DWP lied about duty to keep benefit claimants safe, document suggests
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) lied when it claimed that it had no “duty of care” to protect disabled benefit claimants, new evidence suggests.
Work and pensions secretary Therese Coffey has repeatedly told MPs that her department does not have a legal duty to “safeguard” its claimants, and that such tasks are instead the responsibility of local agencies such as social services departments and doctors’ surgeries.
Her denials are important because they follow a decade of cases linking DWP’s policies and practices to the deaths of disabled people, particularly those who were being assessed for employment and support allowance (ESA) and personal independence payment and had experience of mental distress.
DWP has continued to deny that it has a duty of care to these and other claimants, even when it was confronted with one of its own secret reviews – believed to have been written in 2014 or 2015 following the death of an incapacity benefit claimant – which recommended that the department should carry out a review of its “ongoing Duty of Care”.
When Disability News Service (DNS) asked about this review through a freedom of information request, DWP stated that the recommendation “was not progressed as the Department does not have a legal safeguarding duty to review”.
But DNS has now seen a second document, this time obtained by Leigh Day, solicitors for the family of Errol Graham, who starved to death in 2018, months after DWP cut off his employment and support allowance (ESA) when he failed to attend a work capability assessment.
This document is a copy of pre-2016 internal guidance for DWP staff, written to assist them in dealing with claimants who need support in using its services.
The guidance states: “Where the claimant has a known background of mental illness there are minimum requirements that Jobcentre Plus should be adopting to ensure that we are not found to be neglectful in our duty of care towards these claimants.”
This means there are now at least two DWP internal documents, both dating from before 2016, that mention DWP’s ongoing duty of care to claimants.
Meanwhile, Coffey and her department continue to insist that there is no such legal duty now and that one did not exist at the time the documents were written.
Last September, Coffey told the Commons work and pensions committee: “I do not think it is the responsibility of DWP to have that statutory care duty.
“We are not the local councils, the social services, the doctors and other people who have that.”
In February, she repeated the claim, telling the same committee: “We don’t have a statutory duty specifically relating to safeguarding.”
Her department has also made the same claim in a freedom of information response to campaigner Amanda Hart, claiming that the “legal position is that there is no legal duty of care on the Secretary of State or her officials in the execution of their statutory duties”.
The new evidence was raised by Labour’s Debbie Abrahams yesterday (Wednesday), when Justin Tomlinson, the minister for disabled people, was giving evidence to the work and pensions select committee.
DNS had shared the new evidence with Abrahams earlier in the week.
Abrahams asked Tomlinson: “Can you confirm, do you or do you not have a duty of care to vulnerable claimants?”
He declined to comment, and referred the question to John Paul Marks, DWP’s director general for work and health services, who also failed to answer the question and instead talked generally about the department’s “culture and behaviour”.
After the evidence hearing, Abrahams told DNS: “If the government are committed to protect and safeguard vulnerable claimants, they need to set up an independent public inquiry into the scale of deaths and the drivers behind them.
“The prevarication over whether the Department for Work and Pensions has a duty of care for claimants, when their own internal guidance says that they do, is quite breath-taking.”
Alison Turner, the fiancée of Errol Graham’s son, said the failure of DWP to be transparent and honest about its duty of care was “really frustrating”.
She said: “The system is supposed to be there for the most vulnerable in society.
“They need a department they can trust. Nobody will be able to trust a word that comes out of their mouths anymore.
“To have a fully-functional department, you need to have a fully-functional relationship with the people that the department serves.
“You can’t have a fully-functional relationship with the people that the department serves, if you can’t even tell them the truth and stick to it.
“If you can’t be open and honest and transparent… then that is highly concerning.”
Errol Graham’s family (see separate story) are seeking permission to take their case to the court of appeal, after the high court ruled in March that DWP had not acted unlawfully in October 2017 by cutting off Errol’s ESA.
Turner, who is disabled herself, said DWP needed to be “absolutely clear, once and for all” about its duty of care.
She said that for Coffey to say there was no duty of care, “she may as well have stood in front of my face and said, ‘Do you know what, Errol died, so what, we don’t have a duty of care, so we have got to make no improvements.’”
