The Disability News Service reports that a promise, included in last year’s general election manifesto, said a Conservative government would “aim to halve the disability employment gap” in the next parliament.
John Pring reports that a month after the party’s election victory, Justin Tomlinson (pictured), the minister for disabled people, confirmed in a press release that the government “aims to halve the gap between the disabled employment rate and the overall employment rate by 2020.”
However, Penny Mordaunt, the current minister for disabled people, has now admitted that the government has abandoned the target, in a written answer to Labour MP Stephen Timms.
John Pring in his Disability News Service article details Stephen Timms’ latest attempt to “persuade the government to admit that it had abandoned a target date,” in which he asked whether the government “expects to achieve the commitment to halve the disability employment gap by (a) 2020, (b) 2025 and © 2030”.
Mordaunt replied to the question stating that the government was now “not setting a deadline for completing this work.” This goes directly against what the government had previously promised, including when David Cameron said that he wanted to see the disability employment gap “cut in half over the next five years.”
What do you think about this news? Do you think the promise to halve the gap between the disabled employment rate and the overall employment rate was achievable? What do you think could be done by the government to help more disabled people in to work? Let us know what you think in the comments below, on our Facebook page or on our Twitter feed.
