Oral Answers to Questions

Mike Penning Excerpts

Thursday 31st October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op)]

6. What steps she is taking to improve the position of disabled people in the workplace.

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Mike Penning)]

The Government have a number of programmes in place to enable disabled people and people with health conditions to get into and remain in work. We intend to publish proposals for those programmes in our employment strategy by the end of the year.

[Mark Lazarowicz]

One of those programmes is the Access to Work scheme, but since the election the number of disabled people it supports has dropped by over 15%—that is about 6,000 people. Will the Minister commit himself to taking steps to ensure that that worrying trend is reversed?

[Mike Penning]

I will commit myself to giving everybody who wants to get into work the opportunity to do so, whether they are disabled or have health difficulties or not, and to keep their jobs and continue in employment. I will look carefully at the figures. The Access to Work scheme is working very well, but nothing is perfect.

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

Only 3% of disabled people in the employment and support allowance group in the Work programme found a job after two years. Given the Government’s failure to help long-term disabled people into work, is it not a bit rich for Tory MPs to be lecturing disabled people to get a job?

[Mike Penning]

Nobody is lecturing anybody apart from Labour Members who have selective memory loss about the past 13 years. We will do everything we can. I am sure that the previous Administration did, but they did not do it very well.