Asked by: Beth Winter (Labour - Cynon Valley)
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.
Answered by Mims Davies - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
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.
Asked by: Beth Winter (Labour - Cynon Valley)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if he will make it his policy to support the establishment of accessibility champions in each Department.
Answered by Mims Davies - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
We already have a Ministerial Disability Champion in each government department.
At the request of the Prime Minister, the first Ministerial Disability Champions were appointed in summer 2020, to drive the development and delivery of the National Disability Strategy (NDS).
Their role is to:
The Ministerial Disability Champions meet regularly throughout the year. The Minister of State for Disabled People, Health and Work, Mims Davies MP, is the chair.
A full list of Ministerial Disability Champions can be found on Gov.UK here.
Asked by: Beth Winter (Labour - Cynon Valley)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if he will review the Disability Confident scheme.
Answered by Mims Davies - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
DWP is committed to strengthening the Disability Confident Scheme to ensure it remains credible, sufficiently challenging, and continues to support the employment of disabled people. Key to this is the implementation of the recommendations from the review including work to strengthen the criteria for all employers and tailoring the scheme for SMEs. On 9 April 2024 DWP published a revised version of the Disability Confident Line Manager’s Guide, in collaboration with the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), providing a range of guidance to support businesses of all sizes. Further changes to the scheme criteria stemming from these recommendations are well underway and we expect to have fully implemented them by the end of March 2025.
The Department is continuing to work with a wide range of stakeholders, including employers, disability charities, and disabled people’s organisations to develop, and grow the scheme to increase the number of inclusive employers in the UK.
Asked by: Beth Winter (Labour - Cynon Valley)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if he will make it his policy to introduce mandatory disability reporting for organisations with at least 250 employees.
Answered by Mims Davies - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
In the National Disability Strategy (NDS), the Cabinet Office committed to leading a consultation on workforce reporting on disability for large employers exploring both voluntary and mandated workplace transparency. A formal consultation ran from 16 December 2021 to 25 March 2022. Work on the disability workforce reporting consultation was paused in line with other work deriving from the NDS whilst a legal challenge on the NDS was ongoing. Following a successful appeal, we have now commenced analysis of the consultation responses and will publish the consultation response findings in 2024.