conservative legislation. As matter of fact, that has not happened to anything like the same extent in relation to access to goods and services, because such cases would have to go through the courts rather than the tribunal system. There is also an anomaly in education. Tribunals cover the period up to the end of compulsory education, but access is through the courts in relation to discrimination post-16. Ministers must keep that issue under active review.
 
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I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe that there is still a problem with the implications of the enforcement in October 2004 of provisions of the DDA. Equally, there was a dilemma for the Disability Rights Commission, with which, as I shall say now but have not said in the past, I have had very constructive relations. I regard it is as doing a balanced job. As I understand it, up until last year, it very much put forward the new education agenda to which I did not object. However, that meant that it had comparatively little time to go into what will happen in October. We all know that, in the real world, we probably need legislation in place before people focus on it. It is a question of how sensibly it is handled in the initial stage. Above all, small and medium-sized enterprises should not be put off from trying to do anything when the reasonable adjustments that they may be required to make are entirely modest and appropriate to the turnover of their business.

Miss Begg: I think that the hon. Gentleman will accept that it will not be until October 2004 that some companies and businesses will take the legislation seriously. Once there is one prosecution under the new legislation, minds will be focused and we shall see quite a lot of action. Things will improve at that stage.

Mr. Boswell: I understand that point. Any regulatory body that has any sense is well advised to look to draw attention to one or two notorious cases "pour encourager les autres." At the same time, such a body will not want, in practice, to seek to intervene in every single case of technical infringement or a reputation for doing so. We have to lift the game of the whole sector and, as already has been made clear in the debate, many employers and service providers are involved.

I hope that I am being constructive when I say that the DRC, the Department and others working in conjunction with the Employers Forum on Disability should work closely with specialist trade associations to make sure that they push the new agenda forward.

Because of my new Front-Bench duties, I have been working with the Cinema Exhibitors Association recently. I have seen the third edition of the guidance on access to cinemas that it has circulated over a number of years to its members. Incidentally, the cinema is the No. 1 leisure activity of people with learning disabilities and a detailed, precise and thoroughly constructed code has been made available. It even prescribes things such as the optimal height of coat hooks for disabled people. Such practice is exemplary. I hope that other trade associations will follow suit.

I shall briefly consider the educational issues. I begin with the hon. Member for Erewash (Liz Blackman), with her interest in autism. She made her points clearly and revealed one of the areas that concerns me most—the transitional phases between the different sectors. It is one thing for us to legislate, as we have done through the Special Educational Needs and Disability Act 2001, the Disability Rights Commission and the law that will take effect in October, but things must happen in practice. There lies a real weakness.

We should start early in the process with diagnosis. We have the opportunity of doing that, with, for example, neonatal hearing impairments, but there are other conditions, such as the autistic spectrum, which has become much more apparent as an issue.
 
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Apart from those specific areas of concern, we need to move the debate on from what, as a parent, one can understand is important for the family, which is the enshrinement of legal rights in a statement. That is important and the issue will not go away. We should begin to move more towards considering active and holistic ways of implementing the programme that is appropriate for the individual child.

Liz Blackman: We had an interesting presentation from a local education authority whose name is Welsh and which I find difficult to pronounce—Rhondda Cynon Taff. It has co-located services round autism to the degree that, as I think the presenter said, there was practically no child within the authority who had a statement. That was not necessary because the provision was there.

Mr. Boswell: I am saying that we need an integrated approach for the child. The deficiencies are not always necessarily educational ones. It can be some other component that is missing. For example, I have encouraged or supported the obtaining of a statement for a visually impaired child. Suddenly it has been found that the school to which the child has been referred is out of the immediate area and that transport is not available, or there is a practical problem with transport. Every Member will be familiar with the endemic national shortage of speech therapists, for example. We need to try to bring things together and we may need one financing package to do it. However, it is certain that we need a common approach between the different agencies as they work together.

I move on to mental capacity. We clearly need to draw a distinction between mental health problems and learning difficulties. Much of what I have said in relation to special educational needs is applicable in that context. It is fair to say that many people with learning difficulties and disabilities subsequently get into difficulties with mental health problems because of the frustration and the other difficulties that they experience, but the two are entirely distinct.

My hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe was right to point out the many cases of stress and breakdown that feed into the incapacity benefit figures. With both learning disabilities and mental health problems, there is a need for adequate support services. I strongly endorse the remark of the hon. Member for Chesterfield (Paul Holmes) about the importance of housing. The people concerned need a safe environment in which to live and recover, but they also need advocacy. It is important that people should make their own choices if they are in a position to do so. Certainly their opinions should be canvassed, but at the same time it is important that they are not left friendless and exposed to an unfriendly bureaucracy, particularly when the implicit agenda of the various parts of that bureaucracy is to try to shift the budgetary burdens, with the result that nothing is done.

I want to make two points on mental health. First, a characteristic of mental health is that it is intermittent. Somebody can try and fail to return to work, with all the concerns that have been expressed about possible disqualification from the benefits system. Secondly, it is obviously a sensitive and susceptible matter—for example, in relation to any harsh treatment in a personal
 
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capacity assessment, or even being called up for one. I am currently dealing with a constituency case in which that is under discussion.

