National Assembly for Wales

Prynhawn da. Welcome to the Equality and Social Justice Committee. All Members are present. I'd just like to welcome Mick Antoniw as a new member of this committee—your expertise is very much welcome. I'd like to thank Carolyn Thomas for the work she's done on the committee, who's now going off to do other things. So, there are no substitutions; all Members are present. Are there any declarations of interest in relation to today's business? I can't see any.

So, we'll move straight on. This is our first session of our inquiry into disability and employment. I'm very pleased to welcome Professor Debbie Foster of Cardiff University, who's done an immense amount of work on this subject. We're very much looking forward to what you have to say. Just to tell members of the public, we will be speaking in English and Welsh, so there is instantaneous translation of Welsh to English, were you to require it.

So, Professor Debbie Foster, this is something that you've done a great deal of work on for the Government, and I just wondered if you could just tell me very briefly, for the record—and thank you very much indeed for your paper—for anybody who's watching, what your involvement has been on this subject.

Okay. Thank you. Yes, my first involvement was with the ‘Locked out’ report, and that was during the pandemic. That was produced by me and eight members of the disability equality forum of the Welsh Government. They asked me to help them write the report, but the idea was to co-produce that report as a group, and that was to look into the impact of COVID-19 on disabled people during the pandemic. That report was published in 2021 and, from that report and its recommendations, the First Minister, Mark Drakeford at that time, set up a disability rights taskforce to look into the recommendations in much greater depth, because some of those recommendations were very detailed and inter-related to socioeconomic issues that disabled people faced: poverty, employment, but also things like transport, housing. These were all seen as factors in the pandemic that disadvantaged disabled people as a group. So, the disability rights taskforce was operational, I think, by 2022, and we are coming to our conclusion—well, we’ve sort of come to our conclusion. Would you like me to describe how the taskforce runs?

I think that will emerge. I suppose you included specific actions in the recommendations of the disability rights taskforce, which is, obviously, involving what would appear to be a large number of stakeholders in different working groups. So, what progress has been made on any of these actions?

Well, these are the—. Well, they’re not the recommendations as such because, if they were the recommendations, they would have gone to Cabinet and been approved, but they were the recommendations that came out of taskforce discussions between disabled people, disabled people’s organisations, policy leads, and other wide-ranging stakeholders. So, to some extent, they’re still recommendations; they’re not actually actions that have taken place, at this stage. But, we came to those recommendations by considering a range of evidence from different key stakeholders, including disabled people, because the whole point of the taskforce is that it’s co-produced so it gives voice to disabled people and their organisations. What we wanted to hear about was their lived experience, and that lived experience, as part of the taskforce, was treated as evidence equivalent to any other form of evidence, because it was felt that the closer to the people who received the policy that we got, and their experiences, the better that policy would become in the future. So, we invited a wide range of disabled people's organisations, impairment groups, charity groups, but also individual disabled people came as well. I think it was that emphasis on the lived experience of disabled people that was particularly important here.

I'm aware that you've got other witnesses who are going to produce lots of statistical and quantitative evidence. My own work is generally much more qualitative, but I think that the work I've done with the Welsh Government has been particularly innovative in that it's really tried to operationalise disabled people as a community within Wales, and give them voice. And I've seen myself more as a kind of way of trying to translate that sometimes into writing, with the 'Locked out' report, and also the recommendations from the working group, which I was chair of—the employment and income working group.

Right. Looking at it from the point of view of somebody who's disabled, and the poor level of engagement of employers, particularly in viewing this as a social issue, rather than just simply, 'Are we going to make adjustments to enable somebody to join the company', in your paper, you say only 40 employers in Wales have achieved Disability Confident leadership status, with just 12 in the private sector. There's a lot of conversation gone on, but it doesn't feel like we're really pushing forward in making a better deal for people with disabilities and, in terms of our productivity as a nation, we're obviously missing out in terms of the skills that disabled people can offer. What now needs to happen to make people more confident that this is something that the Government takes seriously?

The disability action plan, when it is published, should set out a huge range of objectives. I don't know if you know, we had 10 working groups, and they were all discussing various aspects of policy that affected disabled people. And I suppose why we did that was that disabled people themselves said, 'Unless we've got transport, we can't get to work, we can't get to training, we can't get into education, and that transport has to be accessible. Unless we've got other facilities to support us, we're not going to be able to participate effectively in the workplace.' You're right—employers weren't part of this conversation, but it is a recommendation that the employers must become part of that conversation.

What was evident from the evidence that we heard was the wide-ranging view amongst disabled people that employers really don't understand the law—so, the Equality Act 2010—and their obligations under the law not just to make reasonable adjustments, but to go much further than that. But reasonable adjustments was a focus of a lot of people's discussion, because they'd had poor experiences of trying to secure reasonable adjustments. But also, at the very level of recruitment, at the very basic level of trying to get into the labour market, as soon as anyone declared that they had a disability, or a health condition, then they were normally filtered out of the process. So, there's a lot of attitudinal change that needs to take place, as well as structural change. And I think that the taskforce is good in terms of setting out priorities for action, but I really do think that it will only be the beginning. What we really need is to pin down, a bit like the anti-racism strategy, the outcomes from the objectives of that action plan. If we don't build those outcomes, and monitor them and evaluate them as we go along, then I think it's pointless just having something that we publish on a website as an action plan. We really do need to have in place, past the action plan, a whole series of work that is about how are we going to evaluate it, what measurements are we going to judge achievements by, who are we going to report to. All those things need to be part of what we do with the rest of the time that we've got with the disability rights taskforce.

Thank you for that summary. Can I now call Sioned Williams?

No, I think it's Julie next. 

I beg your pardon. I'm so sorry.

Bore da, and very nice to have you here today. In your written evidence, you said that there's little evidence that the social model of disability is being used to underpin employment and recruitment practices. Can you expand on what you mean when you say that, and also what further work needs to be done to address that?

Yes. I was talking quite broadly about both the experiences that disabled people have reported within the work that we've done in the taskforce, but also my own research. I just don't see the evidence for employers thinking in terms of the social model. They think very much in a medical model prism, but that's not always that surprising, because the law tends to be constructed around a medical model of disability: it's about proving that you have an impairment, proving with medical evidence that you need reasonable adjustments, and the whole process becomes heavily individualised. And as soon as the process becomes individualised, the social model kind of gets shelved. It's over there somewhere.

I had a conversation with a human rights lawyer recently, who said the problem is that there are human rights around accessibility that are much more collective and social. So, we talk about accessibility in a way that, if we were talking about fully accessible workplaces, we'd be talking about a kind of social model. But the way that it operates in the UK is that we're very embedded with the idea of people having individual rights rather than social rights. So, people have these individual rights, but that means that they get reduced to a set of medical criteria.

So, you know, when you are trying to negotiate a reasonable adjustment with an employer, for example—I've had experiences of this myself—you come across a whole set of barriers in the processes that employers operate in the workplace. You have to go and see occupational health, you have to know what adjustments are available. Often people don't know what's available to them because of the very individualised nature of the process. Employers don't think in terms of, ‘Well, could we put out a number of case studies of where we've implemented reasonable adjustments and they've worked for a particular employee?’ They don't do that because they say that every employee could have a different medical condition and one adjustment isn't suitable for another. I totally understand that. But there are ways of collectivising responses to disabled people and encouraging them to make requests for things that they often don't know they're entitled to. There's often a saying that Access to Work is the biggest or best kept secret. And yet as soon as people find Access to Work, whatever its problems are—and there are problems with Access to Work—the outcomes are often very good for people. So, there are ways that we could collectivise this, but we don't.

And then, when there's a dispute—another area I'm very interested in, in the workplace—a lot of disputes between disabled people and employers arise because of misunderstandings or arise because reasonable adjustments have been given at one point and then taken away. So, you might just get a change of line manager when you move from one department to another, and that person doesn't understand what your requirements are, and a dispute happens, but that dispute never gets resolved. It’s seen as an individual dispute rather than a collective responsibility of the organisation to take that on board, that there are certain things that they are not providing that are making people's lives accessible within that workplace.

So, I think what I'm saying is that I don't see that much evidence in the research that I've done of the social model being both understood by employers, but also being implemented in the way that they deal with disabled people in the workplace. 

Right. So, how do you think employers could learn more about the social model? What would be the best means of that happening? 

I actually think something like Disability Confident. We had some discussions within the taskforce about Disability Confident as a Government scheme to engage with employers. The problem with Disability Confident has been that it's very tarnished by its association with the Department for Work and Pensions, because there's a lack of trust amongst disabled people with the Department for Work Pensions. And I don't know—. I mean, we've had some discussions. Could an employers' scheme or kitemark be detached from the Department for Work and Pensions, and put into the employment portfolio, for example, not in the social security portfolio? Could it be a Welsh-based kitemark that we developed?

