• Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary menu
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • About DNS
  • Subscribe to DNS
  • Advertise with DNS
  • Support DNS
  • Contact DNS

Disability News Service

the country's only news agency specialising in disability issues

  • Home
  • Independent Living
    • Arts, Culture and Sport
    • Crime
    • Education
    • Employment
    • Housing
    • Transport
  • Activism & Campaigning
  • Benefits & Poverty
  • Politics
  • Human Rights
You are here: Home / News Archive / ELECTION 2010: Tory shadow says new work support is key policy

ELECTION 2010: Tory shadow says new work support is key policy

By guest on 2nd March 2010 Category: News Archive

Listen

The Conservative shadow minister for disabled people has said that one of his key election policies will be how to get more disabled people into work.

Mark Harper MP was speaking to a meeting of the all party parliamentary disability group, before an audience that included leading disabled campaigners and charity representatives.

Harper said his party would only make election promises it knew it could deliver, and focused strongly on Conservative plans to use projected benefits savings to provide support to find jobs for a “significant number” of disabled people who are unemployed but able to work.

He said his party would pay private and voluntary sector providers of employment support by results – according to whether they found disabled people “sustainable” jobs that lasted at least a year.

Harper also said a Conservative government would ensure that care and support services offered to disabled people were “properly personalised and fitted to the needs of the individual”.

He said: “Too many times, disabled people are expected to fit their lives around the care and support they get.”

And he said his party “very much support” government moves towards individual budgets and direct payments, but that they wanted to “see that go much further and faster”.

His party would also retain disability living allowance (DLA) and attendance allowance (AA), following suggestions that the government could scrap DLA and AA for those over 65 and use the savings to help pay for local authority social care services.

Harper said a Conservative government would also simplify the benefits system “to make sure it is simple for people to use”.

It would also repeal section 141 of the Mental Health Act, which states that MPs who are sectioned for at least six months must lose their seats.

But when asked by Simone Aspis, from the Alliance for Inclusive Education, how his party would “secure disabled people’s rights to access mainstream education” – following his party’s manifesto commitment to “end the bias towards the inclusion of children with special needs in mainstream schools” – Harper said his party believed parents should have the option to choose a special or mainstream school for their child.

3 March 2010

Share this post:

Share on X (Twitter)Share on FacebookShare on WhatsAppShare on RedditShare on LinkedIn
A photograph shows an audience raising their hands in a BSL sign. The words say: 'BSL Conference 2025. The future starts with us. Leeds 17-18 July. Be part of shaping the future of Deaf cultures and identities. Get 10% off with BDA10'

Related

‘Muddled’ blue badge reforms ‘are to blame for renewal delays’
6th February 2015
UN debate will be reminder of true inclusive education
6th February 2015
IDS breaks pledge on PIP waiting-times, as tens of thousands still queue for months
30th January 2015

Primary Sidebar

On the left of the image are multiple heads of different colours - white, aqua, red, light brown, and dark green - all grouped together, then the words ‘Campaign for Disability Justice. Sign up to support. #OpportunitySecurityRespect’
A photograph shows an audience raising their hands in a BSL sign. The words say: 'BSL Conference 2025. The future starts with us. Leeds 17-18 July. Be part of shaping the future of Deaf cultures and identities. Get 10% off with BDA10'

Access

Latest Stories

Disabled MP who quit government over benefit cuts tells DNS: ‘The consequences will be devastating’

Disabled peers plan to ‘amend, amend, amend, amend, amend’ after assisted dying bill reaches Lords

Minister finally admits that working-age benefits spending is stable, despite months of ‘spiralling’ claims

This bill opens the door to scandal, abuse and injustice, disabled activists say after assisted dying bill vote

Timms says cuts must go ahead, despite being reminded of risk that disabled claimants could die

Absence of disabled people’s voices from assisted dying bill has been ‘astonishing’, says disabled MP

Timms misleads MPs on DWP transparency and cover-ups, as he gives evidence on PIP review

Ministers are considering further extension to disability hate crime laws, after pledge on ‘aggravated’ offences

Making all self-driving pilot schemes accessible would be ‘counter-productive’ and slow us down, says minister

Involve disabled people ‘meaningfully’ from the start when developing digital assistive tech, says report

Advice and Information

Readspeaker
A photograph shows an audience raising their hands in a BSL sign. The words say: 'BSL Conference 2025. The future starts with us. Leeds 17-18 July. Be part of shaping the future of Deaf cultures and identities. Get 10% off with BDA10'

Footer

The International Standard Serial Number for Disability News Service is: ISSN 2398-8924

  • Accessibility Statement
  • Privacy Policy
  • Site map
  • Bluesky
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • LinkedIn
  • Threads
  • Twitter

Copyright © 2025 Disability News Service

Site development by A Bright Clear Web