She added: “We all make mistakes, but you don’t repeat those mistakes over and over again and then sit there and say, to those families in absolute pieces… we are not bothered that you have lost a family member, we are not bothered that you are torn to pieces or your kids have got to grow up without their grandad.
“That’s the attitude, as far as I’m concerned. The DWP sits behind a brick wall and isolates itself from the people it serves.
“It will never work unless it works with the people it is supposed to provide a service to.”
This week, DNS shared the internal guidance with DWP.
Asked if DWP could finally confirm that it does have a duty of care towards claimants, and if it does not, when this changed, and why, a spokesperson said in a statement: “Our sincere condolences remain with Mr Graham’s family.
“It would be inappropriate for us to comment further at this time.”
20 May 2021
Tomlinson sketches out reforms on sanctions, assessments and Access to Work
The minister for disabled people has provided some of the first details of how the government plans to reform the social security system for disabled people through its long-delayed health and disability green paper.
Justin Tomlinson told MPs on the work and pensions select committee yesterday (Wednesday) that the green paper would include changes to disability benefit assessments, the Access to Work system, and benefit sanctions.
He also suggested that the green paper, and the delayed cross-government disability strategy, would “possibly, probably” be published together and before the summer recess in July.
It is the first time that the minister has admitted that his disability strategy will not be published this spring, as planned.
He said DWP was “very, very encouraged” by the introduction of telephone and video disability benefit assessments during the pandemic.
He said: “We will keep video and telephone assessments and through the health and disability green paper we will explore to what extent and where they are best to be used.”
He said this may allow the use of more specialist healthcare professionals to carry out assessments of claimants with some health conditions, as the assessor and claimant will not need to be in the same location for the assessment.
Tomlinson also said that the green paper would include measures to improve the availability of advocates to support benefit claimants who are currently “unable to engage” with the system, while another “key theme” would be “removing unnecessary assessments”.
On benefit sanctions, he said DWP needed to be “absolutely on top of our game in identifying potentially vulnerable claimants” and then engaging an advocate – if appropriate – to support those claimants as part of “one last push to try to find a way to build a positive relationship” before the “last resort” of a sanction.
He said: “I have seen, through my casework as a constituency MP, sometimes, some people are overwhelmed by the process [that leads to a sanction].”
He said this would be a “key theme” of the health and disability green paper.
Tomlinson also said that improvements to the work capability assessment system would be an important part of the green paper.
Labour’s Steve McCabe asked Tomlinson about disabled people’s lack of trust in DWP and concerns about the department’s “lack of respect” for disabled people.
Tomlinson said he viewed these issues “incredibly seriously” and that they would be addressed in the green paper and the disability strategy, and that it was important to ensure that people with “real life experience” are “engaged in the process of co-designing how we provide our information, our services, the support”.
He said the green paper would also look at how more “supportive evidence” for a benefit claim could be gathered early in the process – as disabled activists have been calling for for the last decade – as a way to reduce the number of claims unfairly rejected before they reach the appeal stage.
The evidence session was part of the committee’s inquiry into the disability employment gap, the difference between the rate of disabled people and non-disabled people in jobs.
McCabe asked Tomlinson what was being done to improve the “utterly bureaucratic”, “really difficult to access” and “paper-based” Access to Work (AtW) scheme.
Tomlinson said he accepted most of those criticisms, although record numbers – 44,000 disabled people – were receiving support through the scheme.
He said: “It is fair to say it is an analogue system in a digital world… it is hard work.”
But he said there was now funding to transform AtW into a digital scheme, and the results of the work already underway were “very, very exciting”.
He also spoke of providing potential job applicants with more certainty about the support they would be able to receive through AtW – ahead of a recruitment interview – through an AtW “passport”, which he said DWP was “very, very excited” about.
He said: “If they work, and I would be very surprised if they didn’t, this would then be rolled out and become the norm for Access to Work.”
This appears to be similar to a pledge first made by the Tory-led coalition government in 2010, but which it later withdrew.