In that, we could educate employers. We could think about much more proactively training and educating employers about the social model of disability, about good employment practice, and expose them to some of the poor experiences and poor employment practices that disabled people have experienced, because some of them are really, really horrific. They should not be happening and they undermine the confidence of people who then are too scared to re-enter the labour market.

I think something like a scheme like that, but it would have to be reformed, that maybe included disabled people's organisations as either evaluators or assessors, involved a group of other stakeholders—trade unions, for example, could get involved—that assessed employers and built proper networks. Because the conversations that we had with employers were that those that had reached level 3—what you were talking about, level 3 leadership status in Wales—were really, really enthusiastic to share knowledge, and also were very open to learning from disabled people's organisations about ways in which they could develop and learn. 

What they felt about the existing scheme was that it was currently not rigorous enough, and it didn't have any really formal accreditation. They felt that it wasn't stretching them. So, these employers were the good employers in Wales, and there may be too few of them, but they were committed, and those employers were saying, 'Yes, we would like something that is much more participatory, much more orientated to training and education at lower levels', and maybe finding ways of sharing knowledge and just growing in terms of what they're doing. Because, at the moment, there isn't really a forum for a lot of employers within Wales itself to get involved in, to do with just disabled people alone, rather than just employment.  

Thank you. I'm sure we'll consider all those issues.

Can I just come in and ask about the role of trade unions, because it's very difficult for the individual to start negotiating as an individual on their own? What role do they play in terms of supporting people who need adjustments to enable them to be successful in their work? 

I think, increasingly, trade union equality representatives have played a much greater role in the workplace, but I did a piece of research some years back with Natasha Hirst, when she was Wales TUC equality officer, and we looked at the role of equality reps in relation to disability issues in the workplace. And they said that they had grown in terms of the call on their expertise to negotiate with employers and in accompanying individuals to meetings, but the facility time was still just not available for them to do the work that they needed to be able to do. That facility time was not guaranteed, or it was sometimes shared amongst different representatives, union representatives. So, an employer didn't single out disability as a really important issue for which facility time had to be given; it just got put into a pot with health and safety issues and other issues within the workplace. And we felt at that time—. I don't know if you know Natasha—

I do.

—she self-identifies as disabled as well. And we felt that equality reps had a potentially very important role to play, both in terms of the knowledge that they had, but also their representative role and protecting rights. Because, often—I know this, and I've had lived experience of it—if you're on your own and you're just negotiating, you're in a very, very vulnerable position. You do need that support and that expertise from other forms.

Thank you for that. Julie, back to you.

The next issue I was going to raise was transport. You've already mentioned that, and disabled people have raised that as being a big issue in relation to accessing employment. So, I wondered if the disability rights taskforce did discuss the issue of transport, and what have they come up with.

Yes. We had a working group on transport, and that was—. All our working groups were chaired by disabled people with lived experience in the area that they were chairing. So, we had a representative from the Guide Dogs for the Blind Association, who had actually been part of the 'Locked Out' report as well, and had reported quite a lot. I learnt a lot from her during the pandemic, about the problems of mobility during the pandemic for anyone who had a sight impairment, for example—the whole thing about how do we get on buses when we're not accompanied by anybody, and when you get to a public space, when all the public furniture's been changed, and negotiating your way around that. But she is a very strong advocate of looking at transport. We did have Transport for Wales come to the taskforce and talk to us as well.

I think there has been progress. I think we'd like to see more progress and more co-ordination with the taskforce and members of the taskforce, who've done a lot of work and have got a set of recommendations. This is just the set of recommendations from the employment and income group, and it's not the final set. But every single working group has got a set of recommendations. And I think that there needs to be a closer relationship, a closer working together.

One of the things that we did find was problematic with Welsh Government is that there are often things going on in silos, all over the place. So, there might be a conversation about transport going on somewhere else in Welsh Government, and it's not always brought together as a whole. We felt that there were things going on, there were conversations going on somewhere else, and the disability rights taskforce wasn't always privy to being involved in those, which was a shame because that's a co-ordination problem. And it's just finding the right people to link up with.

But, I think, equality impact assessing some of this work, and making equality impact assessments meaningful again. Because there is a feeling, over many years, of equality impact assessments not really being taken very seriously in Westminster, that there has been a dilution of what they mean. I would like to see equality impact assessments go back to being people being invited, physically or remotely, to sit and really discuss; key stakeholders, key representatives from the groups who are going to be affected—in this case, disabled people—being invited to sit around the table, and having to answer to them, but also demonstrate that, in your equality impact assessment, you have got long-term objectives, not just a statement, but a long-term objective about how you're going to address those needs. And I think that's desperately needed in that area of transport.

Thank you. And then, finally from me, what about support for disabled people who want to become self-employed? Could Business Wales take any more actions? What are your recommendations there?

Yes, well, Business Wales attended all of our meetings, I think, in the employment and income group, and they did highlight the fact that they had found it quite difficult to engage with self-employed disabled people and that they'd developed a number of ways to be much more inclusive. But the big problem for them was this engagement, and they had come to ask us, in a way, 'What can we do about more engagement?' And our feeling was that more co-production needed to go on with disabled people in self-employment themselves, because there had been some reports in the past—and they pointed out that some of this was some time ago—of people finding some of the events that they had put on inaccessible, and I think that accessibility issue needs to be addressed. But also, I think disabled people are one of these difficult-to-reach groups, and it's no good just saying, 'They're a difficult-to reach group' and then we don't get to them, if you see what I mean. But I did feel that Business Wales had a greater role to play in reaching those people. And as I say in my evidence, self-employment is something that some disabled people prefer and want to do but should never be forced into, and I think there is a certain amount of evidence that some disabled people simply exit the labour market and become self-employed because the labour market won't accommodate them, and we should never see self-employment as an excuse for the labour market not being accessible enough.

Thank you.

Thank you. Jane Dodds.

Thank you. In terms of Access to Work, the general feeling was that Access to Work was useful but incredibly bureaucratic, and that the response time for Access to Work was also much too slow. The moment that somebody experiences disadvantage is the moment that they can't do their job because they haven't got appropriate equipment, or they haven't got appropriate support, whatever that is, and that normally happens very quickly. So, we are actually setting up people to fail if we can't provide the facilities, through organisations like Access to Work, because, you know, in a new job—we all know that you go to a new job, you want to impress your employer, and if you can't even do the most basic things because you haven't got the correct equipment to do them, you're not going to impress. So, I think Access to Work, as you've identified, is a really, really important organisation and Government service.

In terms of influence, I am aware that Welsh Government have regular meetings with Access to Work advisers. I only became aware of that during the taskforce, so maybe some degree of pressure can be put on Access to Work in that way. But I think, in terms of Access to Work, what I constantly hear is that it's about investment, and we can't just keep having more and more inquiries into the disability employment gap—we just keep having them—and not say that we actually need to put our money where our mouth is and invest in these services. And I think the same with Disability Confident: it's not a good scheme, and part of the reason it's not a good scheme is there's never been any investment in it. There's no money behind Disability Confident, it's all internal evaluation, so a level 3 employer will evaluate another prospective level 3 employer. So, it works like that, it's not that someone is coming in and externally accrediting you with a set of clear guidelines as to what you should be achieving at level 3; it's a cheap system. All these systems have been run on a shoestring, and it's no good saying that things that are as important as reasonable adjustments and accessibility, really basic issues that should now be resolved so many years since the Disability Discrimination Act 1995—that we don't put resources behind that, because whenever I've had conversations, I tend to get pushback on, 'Well, this is going to cost a lot of money.' Yes, it is, but so is keeping people inactive and at home and claiming benefits. It's a case of deciding what your priorities are, and I think that more investment really needs to go into those areas.

In terms of the influence of Welsh Government, there's an ideal opportunity to influence now that we have a change of Government at Westminster. And I would hope, and I really do hope, to see a total change in the way that we approach this, because disabled people have been horribly demonised in a dialogue that has individualised them, and I did see the Minister for employment—she made a speech recently, and did say that this is a social issue, this is not an individual issue. We should not be blaming the victims who can't get into the labour market because of discrimination and exclusion; we should be looking at investing in those things that we know are helping and are solutions, and Access to Work is one of those areas we need massive investment in.

