Written evidence from Victoria Beckett [DEG0009]

My name is Victoria Beckett. I am responding to your call for evidence through Scope, the disability equality charity. I want to share my experiences of the barriers I've faced in work and what can be improved to help disabled people in the future.

I've answered two questions below as part of your call for evidence.

What extra support would you benefit from in work? Or what would you change about existing support on offer?

Some of the existing support available through access to work means I have to make a social/domestic contribution. So if I need a £10,000.00 wheelchair, and work full time, I need to pay nearly £3,000.00 myself, straight away. Then I have to pay to service and maintain it. Most people just don't have that sort of money saved. Even if we did, we need to be careful, if we have too much money in savings the government takes our benefits away/makes us pay for our own care.

I'm lucky that I work for a small employer that doesn't need to make a contribution towards costs for my support worker. If my employer was bigger, there is no way they would consider spending the money. I used to work in recruitment before I became disabled and can honestly say that this would be true in my experience.

Looking to the future, what does the Government need to improve on to help disabled people get into, stay and progress in work?

Access to work needs to be available without the social/domestic contributions. Now, more than ever, employer contributions need to be removed too.

The disability employment gap has been stuck close to 30 percent for over a decade, and the economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic has seen disabled people falling out of work faster than non-disabled people. 

Scope wants the Government to deliver on its pledge to tackle the disability employment gap. The Government must use the opportunity of the forthcoming National Strategy for Disabled People to set out plans to close the gap.

I hope that the evidence I have provided, alongside research from Scope will prove useful to the committee.

December 2020