About Us, Without Us

John Pring writes:

Campaigners have criticised the Labour government’s “hugely disappointing” and “exclusionary” decision to set up a board of experts to examine “economic inactivity” without appointing a single representative of a disabled people’s organisation.

Work and pensions secretary Liz Kendall appears to have failed to appoint any disabled experts to the Labour Market Advisory Board, even though she made it clear that its key aim was tackling the “spiralling inactivity” caused by a record number of people out of work due to long-term sickness.

Kendall said: “The board’s knowledge, expertise and insight will help us to rebuild Britain as we deliver our growth mission, drive up opportunity and make every part of the country better off.”

But the eight members of the board, labour market experts from across business, industrial relations and academia, do not appear to include any disabled experts and certainly do not include representatives of any disabled people’s organisations (DPOs).

In its general election manifesto, Labour said it was “committed to championing the rights of disabled people and to the principle of working with them, so that their views and voices will be at the heart of all we do”.

But disabled campaigners contacted this week by Disability News Service were united in their frustration at the failure to include any representatives of DPOs, and apparently any disabled people, on the board.

Disabled researcher Stef Benstead, author of Second Class Citizens, which describes the harm caused to disabled people by a decade of cuts and reforms, said: “It should not be thinkable for any modern government department to have an advisory board that does not include representatives of the community impacted by the policy proposals.”

Catherine Hale, consultant researcher at King’s College London and founder of Chronic Illness Inclusion, said: “It’s clear that people with long-term physical and mental health conditions are the key target of this initiative and that their ‘inactivity’ is being framed as the problem.

“For a start, as someone with lived experience of labour market exclusion who is trying to cut through the noise with new research and policy proposals, it is frustrating that this board appears to be made up exclusively of non-disabled economists and policy professionals.

“On top of being marginalised from work, and from society, I and others find ourselves also marginalised from debates about work and our place in it.”

Dan White, policy and campaigns officer for Disability Rights UK, said it was “hugely disappointing that not one disabled people’s organisation or disabled people’s expert representative” was on the board, despite Labour’s past commitments to involving disabled people in developing policy.

He said: “With the government turning its back on lifting people out of poverty and ill health through investing in social security, education, health, social care or social housing, it’s very unlikely that employment programmes alone will work.

“Nevertheless, surely disabled people should be the first port of call for ideas, experience and delivery of programmes.

“Would any other group be left out of an expert board that is focused on their future?”

At its first meeting, the new members of the board apparently offered “new approaches to shape government work on economic inactivity, tackling the root causes for people remaining out of work such as poor physical and mental health, and how the group can help the government reach its ambition of an 80 per cent employment rate”.

Inclusion London said it was “extremely concerned” that disabled people were “once again missing from an important forum where programmes targeting us will be shaped”.

Julia Modern, Inclusion London’s senior policy and campaigns manager, said that, under the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, the government is obliged to consult with disabled people.

She said: “Doing so also makes policies more likely to succeed – people who experience barriers to work are the best placed to identify them and propose solutions.

“Without our input, the new board will be as ineffective as it is exclusionary.”

Despite the concerns about the lack of involvement of disabled people, there was support for the appointment of Professor Paul Gregg, who has studied the UK labour market for several decades, as chair of the new board.

Gregg conducted a review of personalised support and conditionality in the social security system for the Department for Work and Pensions in 2009 and helped design employment and support allowance (ESA), but was later highly critical of the work capability assessment (WCA), the test used to determine eligibility for ESA and linked with hundreds, and probably thousands, of deaths.

Kaliya Franklin, who was a leading member of the grassroots Spartacus Network in the post-2010 years, and spent years researching the flawed WCA, said: “The new government’s focus on labour market participation is to be welcomed after years where the primary policy focus has been how to increase conditionality and punitive sanctions on people with complex, intersectional barriers to work.

“It is positive to see the range of expertise on the board includes people such as Paul Gregg.

“Harnessing the true potential of the labour market is a laudable ambition, particularly given the low rates of employment for disabled people.

“However, the failure to include representation on the board from disabled people, those with caring responsibilities, organisations of or even for disabled people is deeply disappointing.

“It is difficult to see how it will be possible to fulfil that potential when the perspective and expertise of disabled people has been excluded from the very board aiming to address economic inactivity driven by impairment and poor health.”

Professor Ben Baumberg Geiger, co-lead on the work, welfare reform and mental health programme for the ESRC Centre for Society and Mental Health at King’s College London, who has also welcomed Gregg’s appointment, told DNS: “The Labour Market Advisory Board is a really positive development – a way of getting independent advice from knowledgeable, committed people.

“But it would have been better if the government had included a disabled people’s representative on the board.

“Not only would this be an important signal of listening to disabled people’s voices, but it would have provided crucial expertise to help the board’s work too.

“It’s not too late to fix this.”

In its response to concerns about the make-up of the board, DWP refused to explain why there was no disabled people’s representative on the board.

Instead, a spokesperson said: “We are committed to championing the rights of disabled people so their views and voices are at the heart of all we do.”