Thank you. I mean, I'm not a statistician, I'm a sociologist, and as a sociologist, I would look around me and say, 'Well, what's distinctive about Wales geographically?' We have a lot of rural areas in Wales where the infrastructure is not so good, where access to employment may not be so easy. We also have a lot of socioeconomic deprivation in Wales in comparison with the other nations, and we do have some gaps in our infrastructure—transport, health—where disabled people might put a lot of emphasis on those services and they need more investment. So, those would be some of the reasons for the gap, but I would also say that there are some potential solutions to those gaps. So, some of the solutions would be—. You know, Wales was really at the forefront of looking at people remote working, and if we look at the rural economy, we've got a lot of people with skills—professional skills—who could be utilising those skills online or remotely, but I still think it's a very underdeveloped part of the work agenda. Now, disabled people—a lot of disabled people—aren't going to be in professional roles, they're going to be in lower paid roles, but many of them still could benefit from education and training and work placements, for example, that could be online or remotely administered. I did some research during the pandemic with the legal profession, and the legal profession were adamant that they couldn't do various things online—it was impossible, 'We've never done it this way. We can't possibly do it this way. It wouldn't be ethical.' They moved their entire operations online, and they've continued to work that way since, because they found it more convenient, more flexible, more economical. Some of it—the cost savings haven't always been great.

But, yes, the gap in Wales has a lot also to do with just the kind of industrial base that we've had in Wales as well, and the sectors in which people are employed, and the fact that we haven't had an expansion in some sectors of the economy that other regions within the UK may have had, in some service industries, for example. But I kept hearing throughout the disability rights taskforce that we don't have enough lawyers in Wales, particularly employment lawyers. So, can we have a scheme to keep these employment lawyers in Wales so that we have better access to justice as well for disabled people who need advice? Actually, time and time again, everyone's saying, 'We educate these people in our universities, but we don't retain them.' We don't think beyond health workers, where there are some incentives to retain them in Wales. Beyond that, we don't think of other professions where we want to retain people, and that is one area I'd like to highlight.

Thank you. No, they're not published yet, and we've had a number of delays with the taskforce more generally. At the beginning, when we first met the First Minister, things were incredibly slow, and we were told that that was to do with the crisis in Ukraine. I don't doubt that it was, but resources were redirected there, and so the taskforce didn't get up and running until quite a lot later than we all anticipated it would, and I think that kind of—. There's also the feeling that—. We looked at the investment and the time that was put into the anti-racism strategy. This is not me pitting different protected characteristics against each other, but you can have one priority and run with that—whether the next group that comes up gets resourced as much is another question. I don't know how they've worked out the resources on the lines of the different taskforces and the different initiatives for people with protected characteristics, but, yes, we would like it to be quicker.

There's been some concern along the way that things have drifted. We have been made aware, when there have been problems in furthering this, because we've had changes in Government Ministers, changes in Cabinet. It was in the programme for government. I worry that we're running out of time, because the next Senedd elections, as I understand it, are in 2026. And if we have an action plan up and running, it needs to go out to statutory consultation for a minimum period, there needs to be discussion around it. It's pushing way into 2025, and will the next Government of Wales be so committed, ideologically, to this? Will they then want to put in all the resources that are required? Because I would just like to say that one thing that has stuck out throughout the entire taskforce, when we've debated everything, from transport, housing, income, employment—everything—it’s been the capacity of disabled people’s organisations in Wales to actually be part of the solution. They just don’t have the funding and the support, and yet every recommendation from every working group is saying, ‘We need more disabled people’s organisations and more third sector groups supporting this work from the bottom up’. And unless we’re going to enable that from the top up, all these wonderful proposals, I really am pessimistic that they won’t come about.

I think we’ve done a wonderful job with the taskforce. I’m really proud of what we’ve done, and I’m really proud that disabled people have participated throughout. But what I don’t want at the end of the day is for it to become something that was created bottom up, and then becomes top down, because we don’t have the capacity below to actually engage with representatives that need to be fully engaged throughout the implementation stage.

Sioned Williams.

Yes. I’m not on that working group, but I have had people raise concerns that that work is slipping, and it has slipped. And that it’s—. It’s central to everything we did with the taskforce. From the outset, we said we want this to be a rights agenda, and it’s got to be linked to the provisions of the UNCRDP, or PD, whichever way you want to put it. And there has been some effort by the taskforce secretariat to do some work whereby, when the recommendations are drawn up, they will link to whatever provisions within the UN treaty are relevant to it to try and cross-analyse our recommendations with it. But I don’t think that’s enough, and I think that disabled people in Wales have campaigned very, very hard over a number of years to get recognition that this piece of law needs to be incorporated into Welsh law, and for it to be a proper rights agenda in a very similar way to the way that the children’s provisions are incorporated, and then it just gives it much more power. That, and a disabled person’s commissioner, have been two issues that have continually come up during the taskforce.

I’m aware that, if you mention a new commissioner within Welsh Government, there are worries and concerns about the costs associated with that. But, given that the position of disabled people has not improved, particularly in the labour market, over a huge amount of time, I think some intervention, some positive intervention, both legally and in terms of an actor who is going to be carrying on the work of the Disability Rights Commission past its end date into that next period of Government, which, you know, is uncertain, because no-one can know who will win elections and what coalitions may come about, and what the priorities will be amongst those different coalitions of politicians—. We've done a huge piece of work here that has taken a lot of time—too much time—and I'm really quite concerned that it won't realise its potential, unless there's something continuous and permanent about it, past what we're doing at the moment.

We're hearing what you're saying, but we have a number of specific questions we need to cover.

Yes. Sorry, I forgot about the education and apprenticeship part of the question. Yes, we did hear from a number of disabled people who had gained from being part of programmes that Welsh Government had run—the Engage to Change programme, for example. But there was a feeling that there was more support needed, of ambassadors, mentors for disabled people. There was a specific focus on learning disabled people, who really did need that additional support. There was a fear that employers don't know how to make reasonable adjustments in terms of work placements that are attached to apprenticeships as well. So, that's a need for education, but also I think investment in things like a mentor's programme—a very distinctive pathway for particular groups that are underrepresented in the workforce at the moment and who would benefit much greater from apprenticeships—would be a good way forward.

Yes, in schools, the transition from school to further and higher education was one focus that we had. One of the proposals we had was to look at an anti-ableism network in further and higher education, where we could unpick quite a lot of the barriers that disabled people face. I said before that I'd done some research on the legal profession. I think education is another area where merit is seen as something that is valued, but is also, I would argue, very value laden and socially shaped. So, we have certain ways of assessing and evaluating merit that are not always helpful to people who don't fit the norm, they're different, and, being in higher education myself, I've seen a transition to moving away from just crude areas of merit measurement to something a little bit more sophisticated, but it's not far enough, in higher education, and I think further education is often a very neglected, cinderella area of the higher and further education system anyway. I welcome this new body in Wales that has been set up to co-ordinate further and higher education. I think that's great. It's just that they haven't had any feed-in to the taskforce, or we've had no contact with them whatsoever, because I understand they were formed quite a lot later than they anticipated as well, or became operational later than they anticipated. So, there is work to be done in that area. I think the apprenticeships scheme was good, but it was limited in its scope and in the amount of placements that were on offer. And we heard this a lot. We heard a lot of people saying they would benefit from it, but there wasn't enough provision. A lot of this is about competing for resources. I'm very aware that that's the political reality of it, but I think, if you want to address this issue, there are targeted areas that we've identified and that have been known about for quite a lot of time, according to the evidence that's already out there, that we could be investing much greater in, and education and training and apprenticeships is one of those areas.

Yes. In terms of some sort of pathway to support people back into education and training, one of the areas that came up quite extensively in the taskforce was that a lot of people who had become disabled later in life, so they'd developed chronic long-term health conditions, and they'd had gaps in their employment history, they couldn't either be supported financially, or they didn't feel they had the confidence, to engage again in higher education or further education. And so this is where there's this big group of people who seem to be on benefits but want to work, but cannot gain access back into the labour market, because—. Often, it's because the work isn't flexible enough, they haven't got the right skills, they need a skill update.

I think being—. I don't want to put too much emphasis on confidence, but confidence was discussed a lot in the taskforce; people saying that if they had the relevant support and were able to build their confidence at a pace that was appropriate for them, then they felt that they could get back into work, but they'd need somebody who was well-informed, somebody who could be supportive, maybe a mentor, beyond the job centre kind of mentoring that they were talking about.

