Allow disabled people to be “full partners in our economy”

A seminar on 15th December 2014, organised by Disability Rights UK, and sponsored by Joseph Rowntree Foundation, explored how to develop economic policies that would support disabled people into employment. Also, how disabled people currently contribute to the economy, and how it can be sustained and extended in the future.

One of the speakers Professor Jacob Hacker, told the audience that “pre-distribution” was about thinking “more fundamentally about how we can make the market and society work better”.

One way to do that is allow disabled people to be “full partners in our economy”.

He said that disabled people needed to be “full participants in society”, and that pre-distribution was “much more about the redistribution of power and opportunity than the redistribution of income”, as well as about creating “more equitable growth”.

He concluded that the idea that the state should be primarily about taking “remedial action” – for example, by increasing benefits or tax credits – was “extremely harmful”, and that it was vital to rebuild faith in the idea of “active government” and its role in areas such as public health, education and regulating the market.