Tomlinson refused to accept criticism from the National Audit Office, which said that the government’s current disability employment target – to get one million more disabled people into jobs between 2017 and 2027 – “cannot be used to measure the success of the government’s efforts”.
He said the latest job figures showed what was probably a slight fall in disability employment but also a narrowing of the disability employment gap over the last 12 months, and that his “personal preference” was to focus on figures showing the absolute number of disabled people in jobs.
Tomlinson accepted that part of the rise in disability employment in recent years, and the narrowing of the disability employment gap, was due to more people identifying as disabled people.
But Stephen Timms, the committee’s chair, failed to point out that research had shown that the gap had not narrowed at all in recent years, once account was taken of the increasing number of people identifying as disabled.
Tomlinson said the consultation to be carried out on the green paper would ask for views on the appropriate target for disability employment.
Asked about the success of the government’s much-criticised Disability Confident employment scheme, and if employers who have signed up are employing more disabled people and treating their existing disabled employees more fairly, Tomlinson said a key part of the scheme was about “sharing the best practice”.
But he said the green paper would look at “what more can be done” with Disability Confident, including whether more data could be gathered from its members.
Tomlinson said DWP had carried out surveys of Disability Confident members which showed at least half had taken on at least one disabled staff member since joining the scheme.
Disability News Service revealed in October 2019 how a freedom of information response from DWP showed that the 13,600 employers that had signed up to the scheme since it was launched in 2013 had pledged to provide just 8,763 paid jobs for disabled people between them.
20 May 2021
‘DWP must have known my dad would die when it removed his benefits’
The son of a disabled man who starved to death after his benefits were wrongly removed has said he believes the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) must have known that his dad would die if his payments were cut off.
Lee Graham was speaking publicly for the first time about the death of his dad, Errol.
His death caused outrage when Disability News Service (DNS) first revealed in January 2020 how he had been repeatedly failed by DWP.
Errol died in 2018, months after DWP had cut off his employment and support allowance (ESA) because he failed to attend a work capability assessment (WCA).
Lee says he believes DWP “targeted” his dad by repeatedly reassessing him for his eligibility for benefits, despite knowing how ill he was and that he had been unable to work for many years.
As far back as 2011, DWP was told that Errol had tried to take his own life.
But DNS has this week seen a form filled in by an Atos doctor, who assessed Errol on 1 June 2014 on behalf of DWP, just three years before his ESA was cut off for failing to attend another assessment.
Following the assessment in Nottingham, on 1 June 2014, the doctor concluded that he was not fit for work – a decision approved by a DWP decision-maker two weeks later – and described how Errol had “active suicidal thoughts” and “very low mood”, that he was “hearing voices in his head all the time” and sometimes had visual hallucinations.
A DWP questionnaire filled in by an advice centre worker on Errol’s behalf earlier that year had described how he could not cope with unexpected changes to his life, which left him feeling “under threat and upset”, and that he felt “anxiety and panic in new situations”.
Despite the information in its files, DWP stopped Errol’s ESA – and backdated that decision to the previous month – after making two unsuccessful visits to his home to ask why he had not attended a face-to-face WCA on 31 August 2017.
Deprived of all financial support, experiencing significant mental distress and unable or unwilling to seek help, he slowly starved to death.
He weighed just four-and-a-half stone when his body was found on 20 June 2018 by bailiffs who had knocked down his front door to evict him.
The new documents were only provided to the family’s lawyers by DWP less than a week before a court hearing in January, and they were not made available to the inquest into Errol’s death in June 2019.
Lee says the repeated DWP assessments helped cause the deterioration in Errol’s mental health that first led to him being sectioned, and then – when DWP removed his benefits – completely cutting himself off from the outside world as his money ran out.
Lee has also described for the first time how Errol cut him out of his life after he was forced to ask the authorities to section his dad in 2015 when his mental health deteriorated.
From that time, his dad would look straight through him if he saw him in the street, and refused to answer the door or his phone.
Lee said: “It was hard, but I always thought my dad needed space, he was private, so I thought he was OK as I still saw him out, he was still getting his shopping, so I knew he was OK.