So, to that extent, I think there is a pathway that could be developed here in Wales. I see that you've got evidence from organisations like Fair Treatment for the Women of Wales, and they've been incredibly active in all our discussions on employment, and there are a lot of women there who were saying that they have long-term health conditions. Even if they could volunteer, and gain confidence through volunteering, without that affecting their current benefits, because the social security system is constantly penalising them if they engage, then that is one route back into just getting back into an environment where there isn't too much pressure at that point. So, we need ways in which we can support and accommodate different people's impairments, but also different people's level of confidence and ways in which they can go on to develop new skills.

Diolch. Diolch yn fawr, Cadeirydd.

Very good. Mick Antoniw, please.

Thank you for the evidence you've been giving. There were a few questions I was going to ask around the issue of data monitoring, disaggregated data, the disability disparity evidence unit and so on. You've touched on them in most of your questions and the answers that you've given, so, in many ways just to be concise and for the record, in terms of the data and the work of the disability disparity evidence unit, are we obtaining the right type of evidence, how accurate is that data, how do we improve the data that we have? And just generally, how successful do you think the unit has actually been in terms of the evidence that it has been able to obtain? Thank you.

Thank you. On the one hand, I'm going to say that I'm a bit restricted in answering technical questions about data, because I'm not a statistician, and I don't deal with big data, I tend to deal with qualitative data that's created. I think it was a good initiative to have the disability disparity unit, and it was much needed. One of the things that I do know it's been engaged with is it's been looking at how to embed and incorporate the social model of disability into the way that we gather data. This was something that we discussed in the taskforce: often, when data is gathered, it's unclear who it's being gathered from. For example, questionnaires or interviews where there are follow-up interviews could actually be conducted with carers or guardians, rather than a disabled person themselves. There was also a feeling that data concentrated too much on medical criteria and that we needed to think about how gathering data from a social model perspective might change the way that we gather data, but also what the data would tell us. It was starting from a different perspective than some of the submissions that I've seen that you've had, which are very much more a traditional way of looking at data.

For example, I was asked to do a presentation with the unit to the Royal Statistical Society, looking at how we might incorporate the social model into the way we think about data gathering, data management and the sorts of questions that get asked in surveys, because there'd been some evidence also from a Westminster Cabinet Office inquiry—they had a disability unit—in which questions had been raised whether the actual questions being asked to disabled people were the correct questions. I think you may recall that there was a bit of a controversy around the central Government's disability plan. There was some court action and it was felt that some of the questions were totally inappropriate and showed a lack of understanding of disabled people and their lives and the priorities of the disabled community. So, there's been a period of time where it's been quite right to be challenging the way that we ask questions, the way that data is gathered, who it's gathered with, and those questions are being asked. They wouldn't have been asked before, had we not had the unit.

In terms of the statistical evidence, my view has always been that that evidence is very, very valuable to know what the extent of an employment gap is. I don't always think that it teases right down to the minutiae of the 'why' questions. So, knowing that we have a disability employment gap and what factors contribute to that employment gap is one thing, it's another thing if we need to know why that employment gap exists in the first place. I think we have to recognise the limitations of the data, and that's why what's been going on with the disability rights taskforce has been very innovative, in that it's asked from the bottom up what people's experiences are, and gathered data from those lived experiences, not just the usual statistical data that we would normally expect from Government. So, from that perspective, I really do think that Wales is ahead, the Welsh Government has done very well in recognising that, and has been very brave in doing that as well. But politicians do like big data, they like to talk about percentages and how many per cent of people do this, that and the other. It's very difficult to get them off that particular track.

Us. [Laughter.]

Sorry. I'm talking about you. Sorry about that.

Yes. We obviously need to measure outcomes and that's one of the ways in which we can do it. Mick, back to you. 

I think you've answered the main thing. If there was one specific recommendation in terms of data that you would want us to take on board, what would it be?

I'd have to get back to you on that, I think. I don't feel that the whole data area, in terms of traditional data in the way that it's being normally talked about, is my area. I suppose I've already answered it in terms of I would like to see more co-production, I'd like to see more lived experience being part of the data that we consider, and not just statistical data, which is the usual way that Government has operated in the past.

Quality not quantity.

Yes.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you. Joel James.

Thank you, Chair. Thanks ever so much for coming in this afternoon. I'm conscious of time, but I just wanted to pick your brains, if I may, about a few issues. Obviously, you've mentioned the possibility of, say, a disability rights commissioner. You also mentioned then that it would be good to get maybe more employment rights lawyers to try and keep them in the system. I just wanted to get an idea, going forward, of what the main—. If you had a wish list, as they say, what would be the main recommendations that you would say to the Welsh Government—'This is what you need to do'?

In terms of employment—and that's what we're looking at today—I would like to see the Welsh Government use the opportunities that are available to them around public procurement in particular. I think a lot could be achieved through the recent Social Partnership and Public Procurement (Wales) Act 2023. I know that the Equality and Human Rights Commission have called for different groups, including disabled people, to be represented in a better way on the sub-group of the public procurement group, and I don't think we've had a response to that. They brought that up in a number of meetings that they attended of the taskforce, and that would seem to be a way forward.

Public procurement has a way of changing some terms and conditions of employment. It's not just about measuring gaps, for example. We really need to—I agree with the EHRC in this respect—measure the recruitment of disabled people, but we desperately need to understand retention, because it's not good us trying to put people up for jobs all the time that they lose within short periods of time, or they exit the labour market and we don't understand why that has happened. So, we need either good data or good provisions like measures through public procurement to educate and to cajole and to use a bit of stick as well as carrot around the recruitment, retention and progression of disabled people.

Until we see disabled people in leadership roles and see them represented properly in decision making, it's a bit like 50 years ago when women were never around the decision-making tables. It's just so nice to see a good representation today, but there was a day when we would walk into a room like this and there would be no women, and it's no good just saying, 'Well, we've got a percentage of women in the workforce and so we've achieved something'—we need to achieve it at all levels. It's no good just getting disabled people into any old job, or into the labour market or being active in the labour market, we need to invest in them so that they can achieve role-model status and leadership roles and be key decision makers, because that was one of the things we really learnt when we were doing the COVID report—that the key decision makers around the table didn't really think about disability, because there were no disabled people there.

Thank you for that response. Just one more question, if I may, Chair. I know last year—and this is what’s got me thinking, actually—the International Labour Organization released a report, I think it was December 2023, and it highlighted the work that about 30 or 32 multinational organisations were doing to increase disability within the workforce. We’re talking Nestlé, BNP Paribas, all those big companies. I was just wondering if there’s anything out there that could be described as best practice or good practice that could be adopted in Wales to be utilised—either what’s going on maybe in other countries in the public sector, but maybe also private companies and what they’ve been doing.

There's the Business Disability Forum. One of the obstacles to that is that membership costs money, so some organisations, particularly small and medium-sized organisations, may feel reluctant to join organisations like that. The other problem that I have with quite a lot of the initiatives that I know of is that, unlike other protected characteristics, where there’s been employer kitemarks that have been set up—. For example, Stonewall have got their own employer kitemark, and employers proudly display that when they’ve reached a certain level. Unlike any other group, disabled people don’t have their own kitemark. It’s a top-down Government approach. Even with businesses like the Business Disability Forum, they don't incorporate disabled people’s organisations in a way that I think would be incredibly useful.

In terms of other countries, I’m not totally aware of other models, I must admit, in terms of best practice. I think, again, we come back to the fact that the disability rights movement is very poor and under-resourced. If we were talking about LGBT+ rights here, we’ve got some quite well-resourced groups who can push that agenda forward. But my experience of the disability rights organisations in Wales is that they are constantly firefighting, they’re just keeping their head above water, and they are terrified that they will keep getting their grant cut, and the Welsh Government are the main funders of them. They can only do so much. We could ask them to do something like an employer kitemark in Wales, and I think that would be great idea, but it will have resource implications, and it can’t come out of an existing budget, it would need to come out of an additional budget. I think it would be a good thing to explore further.

Thank you. We have run out of time. Thank you very much indeed for your important evidence and for setting the scene for our evidence sessions. If we’ve got any further questions, perhaps we can just write to you.

Yes, please do.

We'd only want brief answers, and we hopefully wouldn’t take too much of your time. So, thank you very much. We’ll be sending you a transcript, if there’s anything you don’t think is accurate please do correct it.

I will, thank you.

Very good. Thank you so much for your time. We’re now going to take a short break. Our next session will start at roughly a quarter to, so in about six minutes, with our academic colleagues.

Welcome back to the Equality and Social Justice Committee. We're continuing our inquiry into disability and employment, and I'm very pleased to welcome Professor Melanie Jones and Professor Victoria Wass, from Cardiff University—and thank you very much indeed for your written paper; very useful—as well as Ruth Nortey, also from Cardiff University, here in the room as well, and Dr Mark Bryan from Sheffield University, who's joining us online. Thanks, all of you, for making the time to be with us today. I wondered if Jane Dodds could start us off with the questions.

