In 2023, the Economy and Fair Work Committee in Scottish Parliament launched an inquiry into how this policy goal was going. In fact, in 2023, it seemed like it was going quite well. The gap was down to 30.3 percentage points, which was actually ahead of schedule: if progress were linear, the disability employment gap would drop by about 0.85 percentage points each year, meaning that it would be 31.5 percentage points in 2023.
However, the inquiry turned up less-than-optimistic findings, which have been published in a report in October 2024.
Allison Catalano and Christy McFadyen, from Fraser of Allander Institute contributed to this inquiry through a fellowship with the Scottish Parliament Information Centre (SPICe). Their work, found that the majority of the change in disability employment is due to a rise in disability prevalence, rather than any specific policy.
Their report also highlighted some significant data issues: people with different types of disability have vastly different capacities for employment, vastly different support needs within employment, and vastly different rates of employment. Yet, in Scottish data and policymaking, disabled people are often treated as a singular entity, meaning that it is not possible to understand where policy interventions might be most effective.
The final inquiry publication highlights a variety of issues which will need to be addressed in order to improve work access for disabled people, all of which can be found here. They have produced 44 recommendations to improve employment prospects for disabled people.