“I gave him his space because I’ve had depression myself and I know mental health can be really challenging.
“I know he would have been all right and he would have come round, but DWP stopping his money is what pressured him into thinking he had no way out.
“My mum lived 100 metres away, but he didn’t feel that he could face anybody.”
Deprived of any income at all because of DWP’s decision to remove his ESA – while his housing benefit was also removed – Errol starved to death.
His body was not discovered until 20 June 2018 when bailiffs arrived at his Nottingham council flat to evict him for non-payment of rent.
Lee said: “The DWP must have known there would be a tragic outcome.
“Even if my dad didn’t die from starvation, he would have taken his own life, and they must have known that because of what was put in their reports.
“But they still stopped his money.”
He added: “There was a lot more they could have done. They could have done a lot more checks. They could have checked if his mental health had deteriorated.
“He had been on benefits for years and they knew he wasn’t well.”
By the time his dad died, Lee was in prison, serving a sentence for a serious assault. He believes the impact of his dad completely cutting him out of his life contributed to his troubled state of mind that led to the assault.
He said that learning what had happened to his dad while he was in prison and unable to support his family was “horrible”.
But he said: “I felt I had to be strong for my own children, so I never fully grieved for him, but I had a few bad days in prison where I cried.
“But in the place where I was, I could have gone down the same route as my dad, so I had to stay strong mentally.
“Even if I had not been in prison, it wouldn’t have made a difference because he wasn’t allowing us access, he was avoiding us in the street.”
Lee was released from prison three months ago, and this is the first time he has spoken publicly about his dad’s death.
He said his partner Alison Turner had done “an amazing job” in leading the campaign for justice for Errol while he was in prison.
She was rejected by 15 firms of solicitors before DNS approached human rights experts Leigh Day on her behalf.
Thanks to her campaigning work and the legal expertise of Leigh Day, the family are now seeking permission to take their case to the court of appeal, after the high court ruled in March that DWP had not acted unlawfully in October 2017 by cutting off Errol’s ESA.
Lee, who was his dad’s only child, said he wanted to prevent similar tragedies happening to other families.
He said: “My dad is gone, we can’t get him back, but I don’t want other families to suffer like we have.
“There are too many people that are being targeted and are suffering because of what’s going wrong, and it’s like they are brushing mental health under the carpet.
“This is about getting something in place to prevent it happening to anybody else. That would be justice for my dad, just to say he didn’t die for nothing.
“If he has prevented somebody else from dying, it’s not going to bring my dad back, but it’s going to be a bit of closure for us.”
Lee said he believed DWP was refusing to listen to the families of those who have died through the department’s failings.
Over the last decade, the deaths of disabled people have been linked repeatedly to DWP’s failure to secure the necessary medical evidence before deciding their claim, and to check on their welfare before removing their benefits, with at least one other claimant starving to death after being found “fit for work”.
Lee said: “I don’t think they are really listening to what we have gone through. They don’t feel they are at fault.
“It’s a lot of people this has been happening to. They have not learned by their mistakes.
“If they really did care, they would have put safeguards in place to stop it happening to anybody else.
“People are starving and killing themselves. It shouldn’t be happening in this day and age in this country.
“It makes you feel disgusted and angry but helpless at the same time.
“I just want them to recognise that they could prevent things from happening and they could save people’s lives instead of causing all this grief and upset.”
A DWP spokesperson said: “Our sincere condolences remain with Mr Graham’s family.
“It would be inappropriate for us to comment further at this time.”
20 May 2021
Call for national action on council care charging
Activists are calling on disabled people’s organisations and campaigners around the country to ensure that their local authorities closely examine their care charging policies, following a vital court ruling.
They are concerned at the growing variations across the country in how much local authorities are charging disabled people for their non-residential care and support, and the minimum amount of income that service-users are left to live on after any charges.
They and others believe there is a growing trend of councils raising charges for care and support to make up for inadequate central government funding and the continuing failure to reform social care.
They want councils to check that their policies are in line with the high-profile court ruling.
One of the groups helping to build campaigning across England is Cheshire Disabled People Against Cuts (Cheshire DPAC).
