Written evidence from Sarah Webb (DEG0169)

My name is Sarah Webb. 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?

Flexibility in hours or remote working, wheelchair access to buildings, properly adapted bathrooms.

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

We need enough money to be able to both manage our health and buy adapted professional clothes. It is extremely hard to find clothes that are adapted for my needs with easy to open fastenings, adapted so that they don't get caught on my wheelchair, and look professional. It's even more difficult to find them when I have barely enough money to survive on PIP, and I haven't been allowed to get Universal Credit and save up a little bit because I was a student.

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