Access to Work Scheme

Adam Dance Excerpts

Wednesday 15th April 2026 Westminster Hall

[David Chadwick (Brecon, Radnor and Cwm Tawe) (LD)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the Access to Work scheme.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Harris. A disability can happen to any one of us at any time. That was a lesson that I learned the hard way, when I became fully paralysed by Guillain-Barré syndrome aged 22. I was unable to walk for five months, and it took me more than two years to walk steadily on my feet again. I remember feeling utterly exhausted and I worried about how I would ever work again. I am grateful to have made a near full recovery, but not everyone does. For many disabled people, the greatest barrier to work is whether the right support will be in place to make work possible and sustainable for them.

The Access to Work scheme should enable disabled people to enter work, to stay in work and to contribute fully to their communities and to our economy. Disabled people can have complex needs, but achieve remarkable things despite them. The scheme enables more than 74,000 disabled people to work by providing support such as specialist equipment, support workers and specialist job coaches. A study commissioned by the Royal National Institute of Blind People found a £1.48 return for every £1 spent on the Access to Work scheme, so it is excellent value for money.

I have mentioned previously in the House that some of my constituents have been waiting more than nine months just for an assessment of their needs. Since then, the situation has deteriorated further. The waiting list has grown to 66,000 people, an increase of 4,000, and 32,000 payments are now outstanding. Applicants are being told that they may wait up to 37 weeks just for a decision, and some, in particular the self-employed, for more than a year. Let us be clear what that means. It means that someone offered a job cannot take it, that someone already in work cannot do the job properly and, in too many cases, that jobs are being lost unnecessarily.

[Adam Dance (Yeovil) (LD)]

Megan was offered 15 hours of employment through an internship with Silver Lining in Ilminster, which was fully funded by Access to Work, but the scheme only offered funding for three hours. Megan now has to claim universal credit as she cannot find accessible employment. Does my hon. Friend agree that such funding decisions are totally senseless and are keeping disabled people out of work and from contributing to our economy?

[David Chadwick]

I agree wholeheartedly that that is a great waste of the undoubted talent that Megan has and should be able to bring to the table.

Demand for the scheme has risen sharply. That should be welcomed, because it shows that people want to work and want to get back into work, but the system has not kept up with their demands. Backlogs are growing, processing times are getting longer and confidence in the scheme is falling away.