It has challenged one of its local authorities, Cheshire West and Chester Council, over the action it took in response to the high court ruling last December.
The ruling found that Norfolk County Council had breached the rights of a disabled woman with high support needs, known in the case as SH, by discriminating against her when it changed its care charging policy.
Norfolk had reduced the minimum amount of income that SH and others must be left to live on after any charges – the minimum income guarantee (MIG) – and took into account the daily living part of their personal independence payment, when deciding how much to charge them for their care and support.
But the council’s policy meant that SH and other disabled people in her situation with high support needs had a higher proportion of their income taken by the council than disabled people receiving lower benefits and those who were able to do paid work.
Cheshire DPAC has been pushing Cheshire West and Chester Council (CWaCC), through a freedom of information request, to find out what legal advice it received in the wake of that ruling.
The council has now decided it is exempt from releasing this advice under the Freedom of Information Act.
Former town councillor Helen Rowlands, a co-founder of Cheshire DPAC, resigned from the Labour party in March over the Labour-run council’s decision to make savings of more than £1 million in its provision of care services in 2021-22.
CWaCC pledged to ensure that it was “only funding social care services that the Council has a statutory duty to provide” and said it would raise “additional income through the implementation of the non-residential charging policy”.
Cheshire DPAC believes that local authorities across the country may be failing to assess the impact of last December’s court ruling on their care charging policies.
Rowlands said: “Marilyn Heath of JRIMG Norfolk contacted the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government asking for MIG details and disability related expenses systems in each local authority and was told central government do not have those details.
“This seems to Cheshire DPAC to be about preventing widespread awareness of the inequity at the heart of social care charging in England.
“We are working collectively with our campaign partners JRIMG Norfolk, Inclusion London, Bringing Us Together, Adult Social Care Warriors and DPAC nationally to shine a light on this, and to fight for an end to care charging – which is a tax on disability.”
Linda Burnip, co-founder of DPAC, said: “Social care and support for independent living should be free at the point of need for all, and if a council like Hammersmith and Fulham can still provide social care free then we can see no reason why other local authorities also can’t do that.
“The charges made on disabled people seem completely random and when people complain about their charging, they can get large reductions in their proposed charges, often as much as 50 per cent.
“Whether this means local authorities actually have no systematic way of deciding what to charge people and simply try to charge as much as possible remains to be seen.
“We know that council budgets have been slashed but rather than taxing people for becoming older or disabled it is time that councils, especially Labour-led ones, stood up and fought against those cuts more effectively.
“We are urging everyone to join with on-going campaigning against care charging.
“More information on how to do this is available from DPAC, Inclusion London, JRIMG, Bringing Us Together or Adult Social Care Warriors on Facebook.”
Marilyn Heath, from JRIMG Norfolk, said it seemed “unreasonable” that the government had brought in the MIG scheme – which sets a minimum level but allows councils to set their own rates at or above that – rather than providing sufficient funding for local authorities, and then failed to monitor how this had been implemented.
She said that this had led to, at best, a “postcode lottery for charges for care for working-age disabled people” and at worst the kind of discrimination seen in Norfolk.
A CWaCC spokesperson said the council had refused to release the legal advice because it believed it was protected “under legal professional privilege”.
But she said that the council had “fully reviewed the [Norfolk] judgement” and believed that its own non-residential charging policy was “fully compliant” with legislation, and that no changes had been made because of the Norfolk ruling, while MIG rates had not changed since the court ruling, although care charges had increased “in line with annual review procedures”.
She said: “As is the picture nationally, the council continues to face significant pressure in meeting its statutory responsibilities relating to adult social care due to the continued rising costs and demand for adult social care, as well as the need to ensure a sustainable provider market.”
She added: “In recognition of this, the council has used its powers to raise council tax in 2021-22 by an additional three per cent via the adult social care precept.
“The additional funding raised through the precept in 2021-22 will be £5.8 million which will only partially address the cost pressures faced, which are estimated to be in the region of £12 million, as set out in the council’s 2021-22 budget report.