Okay. Who would like to start off? Obviously, it's quite a wide question. Who'd like to kick off? Melanie, go ahead.

Yes, I can make a start. The first thing I think I can say is that disability is defined and measured very differently across countries, and there's obviously a very different institutional context. So, I think we have to be very cautious in terms of making those international comparisons. If you look at disability prevalence, it varies a lot across countries, and that provides one of the drivers of the disability employment gap, because if you are defining disability in a very narrow, perhaps a very severe way, you'd expect your disability employment gap to be larger. 

In terms of the international evidence, I've seen work looking at equality legislation very similar to what we'd have in the UK; I've seen work looking at quotas—so, a minimum number or proportion of your workforce being disabled people employed; I've also seen work looking at employment subsidies, and I think the consensus from the evidence is that none of them have been particularly effective. So, I don't think there's an easy model to take internationally and adopt in the UK, but, obviously, I'll let others contribute.

Professor Wass.

No, actually, I hadn't put my hand up.

I beg your pardon. Anything further to add? If not, Jane, move on.

I'm a PhD student at Cardiff University, and I've conducted some focus groups with disabled people and disabled people's representatives. In those conversations that I've had with people, one barrier that disabled people are really experiencing that I think is particular to Wales is particularly people living in rural areas, and that the infrastructure, such as transport, is not available, so people aren't able to get to the workplace, if they are disabled and don't have access to a private car, because public transport is not available to them. I think things have changed slightly since the pandemic, where we've had more options for remote working, but I think there is still a lot to be done here in Wales to have more flexible working approaches, such as remote working, or hybrid working, which could then allow disabled people who live in more rural areas to access the labour market.

Dr Bryan.

Hi. So, one of the pieces of evidence that we described in our submission to the inquiry is some work we've done looking at the disability employment gap in local areas, and how this varies across the whole of Great Britain, but also Wales. It's difficult to describe in detail the analysis we've done, but what we've tried to do is split it into the difference in the gap between the national average and the local average that you can ascribe to the characteristics of the population—so, things like the demographics of the population, skills, the age of the population, et cetera—and other factors that you could say are more to do with the local area. So, it might be to do with the infrastructure, it might be to do with transport or the composition of local industry.

And what we find is that, as you pointed out, Wales tends to have higher disability employment gaps than elsewhere, and even when you have allowed for this profile of the population, this remains, and in fact it gets even more noticeable. So, in our overall analysis of the whole of Great Britain, what we find is that these gaps, these local gaps, are disproportionately driven by the state of the local economy, so the level of labour demand in the local economy, but also the types of industry. And what's associated with lower disability employment gaps—everything else held constant—is having a higher proportion of jobs in the knowledge sector, so professional services, education, IT, that sort of thing. That's one thing that may explain some of the higher disability employment gaps in Wales.

I should say also that we find that working at home can help. On transport, we find that transport doesn't explain the differences. This is at the overall GB level, but transport doesn't explain the differences. That doesn't mean to say transport has no effect. It just means to say that that's not what's driving the differences across different geographies, so other things are going on.

Fine. Professor Jones, you wanted to come in.

I was just going to add, first of all, that Wales looks different from the UK average, but just like Mark said, there are some similarities with perhaps more deprived areas in the north of England, so Wales doesn't look like such an outlier in that context. And the other thing, I think, to highlight is there's not just regional variation in the disability employment gap, but there's regional variation in prevalence, and those two things tend to reinforce each other, so it tends to be that those areas that have a high prevalence of disability also have a larger disability employment gap, and it kind of magnifies the impact of disability on the local area.

Okay. Could I just bring in Joel James, and then I'll come back to you, Jane?

Thank you, Chair. Sorry I was a little bit late coming in then. I just wanted to touch upon a question Jane was asking about the disability employment gap. I was just wondering what would be your recommendations in terms of direct involvement by the Welsh Government. What direct actions could the Welsh Government take? Or is it solely within the realms of the UK Government to take action? Because I know a lot of people have been mentioning, 'Oh well, people could work from home more', and that, but one of the concerns that I have with that, when I've looked into it, is that people feel quite isolated, and they're missing out then on the social aspect that they would have, working in the office, and developing those soft skills that you develop.

Professor Wass.

Yes, I don't know if you've heard of the disability employment charter. It's got four sponsors, and what it is, it's a set of recommendations that's designed for Government. It was particularly addressed to the Westminster Government, but it equally applies to the Welsh Government, and there's no reason why you couldn't take forward some of those initiatives.

If I just tell you roughly some of those initiatives that are in this charter—and this charter is available online. Employment and pay gap reporting: so, I think the Westminster Government is planning to do something around this area, but there's no reason that Welsh Government couldn't pre-empt it, requiring employers of over 250 employees to publish data annually on the number of disabled people they employ as a proportion of the workforce. Then, once you've identified disabled people in the workplace—and there are a number of challenges in doing that, which I think is why the Westminster Government has been quite slow to pick up on that—but once you can identify people within a workplace, you can then measure all the different gaps. If you don't have that identification, that measure of people who are disabled in the workforce, you can't measure the gaps, so you're working in the dark.

Another thing is reform of Disability Confident. It's not stringent enough. It doesn't ask enough of employers, and there's no reason why Welsh Government couldn't step in there, particularly, I think, leveraging Government procurement. You could make it conditional on employers telling you what the proportion of disabled people is in their workplace, and looking for progress over time. Let's just have a look. Yes, I mean, Welsh Government could monitor progress on disability employment independently of the Westminster Government, so that you can see how well Wales is doing both comparatively and over time. But the pre-condition of this is that organisations measure the number of disabled people in their organisation, and very few do at the moment because of the challenges. I think they need support. I think they need a bit of carrot and stick together, but I think that is something that Welsh Government could do.

Jane Dodds, did you have any further questions at this point? 

Again, I can make a start. I think there are challenges on what I'd call the supply side. So, you typically find that disabled individuals will also have other characteristics that reduce their probability of employment. So, let's say disability is often correlated with things like living in a deprived area, like having relatively lower levels of education. So, there are multiple challenges. We also see that many disabled individuals are not unemployed, they're actually inactive, so they're actually further away from the labour market. And if you look at survey data about their perceptions of their probability of getting work, that can also be lower than the general out-of-work population. So, there seems to be a greater distance from the labour market. Also, again, there's a greater proportion of disabled people out of work who would be on welfare support, which, again, might change work incentives.

And then, on the other dimension in terms of the demand side, you're thinking about employer practices and policies. Certainly there's now a consensus, I think, in the international evidence, that there is evidence of discrimination in hiring against disabled individuals. So, you've got multiple barriers, I think, on both sides, which makes it a very difficult issue to address.  

Professor Wass.

I think, traditionally, we've always looked at the supply side. We've looked at disabled people and how to incentivise them and support them into work, and we've ignored the employers. And there are two sides to the labour market. So, if employers aren't employing, it doesn't matter, or you're very limited in what you can do on the supply side. You need a bit of both, and because we're already doing some of the supply side stuff, I think we need to refocus policy attention on what's happening with the employers.

Da iawn. Jane, did you want to—? 

I think Mark Bryan wanted to say something. 

I beg your pardon, Mark. Please do go ahead. 

It was mainly to say that I agreed with what the other two said, but just on the education thing, we've got some work that does suggest that education does contribute something to the disability employment gap. And I guess it's just very difficult to change education quickly, because it's partly a generational thing. We've got some preliminary work that we're doing on looking at trends. However, that does suggest that some of the shrinkage of the disability employment gap over the last decade can be correlated with improvements in education. So, it does seem that things are potentially changing, albeit quite slowly.

Ruth, did you want to come in at this point? 

I was going to say that one barrier, I think, is attitudes and the attitudinal barrier, and that's amongst disabled people themselves having low aspirations regarding the types of employment they can do, and maybe that's due to a lack of role models within society. And then also, I think, within employers as well, attitudes of stereotypes and negative stereotypes around disabled people, and disabled people's capacity in what we can do. So, I think that needs to be targeted as well, attitudinal barriers, both for disabled people and for employers as well.

Thank you. Obviously, this is a very big subject and we could spend half an hour on this, but let's just pick up some of the points you've mentioned in specific areas of questioning. Julie Morgan.

Ruth Nortey, if I could ask you a bit more about your research: I wondered whether, in your research, throughout Wales, you've come across particular issues arising in particular areas that you're able to highlight, and have you seen any particular good practice that is specific to one geographical area or another?

