Foxcroft promises a Labour government would ‘break down the barriers to work’

A Labour government would introduce a string of policies to reduce the disability employment gap and strengthen the rights of disabled people in the workplace, Labour’s shadow disability minister has told union activists.

Vicky Foxcroft also told the TUC Disabled Workers’ Conference in Liverpool that her party would “end the politics of division”, although there was no mention in her speech of how a Labour government would address the key issue of disability benefit assessment reform.

Although the audience of disabled workers meant her speech was always likely to focus on employment, the content did suggest that Labour’s manifesto offer to disabled people is likely to focus strongly on jobs and employment support.

Foxcroft (pictured) told the conference: “We will break down the barriers so that disabled people will have exactly the same rights to get into and get on in work as non-disabled people.”

Among her pledges was that a Labour government would “make it easier to secure reasonable adjustments in a timely manner, including when changing jobs or when circumstances change”.

And she repeated the party’s long-standing commitment to co-produce disability-related policies with disabled people, although there was no detail on how this would be done.

She said she was “working with colleagues across the shadow cabinet to ensure disabled people are at the heart of all of our policy-making”, and she promised that a Labour government would “restore and strengthen disabled people’s rights”.

She said: “Co-production with disabled people is key to delivering this, and I can assure you that this will be at the heart of everything that we do.”

Foxcroft said Labour’s planned New Deal for Working People would “hugely benefit disabled people and those with long-term health conditions”.

Employers would be required to accommodate all “reasonable” requests for flexible working; the “time and facilities” available for trade union representatives to do their work would be improved; and there would be new rights for union equality representatives.

There would also be a review of health and safety guidance to “properly support people with mental health conditions”; improvements to statutory sick pay, so it is available to “all workers, including the low paid”; and action to close the disability pay gap, including forcing firms with more than 250 employees to report on how their disabled and non-disabled employees are paid.

And, she said, Labour would ensure “full rights to equal pay for disabled people alongside Black, Asian and ethnic minority people”.

Foxcroft promised that a Labour government would “reform jobcentres so that they have a new focus on tackling the barriers to good employment” and would force them to work closely with “other agencies including the NHS”.

There was also a promise to “overhaul” the government’s Access to Work disability employment scheme – an area she has focused on in parliament in recent months – so “disabled people know what equipment and adaptations or personal support they will get before they start work, giving them the confidence to take the plunge”.

Her one reference to benefits was to repeat Labour’s promise that those receiving out-of-work disability benefits who are not currently expected to seek work would be able to try employment “without fear of losing their income or having to be reassessed if it doesn’t work out”.

TUC general secretary Paul Nowak told the conference, the day after Foxcroft’s speech, that Labour’s New Deal for Working People would provide the “biggest expansion of workers’ rights and, crucially, trade union rights in a generation”.

He added: “Regardless of what you’ve read in the press, regardless of what the employers’ organisations say, regardless of what the likes of Peter Mandelson say, our unions expect Keir Starmer to deliver that new deal for workers in full in the first 100 days of a Labour government and I’m going to make sure it happens.”

Nowak said the government’s attempts to target disabled people as benefit cheats had been “disgusting” and would be part of how the Conservatives will “go more and more into the gutter” as election day approaches.

He called for “a completely new approach, rooted in a social model of disability, so we build a world of work that is accessible by default, not where there are barriers to begin with.

“The current medical model, which dominates our law and employment practice and our welfare system, simply isn’t fit for purpose.”

He added: “If you’re disabled in Britain today, you’re less likely to be in work.

“If you are in work, you’re more likely to be in low pay; you’re more likely to be on a zero hours contract.”

He said the government had made “zero progress” in tackling the disability pay gap, with “disabled workers still losing £70 a week, the pay gap higher than it was a decade ago, and disabled women faring worst of all with their pay penalty doubling under the Tories”.

Nowak told the conference: “This isn’t about the odd bad employer or the odd bit of bad practice, it’s systematic inequality, discrimination and unfairness in our labour markets, our economy and our society and that’s why we need change.”

Picture by Natasha Hirst Photography

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