“In order to fund the pressures of £12 million, the council will also be reinvesting funding released through planned efficiencies within adult social care back in to adult social care services – this will ensure that the cost pressures within adult social care are funded whilst also ensuring that the council meets its legal obligation to set a balanced budget each year.”
Cheshire DPAC is urging other campaigners to send freedom of information requests to their local councils in England to find out if they have reviewed their charging policies since the Norfolk ruling and what legal advice they have received on the judgment.
They also want campaigners to ask their local authority for their minimum income guarantee rates and how these have changed in the past 24 months*.
The results of these freedom of information responses will be collated to see how care charges and MIG rates are varying across England**.
*For a template letter, message Cheshire DPAC at @OCharging
**Email JRIMGnorfolk@gmail.com with responses
20 May 2021
Equality Act threat over long-awaited rail access app
Rail companies have delayed plans to launch a new mobile phone accessibility app, just days after they were warned that the technology appears to breach their duties under the Equality Act.
The Rail Delivery Group (RDG) had been set to launch its much-delayed Passenger Assist app, which it hoped would make it easier for disabled passengers to book assistance with train journeys.
The app was designed by the technology firm Transreport and early versions that were trialled previously secured support from disabled passengers and disability organisations.
Transreport and RDG had been set to launch the app across the railway network last week, nearly three years after originally planned, but days before the launch they were warned that they could face legal action if they went ahead.
Disabled campaigner Doug Paulley told RDG two weeks ago that such a move would breach its duties under the Equality Act.
This is because the app fails to include a way for disabled passengers to book a ticket at the same time as they book assistance, while it also fails to include a way to book a wheelchair space on a train.
Paulley said this would make the widespread use of the app “a retrograde step”.
He said: “Non-disabled people can make all the requisite arrangements for travel in one straightforward transaction by whatever means.
“RDG had the opportunity to finally enable disabled people to do similarly via the app.
“It will be most regrettable if it turns out that it has failed to take up this opportunity.
“I am sad to be forced to threaten such action, but I feel forced by the prospect of such lack of critical functionality in this app.”
Paulley also contacted the regulator, the Office of Rail and Road, and reminded it that its own guidance states that train operating companies must make it clear that advance tickets can be bought at the same time as booking assistance via Passenger Assist.
This is possible through a website or by telephone, but the new app would not include such a function.
Paulley also pointed out that it would not be possible to book a wheelchair space at the same time as arranging assistance on the app, which he said was a “significant shortcoming”.
He told ORR: “It feels to me very discriminatory that all non-wheelchair users can book their accommodation on the train interactively in seconds, yet wheelchair users are not afforded this basic ability.”
An RDG spokesperson declined to explain why the launch of the app was postponed, and whether this was related to a possible breach of the Equality Act.
But she said in a statement: “Train operators are investing in new technology to improve accessibility on the railway and ensure passengers get the assistance they need, through the pandemic and beyond.
“We are aiming to release a new app to allow rail users to request assistance via their smartphone soon and are working closely with government to ensure the launch supports the safe return of passengers to the railway following the lifting of COVID-19 travel restrictions.
“The app will give passengers greater control over their journey, enable passengers to amend their profile easily and make it quicker and easier to request assistance on their journey.
“We are working with Passenger Assist users and industry experts to support evolving additional functionality to the app in future.”
In response to Paulley, ORR said that it did not consider that the app would mean train companies would be in breach of their guidance, if they continued to offer at least one way to request assistance and book tickets at the same time, by phone or through their websites.
ORR also said it understood that the app would “as a matter of course book the wheelchair space, where this is reservable, when a wheelchair user requests assistance with boarding the train” and so a “separate request to book the wheelchair space is therefore unnecessary”.
It continues to refuse to force train companies to allow online booking of wheelchair spaces through its guidance.
But Paulley told ORR in response that it was “particularly regrettable that this new, centralised, much-vaunted app, marketed as being intended to be a centralised one-stop solution for disabled people, simply doesn’t have this functionality” and that it “doesn’t appear on the roadmap at all”.
And he said that the app simply triggering a request for a member of staff to book the wheelchair space “doesn’t do what I need”.
