Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps he is taking to close the disability employment gap.
Good work is generally good for health. This is why in the Health and Disability White Paper the Government reaffirmed its commitment to close the disability employment gap and stated its intention to set a new disability employment ambition.
The latest figures, released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) for October to December 2023, showed that he disability employment gap was 27.9 percentage points. This was a decrease of 1.9 percentage points on the year. However, the ONS have advised caution when interpreting short-term changes due to the recent volatility in the data.
Disabled people and people with health conditions are a diverse group so access to the right work and health support, in the right place, at the right time, is key. The Government therefore has an ambitious programme of initiatives to support disabled people and people with health conditions to start, stay and succeed in work. These include:
o Employment Advisors in NHS Talking Therapies, which combines psychological treatment and employment support for people with mental health conditions; and
o The Individual Placement and Support in Primary Care programme, a Supported Employment model (place, train and maintain) delivered in health settings, aimed at people with physical or common mental health disabilities to support them to access paid jobs in the open labour market;
Building on this, we announced significant additional investment during the 2023 fiscal events. Alongside the delivery of our existing initiatives, we are now focused on delivering this package which includes:
From 2025, we are reforming the Work Capability Assessment (WCA) to reflect new flexibilities in the labour market and greater employment opportunities for disabled people and people with health conditions, whilst maintaining protections for those with the most significant conditions. Alongside these changes, a new Chance to Work Guarantee will effectively remove the WCA for most existing claimants who have already been assessed without work-related requirements removing the fear of reassessment and giving this group the confidence to try work.