Turning to the benefits system, the single biggest problem, to which the Prime Minister and others have referred, is the sheer number of people—2.7 million—on incapacity benefit. That is a high figure, but it is not unparalleled in other western countries. In the Netherlands, it is estimated that 10 per cent. of the adult population are on disability benefit. The benefits system still suffers from the remnants of the belief that someone is either on benefit or in work, making the position difficult for people who are recovering from an accident, mental illness or other condition. The Minister will tell me that the linking rules are much more relaxed, which I welcome, so I need only flag up the need to keep looking at other options, including the part-benefit, part-work solution mentioned by the hon. Member for Chesterfield, a tapered arrangement and an agreed contract on return to work including supporting benefit while it is being worked out.

In that area, even more than in special educational needs, the need to produce a single pot of money may be driven by the choice of the individual or their advocate. That should not be distorted by the need for insurance, and the mutual system should allow for a single budgetary pot, which, as my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe said, we examined at the last election and would draw on the direct payment of social benefits that has been successful for many people. At the moment, there is no congruence between benefit and the objective of return to work. They are more linked than they were, but they are still not perfectly aligned. The option of preferring to stay off work and on benefit is still a moral hazard, although I agree with Members who say that that is not how most people treat the system.

Turning briefly to active case management, agencies want to know who is not paying for such a service. The collective test should be what they should be doing for individuals to secure their position. I have an interest in the various concepts of case management that have been developed. First, case management should be professional and comprehensive; otherwise it would offer a wonderful opportunity for charlatans and well-intentioned people without the necessary portfolio of skills to manage cases and a pot of money for individuals. Secondly, case management does not necessarily mean advocacy or job brokerage, although they are related functions. We need a collective and flexible approach to achieve suitable solutions for individuals. Inevitably, the Government's notorious obsession with targets has encouraged disability employment advisers, for whom I have a considerable regard, to concentrate on shifting their case load to meet those targets. Challenging work tends to be left with the private sector and not-for-profit providers such as the Shaw Trust, which do a tremendous job. I agree with the Work and Pensions Committee, which recommended that the private sector should increasingly discharge those delicate, difficult and complex tasks.

Finally, I am pleased that a number of Members have mentioned employment, but little has been said about assistive technology. To some extent, technology has created problems for employment and continuing employability. People who might have been able to
 
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continue successfully in employment now find themselves challenged by new technology. At the same time, technology has created huge opportunities for people to continue and sustain their employment, which they might not have been able to do without, for example, the use of information technology solutions.

There are two challenges. The first is getting people into employment in the first place, particularly when that has not been on the cards and they may even have been advised at school or elsewhere to anticipate that. The second is to defend the position of people in employment as their faculties decline with age or new technical challenges arise. For example, they may find it less easy to see or to operate in a noisy environment, and we must find ways of tackling that. Many employers, including typically the larger employers, are good at that. If anyone has not had a chance to visit Ford's MAGIC—mobility and general information centre—I recommend that they do. The centre advises on disability issues and is located in an exemplary building with a huge amount of investment in it.

Let us make no bones about it. Across employment generally, whatever rights we have passed in this place and whatever we may claim to have done, functional discrimination by outcome continues. It is not unique to this area. It is true of a number of other equality issues about which I also feel strongly. We may have talked the talk, we may have passed the law, but we have not achieved the outcomes that we sought to achieve. In some cases in the context of disability, as has been said, that relates to non-employment outcomes such as health.

There is still a strong loading against the survival of children with learning disabilities. Their mortality rates are much higher and their chances of surviving into a full adult life are lower than they would otherwise be. It is interesting that the greater survival rate that is coming through, which is thoroughly welcome, feeds into some of the problems that they have as adults, which would not have arisen had their survival rates been lower, as they were in the past.

Returning to employment, of the 2.7 million people with disabilities who are on benefit, a million or more want to work. The presumption is that we should be helping them into work. That is not just a matter of economics. It is a matter of human dignity, their position in society, their health because of motivation, their inclinations and their choice. There are enlightened employers who are prepared to contribute and there is good practice in the field. On the other hand, the public provision, including access to work, which incidentally was introduced by a Conservative Government, is still too bureaucratic and the whole system is not seen as friendly towards small and medium-sized enterprises, which are the most likely to create employment.

We need to tell employers, large or small, organised, aware or not aware of the issue, that it is good business for them to employ people with disabilities, who are an extremely reliable part of the labour force. It is sensible and will not cause large or unreasonable expense to make reasonable adjustments for them. The adjustments made to enhance access to work usually cost hundreds rather than thousands of pounds. It is also extremely good business, particularly for firms
 
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whose work is customer-facing—retailers or providers of services—to be sensitive to the needs of disabled customers and their families, who might represent up to 40 per cent. of the adult population. They have real spending power, as has been mentioned. It is not good business for a supermarket chain to say that it does not want to do business with 10 million citizens because it cannot make the necessary adjustments. The track record suggests that, where businesses are sensitive to disabled employees and customers who may have a disability, the necessary adjustments usually benefit all employees and customers. Such changes are not a simple matter of cost or loss.

I have appeared on various platforms with organisations such as the Institute of Directors to make the excellent business case for employers to take disability issues seriously and sensitively. That business case happens to lie alongside an extremely strong social case, which has been eloquently expressed this afternoon. We should all do our utmost in this place to see that the whole world knows about the happy coincidence between the business case and the social case and is not put off by scare stories or exaggerated claims about expense. If we can encourage that view with incentives and inducements within the framework of rights and law, let us hope that something positive will be done, which is the outcome that we all want. The 10 million disabled people, and all those connected with them, will not ask us to do any less than that.

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