He said this was already available through website booking, and he added: “I don’t know if the space is available or booked to me unless and until I get the confirmation through; and then quite often it isn’t booked or is erroneous.”
An ORR spokesperson told Disability News Service in a statement: “We want all passengers to be able to travel safely with confidence and ease.
“Any new technology that helps facilitate booking assistance is to be welcomed.
“We’ve discussed the new Passenger Assist app with the Rail Delivery Group throughout its development to understand how it might benefit both passengers and staff when fully launched.”
20 May 2021
Barriers prevent disabled people building music industry careers, research finds
Disabled people are facing significant barriers to building careers in the music industry, according to new user-led research.
The research* by Attitude is Everything found that nearly four-fifths (79 per cent) of Deaf and disabled people working in the music and live events industry believed that barriers related to their impairments had affected their career.
More than half (51 per cent) of those surveyed from the industry had withdrawn from a job application for access-related reasons, while the same proportion believed their impairments had been a factor in not securing a role they had applied for.
And more than two-thirds (67 per cent) always or sometimes concealed their impairments or health conditions from their employers.
The top career barrier for those in the industry and aspiring to enter it was other people’s perceptions of their capabilities. This was shared by 93 per cent of those surveyed.
Attitude is Everything, which campaigns to improve accessibility to live music, released the research as it published its new, free Accessible Employment Guide, which it hopes will improve the inclusion of Deaf and disabled workers in the commercial music sector.
One of those interviewed for the research says in the guide: “I often find job offers are suddenly unavailable when I ask about access adjustments.”
Another said: “I feel like my inability to network has seriously harmed my progress because the industry is so much about who you’re friends with and being fresh in people’s minds.”
Robin Millar, the disabled, award-winning record producer of albums such as Sade’s Diamond Life, chair of Blue Raincoat Chrysalis Group, and chair of the disability charity Scope, told the launch event: “I’m here because, in 40 years in the music business in this country, I’ve never been offered a job.”
He said that research had shown that more than half of the population had admitted being awkward when talking to disabled people.
He said: “The big answer: let’s get rid of special schools.
“Let’s make sure we end up in a country that has had a whole generation that by the time we all get to 18, our classmates have been every sort, type, gender, colour, race, creed, ability, disability, mental acuity, deafness, blindness, you name it.
“It will then never occur to any of them to start a business where they can’t embrace the most talented, interesting, fun, engaging of all their friends.
“I’m really saying that attitude is everything.”
He added: “We, as a huge number of people, are unbelievably under-valued, under-appreciated, thought of as less capable than we are.
“The distance between your workforce and us on the outside trying to get in, is much smaller than you think.
“You will find that by being inclusive, you will find it is good for absolutely every single person that works for you.”
Paul Hawkins, Attitude is Everything’s head of volunteering and skills development, said before the launch: “Our research shows that Deaf and disabled people face barriers applying for jobs in the music industry and that many of those with impairments or health conditions who do work in the industry are concerned about the consequences of identifying themselves as disabled, especially if they are freelance or not in secure employment.”
He added: “The events of the last year have turned many conceptions about the workplace on their head and we’re keen to support the music industry to build back for all and for the industry to come back a stronger, more effective and more diverse place where everyone can succeed based on their talents.
“We hope that this guide will help to make that happen.”
The guide has been endorsed by organisations including UK Music, the PRS Foundation and the Association of Independent Music.
Ben Price, from Harbourside Artist Management, said: “The statistics on disclosure are quite alarming and we know one of the main reasons for that from an employee perspective is fear that an employer wouldn’t know where to start with employing someone who has access requirements.”
He said the guide was “a huge step forward in simplifying and demystifying some of the assumptions employers sometimes make”.
The guide is part of Attitude is Everything’s Beyond the Music programme, which is funded by the National Lottery Community Fund and aims to improve access to the music and live events industries for Deaf and disabled professionals, employees and volunteers.
*The survey was based on responses from 53 disabled people who work in the music and live events industry, and another 38 who aspire to work or volunteer in the industry
20 May 2021
News provided by John Pring at www.disabilitynewsservice.com
