BRIDGWATER and West Somerset MP Ian Liddell-Grainger has called for all businesses to use a newly-published report to help them remove the barriers that sometimes prevent people with hearing loss from getting or keeping a job.

The document, 'Working for change', has been compiled by the charity Action on Hearing Loss, which says it is growing increasingly concerned about the problems encountered by many of the country’s five million hearing-impaired people of working age.

Mr Liddell-Grainger was among MPs who attended the official Westminster launch of the report.

It reveals evidence of widespread employer opposition to recruiting or retaining staff with hearing difficulties with 80 per cent of such employees questioned reporting experiencing problems with their bosses.

The report calls on Government and employers to work closer together to help people with hearing loss to find and stay in work.

Action on Hearing Loss chief executive Paul Breckell, said the report would help businesses to support people with hearing loss to maximise their valuable skills.

“It makes no sense that people have to retire or give up work due to their hearing loss owing to an unsupportive working environment.

"This is costly to employers as they lose highly-skilled staff and will need to spend to recruit again,” he said.

Mr Liddell-Grainger said many of the obstacles encountered by employees who were losing part or all of their hearing related to health and safety issues.

“But it is completely nonsensical to allow regulations which are designed to keep people safe to exclude some from a workplace simply because they may need more protection than others,” he said.

“There must be more flexibility when it comes to actually interpreting the regulations without, of course, any relaxation of the highest health and safety standards. But I am convinced it can be done and that it must be done.

“Commerce and industry must not refuse to recruit people or show them the door just because their hearing isn’t 100 per cent.”