Can you explain what the Shaw Trust does?

Ian Charlesworth:Shaw Trust is a national charity providing training and work opportunities for over ten thousand people in the disability sector in the UK each year. We employ or support approximately three thousand people working in companies in the public, private and voluntary sectors. We are also the largest voluntary sector provider of work related services under the New Deal for Disabled People.

What's your number one priority as Managing Director of Shaw Trust?

Ian Charlesworth:My number one priority is first of all to provide effective services that meet the needs of the service users who we are working with. Effective services which help people to progress from welfare to work and to help them move along that continuum.

So are there not enough disabled people in work?

Ian Charlesworth:This is a major problem and I believe that it should be a main priority for the government. In their new policy framework they do talk about helping redress the balance in the labour market between disabled and non-disabled people. To achieve this they're going to have to make tremendous strides because currently there are 3.3 million disabled people of working age who are not working. And there are only 700,000 non-disabled people registered as unemployed.

Over the years there has never been any priority given to this particular group. There have been fluctuations in the economic cycle before which meant that throughout the last 50 years various groups have had priority - women, ethnic minorities, redundant workers or young people - but disabled people have never had any political backing and no priority.

Why is that the case?

Ian Charlesworth:I'd put a good deal down to prejudice and discrimination at all levels of society. I think it exists amongst the civil service, politicians and trade unions - who've had a peculiar attitude towards disability and employment. Employers have also not provided the opportunities for disabled people. Some disabled people - through negative conditioning often by well meaning but perhaps misguided parents, family or social workers - are being constantly told that work is not for them

So there's been that gap growing. On the one side there's not been any political push to do anything about it and employers have not generally recruited any one with disabilities and at the same time there's not really been any pressure from people with disabilities themselves.

We would estimate that at least 1.5 million of the 3.3 million I mentioned earlier could work and would like to work given the opportunity. In the last 50 years of the old quota system, companies - whether public, private or voluntary - were required to have a percentage of employees from those with disabilities. There were only six prosecutions in 50 years and the maximum fine that was given was £2,000. I was a chief officer of a local authority that never met its quota in all the years that I was there. And not only did it not meet its quota, it was absolutely miles away from it but no action was ever taken against it. No pressure was ever put upon the Civil Service who themselves were nowhere near their quota. So it's difficult to put it down to anything except prejudice and discrimination.

What has the government done since coming into power to address this problem?

Ian Charlesworth:In fairness to this government, for the first time we've seen some positive moves. They've tried to tackle it from two ends. Firstly, they've tried to tackle the discrimination and prejudice by implementing the Disability Discrimination Act in full. But it's taken longer than I would have hoped and still not happened yet in full - there's still bits to be implemented.

The government has also set up the Disability Rights Commission that hopefully will be there to plead the case more powerfully for disabled people. A concern in that area is the formation of an Equal Opportunities Commission. Once again people with disabilities would be marginalized when compared to some other groups such as women and ethnic minorities.

Ministers have also introduced a revamped supported employment programme which is now called WorkStep, which is a more positive programme than the old programme which tended to be a job for life but a job that led nowhere. Hopefully this new programme will be more progressive.

They also introduced the New Deal for Disabled People. However, I think it was under-funded, poorly planned and badly implemented. The ideas behind it were good ones but just not good in implementation. There was £3.5 billion from the windfall tax on profits set aside for the New Deal, but only £195 million of that was allocated to the New Deal for Disabled People. This was very disappointing - that the group facing the biggest barriers to work and has the biggest barriers to overcome, and five times the size of all the other groups put together - should receive such a small amount of the funding.

One of the excuses given by the civil service was that they don't know what works to help disabled people back to work - a claim we would challenge. For years, organisations like Shaw Trust have been working successfully to get people into work, but there's no such thing as a quick fix - it takes long term support in many cases to move someone from welfare to work.

So do you think the civil service discriminates against disabled people?

I don't think it's a conscience prejudice but I think there's certainly an unconscious prejudice that in many cases is born out of not being exposed to people with disabilities in the workplace - they get used to the status quo. There has also been unhelpful portrayals of disabled people in the media which do not reflect the vast majority of disabled people, who, according to research can prove to be good and efficient workers.

How do you think you'll keep this issue in the news - especially in the light of the government's current distractions such as Iraq and the debate over PFI?

Ian Charlesworth:I think the issue is going to force itself into the spotlight anyway because of the economic consequences of the current situation. Shaw Trust estimates that the overall cost of keeping this 3.3 million without work in terms of their benefits and care is higher than the cost of the NHS and twice the cost of schools. We're not belittling the government's other priorities but if we're always told about schools and hospitals first, this negative investment - which is what I call it - in keeping so many people out of work has got to be draining resources which could be more positively applied.

All the research shows that unemployment and ill health are directly related to each other and doing something about the employment status of people with disabilities would give savings to the health service. Turning people who are in receipt of benefits and receiving care payments into people paying tax and national insurance has got to be a positive step forward.

The economic case is going to mean that the disabled are given greater priority. We would argue that in addition, the social consequences of leaving such as large group socially excluded are tremendous. The only difference is that perhaps they aren't going to be out burning cities down or demonstrating in the streets. But they are the largely socially excluded group in Britain.

Do you think this is a matter for the government, or is it something that business leaders can sort out on the ground?

Ian Charlesworth:Nothing can ever be cured by the government alone. It needs a much greater awareness amongst all government departments and not just Work and Pensions, but the DTI and Office of Deputy Prime Minister as well. It also needs an awareness amongst employers - whether they are small firms or firms covered by the CBI. It also needs the general public, the social workers, and the teachers who are in constant contact with this group to make them more aware of their potential for work and less aware of their disability.

It isn't an easy task but the government can set the climate by acknowledging the issue for a start, recognising the issue and beginning to look at how mainstream resources can be better used and better applied. When the debate is on about welfare to work, that's a phrase which is often used but what does it mean? For us it means beginning to divert or reconfigure the resources which are in care or welfare into a much more work focussed activity and this has major implications for local authorities, health trusts and so on.

Do you think the current level of benefits for the disabled are currently sufficient?

This isn't a priority for us, but what I would say is that the benefits that disabled people are often in receipt of are benefits such as housing and council tax relief - rather than incapacity benefit. What is clear is that many disabled people have jobs and lose out financially, but one of the government's commitments is to make work pay and we would hope that they'd be able to do something positively to make this a reality for people who are often on higher benefits than people who are not working.

What are Shaw Trust's priorities for the coming 12 months?

The biggest project we will be working on is to expand our job broking activity. We've been successful in implementing the programme so far but unfortunately that's not been the case nationally. We want to expand our activities through being able to demonstrate that we can get people back to work and that people with disabilities are able to be got back to work given the right circumstances, training and job.

The second priority is to continue to make our Workstep programme work positively and to see people progress both within jobs and from one job to another. This will enable us to offer more opportunities to individuals rather than one person being in the programme forever.

The third major initiative and priority is to seek to convince social services and health trusts that again, some of their resources would have a more positive outcome if they were redirected from welfare into work focussed activities.