Chamber and committees

It is worth mentioning—perhaps I should have mentioned this in response to Graham Simpson’s point—that some trials are under way. We are working on an initiative with the Association for Real Change. Ten local authorities are currently being worked with, and some of the things that I spoke about with Graham Simpson are being trialled. As I said, we are committed to introducing a national strategy in this parliamentary session. The trial is designing and testing changes that would improve planning and delivery of support for young people who need additional support as they make the transition into young adult life. I would be happy to follow up with more information about that for the committee.

I think that that gives reassurance that those issues are on the agenda and that things are now, for the first time, being implemented and trialled. I would be happy to come back to the committee on what my education colleagues are doing.

Your questions sum up the complexity of the issue that we are discussing today; there is no easy answer to some of them. I will address your first question first, then come to the second one.

The first question was about where the best interventions are and what makes the biggest difference. My point earlier about not being able to identify specific reasons why we are making progress was about the combination of practical support for people and changing culture, particularly in workplaces. The latter is quite difficult to measure, but we want it to happen and it is beginning to happen. The extent to which progress is due to practical support or due to culture changing is difficult to measure. That is the point that I am trying to make.

Since you have asked the question, I will say that I think that the biggest obstacle is culture change in workplaces. If we can open the minds of all employers in Scotland to the fact that there are steps that they can take to tap into the massive talent pool that we have in this country, in the disabled population who are not in work, that will clearly help to address these inequalities. We must focus on culture change. There are some positive signs—especially, as we have said before, in some big employers. I think that the convener just said that some of the feedback that the committee has had is that the private sector is now doing much more to be adaptable and flexible. Culture change is the biggest area.

As to how we identify disparity across the country in our interventions, including the “no one left behind” strategy, every partnership at the local level should be looking at the local labour market and coming up with projects and initiatives and funding workstreams to address that. “No one left behind” is a relatively new approach, so we must understand why some areas are performing better than others and we must identify gaps.

Yes. You are absolutely right that the issues affect our rural communities. We have a forum—I am trying to remember its name—for disabled people and people with mobility issues that advises on transport policy and works with transport colleagues. There is an “access to work” theme, as well. I do not have the name of that forum in front of me but, I give members the assurance that it exists. I will happily send details of the forum to the committee. I am sure that it has its own workstreams and issues that it is looking at.

I am not aware that such provision exists at the moment. Lewis Hedge might be able to say something about that.

Our fair work action plan includes an aspiration that Scotland will become a leading fair work nation by 2025 and contains a lot of measures to push that forward. As I said previously, we now have labour shortages in Scotland, but we also have talent pools of people who could be working. Now is the time for employers to be more open minded, adaptable and flexible and for the Government to play as big a role as possible. It is important that we speed things up.

Yes, absolutely. There are some projects under way. I have mentioned the Salvesen Mindroom Centre and other relatively new projects that are looking at the issues.

Of course, the fair work action plan is about the employment gap that faces racial minorities, the disability employment gap, the gender employment gap, the gender pay gap and so on. The disability employment gap is a big part of it, but the plan applies much more widely than just to disabilities.

In 2021, the Scottish Government adopted the “Learning/Intellectual Disability and Autism Towards Transformation” plan. Various recommendations from that have been taken forward. All those things are being joined up and there are specific actions being taken within the employment sphere. I want to assure you that the issues are being addressed. I am happy to include that in my response to the committee.

The answer is probably no. A lot of new work is under way, which we referred to in answer to earlier questions, to support this agenda in schools and, in particular, on the transition of young people from school to young adulthood. It is now recognised that we have to do a lot more.

It is exciting that new policies and plans will be developed in the coming months and years to address some of the issues. No doubt, there is a lot more we could do in schools to promote equalities and to support disabled people to be prepared for employment.

The answer to your question is yes and no. We are aware that we are making progress in some areas, but, as the committee has highlighted and your witnesses have raised, there are data gaps. As part of our fair work action plan, we are looking at improving that in the coming years.

The biggest issue that I have come across when discussing the issue with officials over the past few months is the disaggregation of statistics to look at, for example, the breakdown of neurodivergence characteristics within disabilities. Members quite often raise issues in the Parliament about people with autism, for instance, and employment, and it is quite difficult to disaggregate the statistics. No doubt, part of that will be about how the information is collected by the labour force surveys and other surveys. We are committed to looking at that and improving the data. It has been identified as an issue.

It is quite a big question. I will try to keep my answer brief.

The overall target of halving the disability employment gap by 2038 was set in 2016, and we have set interim targets as part of that. We want to achieve an increase in disabled employment to 50 per cent by 2023 and to 60 per cent by 2030. Currently, 49.6 per cent of disabled people are employed, if we look at the 2021 figures. That suggests that we are doing well in the aim to get to the interim target of 50 per cent by 2023. We estimate that we have to improve disability employment by 1.1 percentage points each year and, at the moment, we are achieving 1.2 per cent a year. We are achieving our targets and we have those interim targets in place.

Why we are making progress, but what the remaining challenges are is a huge question. I note, briefly, that we have measures in place to work with employers to ensure, through the workplace equality fund and other means, that we support people to adapt and make it easier to employ disabled people. Hopefully, that is making a difference. There are various partnerships with the Government, disabled people’s organisations and employers working together to break down some of the barriers, and we fund such initiatives, as well. Finally, the employability programmes, particularly fair start Scotland, clearly have a big emphasis on helping disabled people back into work. I think that you said that the committee has visited some organisations, as well.

Hopefully, we are contributing to progress but, to be frank, we do not have all the answers. We do not know exactly why we are making progress, because we do not know what is working best and what is not working. We know that it is all helping, but it is quite difficult to give a precise answer.

Going forward, a lot of the work will be focused on disaggregating the headline statistics to understand the impact on people with different disabilities, which we talked about earlier. The statistics show that there has been a steady increase in the number of people with disabilities who are in employment; it is an increase from 251,000 people in 2014 to 407,000 at the end of December 2021. Once the new statistics come out for the subsequent year, we might see an impact from Covid on the number of disabled people in employment. We will see whether we can identify any trends in the data and what the relationship with Covid is. We only have figures until the end of 2021, which begins to take Covid into account, but as more data about the labour market becomes available, we can really see whether there are any trends.