Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps they have taken to operate a disability confident scheme for those seeking promotion in their Department; and how many and what proportion of those candidates who declared themselves as having a disability and who applied under the scheme were (a) interviewed and (b) promoted in (i) 2021 and (ii) 2022.

In line with the commitment made in the Civil Service Workforce Plan all DWP recruitment has been ‘External by Default’ since August 2020. It is therefore departmental policy that all permanent vacancies, including those that would result in promotion for an existing employee, are advertised externally unless there is clear rationale for not doing so.

To comply with CS Commission Recruitment Principles, our external recruitment is Fair, Open and Merit based and as a Disability Confident Leader all our advertised campaigns, internal or external, carries the Disability Confident Logo to make this clear to applicants. We are committed to offering an interview to any disabled candidate, internal or external, who applies under the Disability Confident Scheme and meets the minimum criteria for the role.

It is only within internal recruitment exercises, where candidates are asked if they are applying on promotion, as such, we only hold data on promotion figures for internally advertised campaigns.

The figures in the table show the number of DWP candidates who declared themselves as having a disability, or who applied for internal vacancies under the Guaranteed Interview Scheme, and their progression through the recruitment process.

.** Applications made by internal DWP candidates for internally advertised DWP / Cross Government vacancies, on promotion.