Equality and Social Justice Committee

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.

Thank you very much. I'm going to ask my questions in Welsh. So, the first question is: do you know about best practice across the world in the area of disability employment gap? I don't know whether anyone is keen to start. Chair, is there anyone who wants to start?

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.

Diolch yn fawr iawn. Mae'n siomedig iawn nad oes gennym ni arfer gorau o'r byd i edrych arno, ond dyna ni. Mae gennym ni sefyllfa yma yng Nghymru lle mae'r bwlch cyflogaeth anabledd yn waeth yma yng Nghymru na'r Deyrnas Unedig. A allwch chi ddweud, yn eich barn chi, neu yn eich profiad chi, oes gennych chi ryw farn o ran pam mae hynny wedi digwydd? Beth ydy'r rhesymau y tu ôl i hynny, os gwelwch yn dda?

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?

Just one more, please. Just to take a step back, could I ask you all—a brief answer, if you could—in your opinion or your experience, why has the disability employment gap been so difficult to close, in your opinion? Thank you.

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.

Thank you very much.

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 have—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.

Thank you, Chair. If I could ask Dr Bryan first of all about this, and then you're welcome to come in afterwards, because you mentioned it there, and also in your evidence that you gave to us, how essential addressing educational inequalities is in order to be able to have an impact on reducing the disability employment gap. So, could you go into detail, perhaps, about what steps have been taken and that you mentioned already, and what steps need to be taken?

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.

Does anyone else want to come in on that—specifically on education and maybe post-16 education as well, things that need to be changed? No. In terms of post-16 education specifically, because you said that that's where a big difference could be made—as people stay in education longer and then they gain more qualifications in terms of higher and further education—are there any things that you've seen that could be advantageous in terms of keeping those people in education, as well as forcing them to do that through law? Are there things that mean that people leave education before they're 18, things perhaps relating to geography or infrastructure or attitudes?

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.

Thank you. Do any of you want to comment on that, in terms of what you'd like to see change, in terms of further or higher education, in terms of any good practice you've seen in your research or anything like that? No. Okay.

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 have also heard evidence, through a group that I chair on learning disabilities, that some sort of one-size-fits-all model could relate to that transition from school and further education or training—that there's a strict timetable, which doesn't work for everyone. I don't know if you have had any examples of that in your evidence.

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. Thank you, Chair.

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.

Just one brief question. Victoria and Melanie, you mentioned that there may be an underestimating of the inequality that is related to disability, and you've spoken about that in terms of people in employment, and you've mentioned that today. In terms of impact assessments, obviously, you said in your evidence that the economic cycle can have a disproportionate effect on disabled people: if there's a recession, their costs, we know, are likely to be higher anyway, so the freezing of salaries or making cuts in employment will affect them disproportionately, won't it? Do you feel that there are enough impact assessments being undertaken by employers, or the Governments that are making policy decisions that will lead to these things? Do you have anything that you'd like to say about that?

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.

Thank you.

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.