Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Guy Opperman and Vicky Ford(8 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Guy Opperman
The hon. Lady’s constituency is a long way from Essex, Mr Speaker! She will, however, be aware that over 1 million more disabled people are in work and that the WCA will continue on an ongoing basis until there is reform.
Vicky Ford (Chelmsford) (Con)
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Guy Opperman and Vicky Ford(1 year, 3 months ago)
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Vicky Ford (Chelmsford) (Con)
The Minister for Employment (Guy Opperman)
We want people to work more, and ideally come off benefits—as we all know, UC progression means that work always pays more. To enable that, we have created in-work progression support that provides over 1.6 million more claimants with access to work support.
Vicky Ford
In Chelmsford and across Essex, job coaches have been running a new initiative to support working people on universal credit to gain more income, which is proving highly successful. Many people have been supported to increase their skills and therefore their hourly pay rate; other people who were working part time have increased their hours. May I urge the Government to first, provide more out-of-hours training for those in work; secondly, offer more discretionary spending to enable those in work to attend those training courses; and thirdly, help to roll out the lessons learned from Essex across the country?
Guy Opperman
It is true that Essex is a pioneer of our in-work progression offer; I spoke to one of the job coaches doing that in Essex only this morning. We are recruiting senior district progression leads who will work with local skills providers to ensure that there is appropriate training for in-work claimants. Bluntly, the Essex profile, along with the other volunteer organisations, will be going out to the entire country by the end of March 2023.