I would say that—. So, in my research, I—. So, initially, I interviewed disabled people, disabled people's organisations, and disability employment advisers, to get a general understanding about the issues that disabled people are facing in Wales. And then I would say that one geographical area in Wales that seems to be doing a lot of work around disability is Pembrokeshire. There seems to be quite a lot of activity going on in Pembrokeshire around disability. There are possibly other areas, but that's one that came to light with me, from people that I spoke to, particularly Disability Confident organisations. There are a few of them that are a 'leader'—so, they've got to the top level—based in Pembrokeshire.

I know there are lots of issues that were mentioned around Disability Confident, and it does need a lot of reform, but there is some good practice going on in Pembrokeshire, particularly around, I would say, aspirations towards employers offering more of a universal approach to reasonable adjustments. So, following, I guess, the social model of disability, so that employees can go into an organisation and reasonable adjustments are just something that are on offer, it's not such an individual offer that people have to ask for. There are some organisations within Pembrokeshire that are going for that, I guess aspiring to have a universal offer that is inclusive to everybody, regardless of if they are disabled or not.

And what about people with learning disabilities? Is there any work there in Pembrokeshire going on at the minute?

There is work around Pembrokeshire. I guess one thing that came to light within my research was particularly around alternative ways of recruitment and recruiting disabled people, particularly people with learning difficulties, and being able to have the option of a work experience, or work trials, instead of a standard interview, an application process, really opened up the labour market to them, and enabled them to enter the labour market. And having the option as well of employers, instead of having such a rigid job description, maybe having a look at the individual and job carving—so tailoring a job or a position that they have in an organisation for that particular disabled person, that seemed to have benefits as well, particularly with people with learning difficulties.

Right. Thank you. Then I was going to ask about the rates of self-employment for disabled people, about the fact that they've been traditionally higher. And so, do you think more support should be available for disabled people to take up self-employment positions?

So, if you condition on work, a higher proportion of workers who would be in self-employment, if you were disabled relative to non-disabled people, there's a positive dimension to that, in the sense that self-employment offers greater flexibilities over the location, the duties, hours of work. So, some of the evidence that we've seen says it's a positive choice for disabled people. On the other hand, we've also heard evidence around it being a last resort—you're perhaps doing it because you haven't got other options. I think what we don't know very much of is about the quality of self-employment. So, clearly, self-employment is a very diverse thing, and what we don't know very much about, I think, is particularly differences between disabled and non-disabled individuals on the basis of success in self-employment, incomes. So, I think before making a recommendation that it should be encouraged or discouraged, I would like to know much more about what job quality is amongst the self-employed.

And you don't have any evidence of that at the moment.

It's very, very limited. The kind of survey data we have is much richer on employees than it is on self-employment, not least because the income of a self-employed individual is just much more difficult to measure.

Thank you. Did you want to add anything?

Well, I can add a little bit, but it's anecdotal rather than statistical. I do quite a lot of work valuing personal injury claims, so people who are, very often, not disabled before the injury and then they're disabled afterwards, and my job is to work out what their earnings loss is, as a result of the injury. Some of these cases are people who are self-employed, and people who are self-employed before injury are often able to carry on in that self-employment. But the people who are self-employed after injury, when they were previously employed—and it's quite good, because we've got this before and after; they're not disabled before and disabled after—the form of self-employment is quite poor-quality employment, and they've been pushed into it through lack of employment opportunities.

Right. Thank you.

Okay. I just want to ask about the in-work inequalities, because obviously there's a lot of focus, by Governments, on ticking the box for getting disabled people into work, but much less of a focus on the success in retaining that work and also being able to move up and get a higher paid job, as they gain experience. So, I just wondered if any of you could tell us what information there is about that, and why it is we've ignored that, rather than having a tick-box exercise to getting disabled people into work.

I think I can say much more about the evidence that exists. So, I would totally agree with that position: there's very much a focus on the disability employment gap, and you contrast that, for example, for gender, where it's the gender pay gap, so I think, just sometimes, indicators become a focus and then people neglect other surrounding indicators. But all the evidence is that the disability pay gap is as large as the gender pay gap, it's persistent. Even if you condition on a range of characteristics of the individuals, you still get what we call an unexplained pay gap, so evidence consistent with wage discrimination against disabled individuals; it doesn't get anything like the profile, either in terms of the public or policy or academia. I've done some work looking at the differences between the public and the private sector, so it's narrower in the public sector than the private sector. We've also done work looking at hours of work. So, you get a disability employment gap measured in terms of people, but, actually, if you consider employment as well, in terms of the number of hours, you get a further disability hours gap—more likely to work part-time than non-disabled individuals.

We've seen differences in the nature of work, like self-employment, but also important indicators around job satisfaction, or your perception of management in the workplace. And, again, we've got quite detailed survey data, so we can account for where you work, your occupation, and you still find those differences in the experience. And I think what's really important is that you're not going to address the disability employment gap if you don't address issues around job quality, because the incentive to work, and the incentive to retain work, depends on those indicators as well. So, I can't say why people have neglected that, but I think it is an area where there does need to be policy attention and development, not least nationally tracking things like the disability pay gap, but also, like Vicky mentioned, employers have a huge role there to internally track things like their disability pay gap within the organisation, or differences in the experience of work, or progression at the workplace.

I mean—. Victoria.

Yes. And that brings me back to the organisational collection of data. Since 2011, which was the last workplace employment relations survey, we don't have organisational data on a whole load of in-work indicators. We're very limited in our in-work indicators when we're relying on the labour force survey. If we can encourage employers to collect data on disability—they also collect data on a lot of these other things—we've got the data then to be able to say something about in-work disability gaps. And if you don't collect the disability data, you can't look at the gaps.

And then I think we'd be able to tell you a lot more about employer best practice, because at the moment we can't evaluate changes that employers are making that aim to be positive, because you don't see the before and after, because we don't have the data.

Okay. And what impact would the legislation that the UK Government's proposing to extend the gender pay gap reporting to disability—would that then give you a much better data set of what was going on? Because if we don't know—. We can't evaluate something if we don't know what the current situation is. 

I think it depends on the quality of the data that's produced. So, I think, as we started out, disability is difficult in terms of a concept, it's difficult in terms of measurements. So, if employers are all measuring disabilities in their own metrics, then that data wouldn't be comparable and it wouldn't be much use in terms of making comparisons across time or across organisations, so we believe there's a huge role for Government in creating a consistent definition, even a consistent way of data collection. It might sound like a smaller point, but even the way you ask the questions will affect prevalence rates. So, the more consistent that data can be, the more meaningful it will be, and then, yes, clearly, we can look at whether the disability employment gap is related to very much a concentration of disabled individuals in certain firms or is it equally spread across firms. That requires us not to just monitor pay, but to also monitor workforce composition within the organisation. So, it would need to be different from the gender pay gap reporting, and it would need to have measures of, I think, workforce composition in there to address the disability employment gap, as well as address things like the disability pay gap. But I think just putting that framework in place for employers would allow them to then measure any outcomes within their workplace.

Okay. We'll move on to Sioned Williams. I'll come back to that if we have time.

So, what our evidence showed is the amount of the disability employment gap that we think we could explain by education. So, the figure we got was 12 per cent, which doesn't sound very much, but as we've already heard, there are multiple barriers to closing the disability employment gap, so it's not surprising that when you focus just on one particular characteristic it doesn't explain a huge amount. So, we found it explains about 12 per cent. We found that what really counts is having a degree, or at the other end of the scale, not having any qualifications. So, having a degree helps to close the disability employment gap, and not having any qualifications widens it.

And also, as I've said, we've seen this evidence, which is still preliminary in the trends data, that a substantial part of the decrease in the DEG over the last decade or so can be correlated with improvements in education. So, in particular, there are now fewer disabled people who have no qualifications. So, these two ends of the distribution, increasing the number of disabled people who hold higher education qualifications, degrees, and reducing the number who hold no qualifications, could help to close the gap. I mean, what I said in the evidence is that in England students are now required to carry on effectively in full-time education until they're 18, whereas I believe in Wales that's not the case. So, if that changed, that could, over time, as new cohorts acquire qualifications, reduce that component of the disability employment gap for the 17 per cent who do not have any qualifications. I think we should say that this is not a panacea, though; this is but one part of the solution, I think.

So, I guess we shouldn't think that this is going to be, necessarily, an easy thing to do. It will need investment, and it will probably need specific support for disabled people to improve their education, because we know that there's, arguably, a vicious circle between being disabled, not getting enough education and then being more likely to be disabled later on. So, I think it does need, probably, specific support for disabled people. I couldn't say what form that should take. That's not my area. But I think that that's probably going to the case—that it does need specific investment.  

