Autism Employment Review

Question

14:49:00

Asked by

To ask His Majesty’s Government what progress they have made in implementing the recommendations of the Buckland Review of Autism Employment, published on 28 February 2024.

My Lords, in begging leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper, I declare my interest as a vice-president of the National Autistic Society. That is an honour I share with my friend—the noble Baroness, Lady Browning—from the Opposition Benches, who is not with us this afternoon as she is in the Select Committee looking at the working of the Autism Act.

My Lords, the independently led Buckland Review reported to the previous Government with recommendations aimed primarily at employers. This Government are committed to raising awareness of neurodiversity and have launched an independent panel of academics with expertise in and experience of neurodiversity to advise us on boosting neurodiversity awareness and inclusion at work. The panel will consider the reasons why neurodivergent people have poor experiences in the workplace and a low overall employment rate, and will make its recommendations to employers and government in the summer.

My Lords, when asked in the other place about progress in implementing the Buckland Review of Autism Employment, my honourable friend Alison McGovern said that she preferred the term “neurodiversity” as it is “more inclusive”. Neurodiversity is very broad, whereas autism is a specific condition. Will my noble friend the Minister think again and perhaps reassure the House that this umbrella term will not be used when responding to the review? There is a danger that the needs of autistic people will be overlooked, and I have the permission of the noble Baroness, Lady Browning, to tell the House that she shares that concern. Robert Buckland’s review is specifically about the employment of people with autism—full stop.

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that question and commend him for his work in this area. The Buckland Review reported to the previous Government, who did not formally respond, but most of the review’s recommendations were to employers. Several recommendations relating to government are being progressed, including working with employers to reform Disability Confident. I think my honourable friend the Minister for Employment was signalling that this Government have broadened their focus to address employment barriers for all neurodivergent people, specifically including those with autism, while recognising that many people have more than one condition. Our academic panel is reviewing the evidence, recommendations and insights from the Buckland Review, so that they do not get lost. I understand the fear that my noble friend is expressing, but it might reassure him to know that the panel specifically includes expertise on autism. Although this Government will not respond specifically to the previous Government’s report, the Minister for Employment, Alison McGovern, alongside the Minister for Social Security and Disability, met Sir Robert Buckland to discuss his work. Professor Amanda Kirby, chair of the academic panel, recently met Sir Robert to discuss its scope and plans, and he was supportive of the way that the panel would build on the work he initiated. I hope that reassures my noble friend.

My Lords, first, I have an autistic grandson. He is at a very difficult period of life. I know from old that the Minister has a deep feeling for and understanding of the problems of it. The noble Lord, Lord Touhig, and I have worked together for many years and there are two things I want to make quite clear. First, autism is not a “neurodisease”, autism is autism. Secondly, from my own experience, autistic people have the most brilliant minds when they have the opportunity to be cared for correctly. Will the Minister, as usual, throw everything behind what is needed to help autistic youngsters?

I am grateful to the noble Lord. His grandson has a good champion in him, and I hope he can understand that. The noble Lord makes a really important point. The employment rate for people with autism was 31%. If you compare that with disabled people across the board at 55%, it is not good. That shows the extent of the problem. We recognise that this is extremely serious. Nothing in the way this Government are going about this is trying in any way to minimise the challenges faced by people with autism. I take the noble Lord’s point: autism is not a disease, but it is a different way of learning and looking. That is true of many neurodivergent conditions, and there are things that can be learned. We have pulled together a panel with different kinds of expertise, not to create some generalised view on what it feels like to not think in the way that some other people think but to enable us to look at all the evidence and work with employers to try to make a better place for everybody to go out there and work. I hope the noble Lord will be reassured by that.

My Lords, will the Minister give us a further assurance that when the Government use the term “neurodivergence”, it is a broad spectrum, and you cannot help somebody with neurodivergence? You might be able to help somebody with dyslexia, autism or dyscalculia, for instance. I remind the House of my interests. There have to be specific help pathways for those conditions. If we start trying to be too general, we will end up helping no one.

