S5M-12344 Disability Employment Gap

The Deputy Presiding Officer (Linda Fabiani): The next item of business is a debate on motion S5M-12344, in the name of Jamie Hepburn, on a fairer Scotland for disabled people: tackling the employment gap.

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Stewart Stevenson (Banffshire and Buchan Coast) (SNP):

My key skill is an ability to conceal gaps in my personal knowledge and skills. For example, I play no musical instrument, I would judge it a great success if I drove a golf ball more than 100m, and my swimming abilities are close to nil. I highlight those examples of my shortcomings to illustrate the fact that many disabled people can exceed my skills in any one of those areas. The same will apply to all of us in the chamber. In other words, someone may be disabled in one part of their life, but that does not mean that they do not have abilities in another area. That is a key point that we should all remember.

It is surprising that we have not talked much about how we need to get inside the minds of many disabled people, who are talked down to, perhaps from quite early on in their lives, and made to think less of themselves than they should do. We need to look for some role models who illustrate the fact that having a disability is not an impediment to a successful life. It is only two months since Stephen Hawking died at the age of 76. His intellect far surpasses—I think that I will not be challenged if I put it this way—the collective intellect of all of us in the chamber. I can read his book, “A Brief History of Time”, and I seem to understand each sentence as I meet it, but when I get to the end of the book I find that very little has penetrated the cerebral cavity on a permanent basis.

Alex Rowley talked about people who are disabled and unable to work, and what he said is certainly true. However, I would like to put a different gloss on it, if I may. People who cannot work are nonetheless able to contribute to society and to give us something that is of value, simply by existing. They may contribute to a small circle of family and friends, and very often to a much wider circle. We should not forget that.

I will highlight some further models of achievement in disabled people. Dennis Robertson, a former member of the Scottish Parliament, is blind, as members know. I will give another example. In 1969, when I joined the Bank of Scotland to work with computers, I was stuck in a room to read some manuals to learn about what computers were and what one did with them. One of my colleagues, Brian, used to come in and walk across the room, get some blank punch cards, put them in the punch machine, punch things out and take them away, and off he went about his way. In the second week, I moved the heater in the room, because it was approaching winter and very cold, and Brian walked straight into it. I got a full mouthful of abuse from him, because he was blind. I had not known that he was blind for the first 10 days that I had known him. He had learned, more or less off by heart, all the technical manuals relating to the IBM computers that we used. We used to go to Brian with all our really difficult questions, and he always had the answer. That is another example of someone turning a disability into an advantage and a success.

Another issue, to which members have made reference, is invisible disability, such as mental ill health or incapacity, or indeed deafness—it is not obvious that someone is deaf. We have to think hard about how we help people with invisible disabilities to see a way forward in their lives and about how we help employers to understand that such people are of value to their companies.

Members have talked about the economic contribution that will come from increasing the number of people who are employed. I have no time—not a single second—for that argument. We are not here to serve an abstract idea of the economy; the economy is here to serve us, and not to enslave us. We should remember that whenever we consider this subject and a wider range of matters.

There are now some wonderful disabled role models. For example, there are quite a lot of disabled comedians—ain’t that great? That engages us and draws us in.

I remind everyone that this debate is on a fairer Scotland for disabled people. We should forget “disabled”: we are all people.

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