Written evidence from NameWitheld (DEG0036)

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 getting into 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 to get into work?

Being able to work short hours without the money being taken off my esa

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

Ban penalising disab3and chronically ill employees for sick days. have a phone line employees can call if their workplace is breaking employment law like the covid phone line, but permanent. Having all jobs that can be done from home, offering work from home. Making freelance work pay spread out, or benefits calculating freelance pay spread over the time worked. So if I work an hour or two for weeks and get paid weekly I can keep the pay, but if the pay for weeks or months comes at once, it nearly all gets taken off my esa, this penalises ill, and disabled people who have fluctuating conditions or can't do jobs that are regular set hours. And make esa and pip fairer and easier to apply for, I know people who have washed too try working, but know it would be used against them in their next benefits assessment, even if it turned out they couldn't work, we need that safety net there to be able to try.

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