What I'd like to add, related to research, is around the transitions between people when they finish school going into employment, and I've heard a lot of people I've spoken to say there is a gap there in getting information and support of how to then move into employment, what their rights are as a disabled person in the labour market. I think there’s definitely a gap there that's missing at the moment.

I haven't of that, exactly, through my evidence, but what people have said to me is, 'Yes, having that flexibility in support, that individual tailored support, is really useful.' I know that, with that, comes a cost, and so that needs to be picked up somewhere, but having individual support that's ongoing as well. So, maybe after someone has entered employment, having continued support for a certain amount of time is really useful for people, particularly people I've spoken to that have learning difficulties as well.

Thank you very much. Mick Antoniw. Sorry, Mark Bryan, you wanted to add.

Yes, I just wanted to make a general point that struck me, which is that there are lots of different types of disability, and sometimes we say ‘the disability employment gap' as if there's just one gap. But, in fact, there are different gaps and it's not surprising that, for people with learning disabilities, the gap is huge. For other sorts of disabilities, it's much smaller. It varies by severity of condition. So, I think that's probably another reason why it's so difficult to change, because it is very different for different types of people. So, these one-size-fits-all solutions aren't necessarily going to be as effective as you might think.

Thank you for mentioning that. I'd just like to follow up and ask—. Most people should have the dignity of work. Clearly, somebody may be so unwell or so disabled that they can't work. But, for those who have a learning disability that gives them an intellectual age of much below 16, is there a case for, and has anybody done any work on, subsidised employment so that we reward the employer for taking on somebody who can do a basic job but has a limited range in what they could do or progress to? At the moment, we spend a lot of money on enabling people to survive through the benefits system, but how do we actually use the same resource to enable people to do specific jobs that they would be capable of doing? Has anybody done any work on that? No. Ruth.

I haven’t done any work on that specifically, but I think I mentioned before job carving. And I know I’ve come across examples where, within an office, for example, there’s one bit of work that needs doing, so maybe they have somebody come in, with a learning disability, and that person just went around at the end of the day and collected mail. And that was their one particular job, but, in just doing that for a few hours, that person was coming out of their home, they were socialising, they were growing in confidence. So, I think it’s about encouraging employers to be more creative, maybe, about the way they look at how jobs are defined and the way that jobs are split up within the organisation, to be a bit more flexible to accommodate, maybe, someone that has more complex needs.

Thank you. Can I move on to Mick Antoniw?

Thank you. You’ve provided quite a bit of information already about the area of questions that I wanted to look into, which is really around data—the type of data we have. And, of course, all the actions we want to take, and the policies we wish to develop, really have to be based on some from of evidential base and understanding, and, of course, you’ve spoken a lot about the need for better needs and outcomes understanding and data. So, I won’t go back over those.

So, I think the only sort of really concise question I can put is this: most of the Welsh Government’s focus has actually been via the disability disparity evidence unit—that has been the main vehicle whereby data has been collated, obtained for these particular purposes. It’s really just whether you have any particular view of how effective that unit has been, the quality of the data it has. Is it looking for the right type of data? Do you see this as being a useful vehicle for the future development of policy and action, or do you have any particular recommendations in that regard? Thank you.

Victoria. 

I’m not really aware of what the disability disparity evidence unit is actually doing. And that’s no reflection on it; it’s just that most of our research uses UK nationally representative data, and then you can look at Wales within that. I think any work that that unit is doing, in order to be comparable with what’s happening in other regions and the UK, needs to use the same measures, or it needs to include the same measures of disability within the survey. It can add on measures, but, as a basic requirement, it needs to use the same measures that are used in other nationally representative surveys, otherwise Wales is going out on its own and has no means of comparing what it’s doing with other regions.

Okay. 

If I can add, but this is not necessarily directly related to that, I’m aware of the disability disparity unit. I haven’t necessarily engaged directly with it or seen particularly new evidence. But, in terms of data gaps, where I think they should be looking forward, I agree entirely with Vicky about perhaps boosting the sample sizes in relation to Wales, where those regional comparisons are really important. I think we know very little since the workplace employment relations survey about the role of employers and the firm, and what happens inside that sort of black box of the firm. So, back in 2011, we had data on things like equality policies and practices for employers that we don’t have comparable information on now. We’ve also talked a bit about self-employment; I think there’s a big gap in terms of self-employment.

And perhaps the other thing that I wanted to emphasise is not just that consistency with the rest of the UK, but also consistency across time. So, a lot of what we’re doing is we’re looking at trends over time, and even slight changes in terms of questionnaire design can cause discontinuities, or exercises whereby it’s very difficult, then, to track the progress or change over time.

Victoria. 

Sorry, I don’t mean to hog this, but I’m just thinking, in terms of additional questions, one of the problems with the existing questions that we’ve got is that they’re quite fluid. And, over time, the increase in disability prevalence is due to an increase in understanding and acceptance of disability. So, at the moment, at UK level, a quarter of the working age population reports disability. If you go back to 1998, it was half that proportion. So, more and more people—. And I don't think it's to do with more health conditions. It could be to do with all sorts of other things, but we don't know what it's to do with unless we collect some other data that is more medical model orientated. I know that doesn't really fit well with your objectives, but if we have some data that is more constant in terms of what constitutes a disability in terms of limitations, we can then work out over time what the source of this increase in disability prevalence is. And it does make a difference. It was quite a long time ago now, but the RNIB looked at the labour force survey collection of data on visual impairment, and then it collected its own data in terms of registration of registered blind, registered visually impaired, and the gap between the two was quite big, but what was interesting over time is that, for those people who had an objective measure because they'd been to an ophthalmologist and there was a strict medical definition, the disability employment gap, over about 10 years, declined. Whereas, with the labour force survey, when you've got these very wide visual impairments, more and more people are reporting that they're visually impaired and the disability employment gap is going down. That's the heart of the problem. We can't get at that problem, we can't unpick it, unless we've got a number of different measures of disability, and one of those measures could be, and it would be helpful to have, a more objective, less changing, less fluid measure of disability.

No further questions from me.

Okay. Joel James.

Thank you, Chair. I suppose my question, really, touches upon what you were saying there, Victoria, about the different definitions and the fluidity of it. So, one of the concerns that has been expressed is, obviously, as to people with disabilities, there are different degrees of disabilities—there's physical, there might be mental, there's neurodivergence. Do you see in the support out there that there is a lack of consistency amongst that then? Are some Government or third sector organisations better at providing support for, for example, as you mentioned, blindness or hearing, and then is that replicated in the private sector, or maybe where the Welsh Government are helping out? Sorry, I've waffled on a bit there, but I hope it makes sense. Some of the concern that I have is that that support is inconsistent. When you're looking at—. I think the lady before said that there's a competition for resources and, unfortunately, some disabilities are more widely known or more widely recognised than others and the support might be better for it, then, if that makes sense.

I think there are well known gaps and inconsistencies between people with physical impairments and those with neurodivergent or mental impairments. The gap has been there for a long time. But what we've seen is, in terms of reporting of disability, that we've got a huge increase in those people reporting mental-type impairments.

With that in mind, then, what sort of support could be given, or what do you think the support should look like?

You're asking me well out of my area. I do statistics and economics and quantitative large data, and we don't have the data, really, to identify what the support needs are.

Okay dokey, then. Ruth, you mentioned earlier the regional good practice out there in terms of, for example, Pembrokeshire. Is there anything else out there, maybe internationally, that we could look at, and say, 'Well, this is what they're doing in, say, France and Spain, and this is the impact it's having'? And are there any big private companies? I know, last year—let me check my notes now—. The International Labour Organization, and the big businesses that they cover, like AXA and BNP Paribas and Nestlé, they all publish what they do as their best practice for plugging that disability employment gap, and I was just wondering if there are any big private companies out there that are setting the trend, if that makes sense, which maybe we could learn from.

So, in terms of international examples, I haven't come across—it's not something that I've looked at in my research. On private companies, I'm just thinking about the ones that I've looked at. For example, I know that here, in Cardiff, Admiral is doing some really great work around making their workplace more inclusive for disabled people, but also people with all different protected characteristics as well. And they are looking to make their workplace universally inclusive for everybody, so that reasonable adjustments are just a standard, people don't have to request them individually. So, that's one example that I've looked at. But one thing that I found in my research is that best practice isn't really being shared widely. So, when I spoke to employers that were under the Disability Confident scheme, one challenge that they had was that they felt that they were doing really good work within their organisation, but they wanted to talk to other employers as well, to understand what else was going on out there. They didn't know how to contact those employers, where to find them. So, that's one gap that I've found is that employers were asking for more networking opportunities to learn from their peers, and those weren't available at the time, at the moment.