I am grateful to the noble Lord for highlighting some of the conditions. It may reassure him to know that the academic panel we have pulled together is looking at a number of specific neurodivergent conditions. Those include ADHD, autism spectrum condition—with the acknowledgments made—dyslexia and dyscalculia. They also include DCD—developmental co-ordination disorder, also known as dyspraxia—and developmental language disorder, among other conditions. The noble Lord is absolutely right. The job of the panel is to review what is known and then to look at what can help. There will be some things, some steps employers could take, which may be of benefit to people with more than one condition, but there are some that will be quite specific, and we need to understand the evidence before we can make good recommendations.

My Lords, I agree with my noble friend Lord Touhig in his entire assessment of how different it is for autism and neurodivergent issues. I declare that I have an autistic son who is 44 years old. I just came back from a meeting chaired by Samantha Niblett MP on this specific subject of underemployment and employment of people with autism. I agree with the Minister that the gap is unacceptable, but what are the Government doing to ensure that job coaches, in particular those of the DWP, are attuned to their needs and directing them properly?

The noble Baroness makes a really good point. There are a number of different forms of support available to people with a range of disabilities or other conditions, if they come forward. Our job coaches have extensive training in a wide range of conditions to work with people who come in who need help, but there are also all kinds of schemes available. We can refer people to different kinds of help, to programmes where they can get voluntary support and work with whatever their particular needs are. We are trying to make our service out there increasingly tailored. There is not a generic range of barriers to employment. People often need quite specific understanding of what is getting in their way and help to overcome it. I hope that, in time, if the noble Baroness’s son ever comes to a jobcentre, he will find the help he needs, if, indeed, he needs it.

My Lords, I declare I have a great-nephew, Ollie, who is autistic and in a special school, and we love him to bits. Every grandparent, every parent, every great-aunt, worries about how their relative is going to get a job. I recently visited Project SEARCH run by the DFN Foundation, and I can tell the House that it has a 70% success rate of getting autistic young people into work, and 60% of them are in a full-time job. Are His Majesty’s Government going to set ambitious targets such as that, so that we get as many people into work as possible and they can lead productive lives? If the Minister would like a day out of the office, I will take her to Project SEARCH myself to see it in action.

Well, that is an offer I cannot refuse. When I used to work with families with children, there was a saying that every child deserves to have at least one adult unreasonably committed to their flourishing. In this House, I think those adults are particularly ever-present, and I can imagine that Ollie is not only being loved to bits but supported. I completely agree with the noble Baroness. One of the challenges for us in supporting people who have disability barriers to work is that we have to have confidence that people can be supported and helped to get work, because if we do not believe they can, why should anyone else? If we do not believe it is possible, why should employers take a chance on people and why should individuals have confidence in themselves? We have seen great results with supported employment. Start where somebody is, look at the barriers, think about what they might be able to do and support them into it. Some people will be happy with supported employment. Either someone is at risk of falling out of a job or we can get them into it and, once they are in, can we help them to stay there? I would be delighted to go with the noble Baroness to visit that project but let us talk about this some more.

My Lords, I recognise the danger that has been pointed out. If you move from the specific to the general, you often lose focus. But do we not have a broader problem? Millions of our fellow citizens are unemployed or underemployed. Meanwhile, we have a load of artificial barriers in not just the private sector but local and national government departments, about people’s conditions, previous criminal records, often from decades past, irrelevant qualifications and boxes being ticked—with employers therefore not looking at people’s potential. Is that not the broader issue and one that the Government need to take on, for individuals and the wider economy and wider society?

My Lords, those are excellent points. We want to help individuals see their own potential and help employers see the potential in everyone who comes in. I am answering questions today, but I am also the Minister in the DWP who is responsible for working with ex-prisoners, ex-offenders and people who have experience of homelessness. Similar patterns happen across the piece. Some of our programmes addressing people’s challenges if they have disabilities or health conditions are also available to people with other barriers, such as having been an offender or having been homeless. The first step is to help people overcome those. We do a lot of work in this space already. I have visited some fantastic programmes which have great success rates. We are committed to doing this. Let us all have confidence. People can achieve anything if someone gets behind them.