Speeches by Cane.

“You were trying to deliver quite a lot of change in the organisation, and you were under quite a lot of financial pressure. How much messaging did you get back about how the change was being delivered, how people felt part of the process, and how well they thought it was going?”

“I just want to pick up on the way that the director of operations post was appointed. You said it was within the civil service rules. Your chair seemed to be concerned about the way it was done, yet you did it anyway. Why was that?”

“Okay, thank you.”

“You have talked about systems for getting your message out and for cascading messages down—systems that may not, in themselves, have worked as well as you liked. What systems were there in place, other than the questions, for cascading things back up again?”

“I am going to ask mainly about the culture of the organisation. We have heard from other witnesses, and it came out of Sir Robert Devereux’s review, that there is a culture where open discussions regarding challenges are not welcomed. Do you recognise that description?”

“In your answer to the Chair’s question at the beginning, you talked quite a bit about having open meetings, but you talked about those meetings being quite large—in one case, you said it could have been 1,000 people. You also talked about trying to get your managers to cascade down. How well do you feel that that worke…”

“So not until late 2024?”

“We have heard there is a problem with young people being assessed in school; we cannot then cut off the backstop of being assessed in adulthood. Can the Minister update us on the Buckland review’s recommendations and when they intend to publish the conclusions of their expert panel on employment prospects for neurodive…”

“I thank the hon. Member for Mansfield (Steve Yemm) for his intervention and I congratulate the college that he mentioned. He is absolutely right—one size fits all does not fit anybody, but particularly not neurodivergent people.”

“I do not know about self-employment being “better”, but it is certainly important, because different things will work best for different people. Neurodivergent people need the same full choice as non-neurodivergent people.”

“I agree with the hon. Member that helping people to stay and flourish in employment, once they are in employment, is hugely important.”

“I thank everyone who spoke in the debate. It is good to see that across parties we are all agreed on this issue. We have heard about the many barriers that people face, but we have also heard about some really good employers and opportunities. I welcome the Minister’s commitment to build on the Buckland review and to w…”

“I thank the hon. Member for those points; I agree entirely. We need to help employers to help these people into work and help them to thrive in work. Will the Minister set out the Government’s position on a wide roll-out of specialist apprenticeships and planned actions to encourage it? The Buckland review recommended …”

“That is absolutely true, and I have seen people trying to deal with filling in the forms. These people are likely to be dyslexic or have similar conditions, so they will inevitably have real trouble with those forms. A scheme designed to grow inclusion and increase support should really do better than that. I hope the …”

“Absolutely. It needs to be much faster in doing the assessments and delivering the payments. One of Mona’s staff experienced a traumatic event that made it difficult to manage work without more regular therapy, so they applied to Access to Work. They were told that they could not be supported because they were already …”

“I will make some progress. Think of the challenges that neurodivergent people can face in everyday life: knowing they are different from others; being unable to read social situations in the same way as others; being uncomfortable travelling on public transport; and, commonly, experiencing anxiety after years of bullyi…”

“I thank the hon. Member for his intervention and I agree that we must provide these people with much more guidance and support, and also give them fair access to work and a career. In addition to the problems that autistic people encounter in finding and staying in employment, the raw pay gaps for people with autism an…”

“It is great to hear that example. One thing I am calling for is proper structured apprenticeships.”

“I do agree and will speak about that. Local businesses have described employing people with learning disabilities to me as like a game of bureaucratic hopscotch. They can see the end goal but they need to hop from square to square, assessment to assessment, with a lack of resources to dedicate to training staff. Sadly,…”

“I agree with my hon. Friend that recognising neurodivergence in school and giving support at an early stage is incredibly important. As I said, I want to make the distinction and recognise that neurodivergent people and those with learning disabilities are distinguishable groups, both of which I will speak about. Over …”