Just one final question from me, which touches upon what some of the other Members have asked there about private companies looking at specific things where they could maybe bring in better work experience or internships to try and get disabled people into the market. I know, a couple of years back, one of the things that was floated—and I don't necessarily agree with this, but I just wanted to get your opinions on this—was to look then at the wages, for private companies to be able to pay less in the hope of trying to employ more, if that makes sense. What are your views on that? I'm not necessarily supportive, but I'm keen to know your views. I don't know if anyone wants to—

It's hugely controversial, isn't it? I remember the controversy when it came up, was it about 10 years ago now?

Perhaps it can be related back to the proposal for disability pay gap reporting. So, one of the arguments against disability pay gap reporting is that you're not really taking into account—. So, if you're hiring, perhaps, disabled individuals who are relatively inexperienced, low down in terms of the organisation, then you're going to have a larger disability pay gap, but at the same time you're helping address the disability employment gap. That's why I would strongly say that any disability pay gap reporting metrics also need to have the proportion of the workforce who would report disability, because it's only by having those two pieces of information that you can really assess the company.

In terms of best practice in the private sector, I think a lot of the reason we don't know—. Companies are doing good practice, but they're doing it individually and it's very hard to prove externally, because we don't have any sort of central data sets or ways of monitoring what companies are doing. And so that data gap, if we address that, we would be able to identify good practice and then I think people would be able to adopt policies and practices that have been shown to be effective. At the moment, I just don't think we know what those are, because it's very difficult to prove that you're doing good practice.

And I think it also relates to some of the comments that we've had about Disability Confident. So, a lot of the criticisms of Disability Confident are that people have said that they're doing good practices, but we just don't know how effective they are because there aren't enough hard outcomes in terms of data.

There's just such a huge range of disability. Some things are easy to measure, like visual ability. We test it in a range of ways, from when a child enters school, and whether or not you can see a number plate at a sufficient distance to be able to drive. But there are other disabilities that are really difficult to measure. With neurodivergence, our understanding of it has improved enormously, but the range is just massive, between those who are able to be captains of industry to those who fall into the category of falling out of the workforce because we aren't sufficiently creative in how we are going to accommodate that. So, I think measuring it seems to be really difficult, and perhaps that explains why, unlike with the LGBT kitemarks, we don't have disability kitemarks, because it's unclear how we're going to measure that. How do you address that in your academic work, given this huge range of people put under the label of 'disabled'?

So, in national survey data, when we produce things like the disability employment gap, we're using survey data where individuals are essentially asked—. They self-report information about whether they have a long-standing health problem, and whether it limits them, and typically, we use a definition that is consistent with the Equality Act, so it'll be 'limiting day-to-day activities'. So, regardless of your impairment type, it would be up to you then to say to what extent you would see that as limiting your day-to-day activity. So, it's very much a self-reported definition.

It's a global definition in the sense that it is essentially a binary definition, which, in some cases, we could be quite critical of, because actually we're thinking about more of a continuum—you know, severity differs. So, we have crude measures, but that definition at the moment is tied to equality legislation. It's that definition that we use to measure the disability pay gap, the disability employment gap, and it's that definition that I think would be most straightforward to implement, let's say, in a range of other organisations, so by employers, by public service delivery. I do worry a bit, just because it's difficult, and we don't do it, then that means we've got big data gaps. So, I can see there are probably arguments for improving things and doing things differently, but I think as a sort of benchmark measure that is consistent with what we know about national statistics, then it would be a good place to start.

Okay.

But individual employers are not going to have that wealth of knowledge, so I really think that there's a role for Government in terms of saying that this is how we measure nationally, this is the type of measure that would be useful for an organisation to implement, then you'd be consistent with national data. You could be consistent across each other, consistent across time, and so we could have a much, I think, deeper debate about what works in terms of policy if we used that consistent definition, even if it is imperfect.

And how do you define 'mental health issues'? Because one in four people are going to have a mental crisis during their lifetime, and you hope that it's going to be rare and never repeated. But other people will have enduring mental health problems, which clearly is an enduring disability. But somebody who's had an acute episode won't necessarily want to describe that as a disability; they just want to make it a health problem that they've managed to overcome.

So, there is more detail. Behind that Equality Act definition, in the labour force survey, you'd then be asked which of 18, I think, impairment types you had, so you could then break it down into different types. You also have information about the number that you report, whether it limits you a little or a lot, so there are ways to—. That is a point-of-time measure, so you're right in saying that disability's not permanent, and in survey data, we see people moving into disability and people leaving disability, and that's why any data collection exercises that are done need to be regular, to recognise the fact that disability doesn't necessarily need to be permanent. So, I think what we'd say is you can explore that heterogeneity, but at the start, you have to define 'disability'.

Thank you. Mark, you wanted to come in.

Yes, just to add, the official definition of 'disability' is that it's a long-term condition, so in the labour force survey, for example, they ask whether it's—I think it's a condition that's lasted or expected to last more than 12 months. So, in theory, just one acute episode wouldn't count as disability.

Okay.

Can I just add something that came up when the gentleman was asking about, I think, suggesting that if disabled people were paid less, then the disability employment gap might be smaller, because more of them might be employed? So, I think this is something that someone's alluded to, someone suggesting a few years ago that the minimum wage should be lower for disabled people. Obviously, that's very controversial, so I think a more productive way to do this would be to do what was suggested earlier, and think about subsidies for certain jobs that are done by people with certain conditions, so subsidies to those employers or to those jobs. We talk about the cost of disability, and the personal independence payment is meant to address that, to some extent, so you could think about the cost of disability employment. So, rather than doing it through the wage, you could think about subsidies, which might be a more productive way forward.

Well, in the long term, there are things like the minimum income guarantee could be a way of ensuring that everybody could work in some shape or form. But, anyway—

It's how you get employers to take people on, isn't it—

Indeed.

—if the costs are higher. That's one reason why the disability employment gap is smaller in areas where there's more latent demand, so more prosperous areas, and employers can't pick and choose so much.

Thank you for that. Sioned.

If I do the narrowing of the disability employment gap and how that overestimates the changes in inequality, and Melanie can do the economic cycle. I'm not sure we can answer on the impact assessment, because we don't know what employers are doing. But the disability employment gap appears to have narrowed over time, it's gone down. It's gone down more in the UK than it has for Wales. But it can be misleading in terms of thinking, and the Westminster Government, the last Governments, have made a big deal about that, that they're doing good work in the area of disability and equality. But that as an indicator is misleading in the context of the prevalence rate going up, and it can't be relied on. One way of correcting for that and thinking about the total loss to the labour market, or the total loss to the economy from disability, is to multiply the prevalence rate by the disability employment gap, and when you do that, it hasn't narrowed. It stayed pretty constant until COVID, and COVID has been a big health shock. That measure has then gone up, and, interestingly, the disability employment gap has stopped narrowing. So, you have to be very careful with the interpretation, and interpreting a narrowing gap in terms of successful policy and progress towards equality for disabled people, because you can't infer that.

So, if I talk a bit about our work, generally, a bit like what Mark said in terms of the regional picture, if you've got a weak labour market, you'd expect disabled people to be even more disadvantaged. We looked at the in-work experience through the recession, using self-reported information about the kind of practices or experiences of disabled employees in work, and in general it was a more negative experience of the recession. So, that was things like overtime being cut, the hours, pay freezes, but also disabled employees reported more things like changes in their role and their work organisation. There are obviously particular challenges, especially if you've got accommodations, around change, perhaps, in your workplace. So, I think there is an important role in terms of continuous monitoring and recognising that things like the economic cycle, but also we did some work looking at the impact of the pandemic, they can be particularly acute events and they can exacerbate what are already the existing inequalities, like a disability pay gap that already exists.

Okay, thank you very much indeed. If there are no further questions from Members, I'd like to thank you very much indeed for your contributions. We'll send you a transcript, so feel free to amend it if we've recorded your contribution incorrectly. Otherwise, thank you very much for taking the time to give us the benefit of your advice.

There is just one paper to note, in our correspondence from the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists. Can we just note that? Thank you very much. Jane Dodds.

Thank you. Sorry to come in here. Thank you very much to them for their updated paper. I'd like to note it, but I'd also like us to take action on the two recommendations that they suggest at the end of their letter. Thank you.

Excellent. Perhaps we can discuss the detail in private session.

I just want to ask Members to agree that we go into private session under Standing Order 17.42 for the remainder of this meeting. I see no disagreement.