Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what estimate she has made of the number of companies signed up to the Disability Confident scheme; and what assessment she has made of the effect of that scheme on employment rates for disabled people.

In 2017 the Government set a goal to see 1 million more disabled people in employment over the next 10 years. In the first three years of the goal (between Jan-Mar 2017 and Jan-Mar 2020) the number of disabled people in employment increased by 800,000. The rate of disabled people in employment also increased, by 4.4 percentage points to 53.4%, in the same period.

The Disability Confident scheme is a learning journey that aims to provide employers with the knowledge, skills, and resources that they need to attract, recruit, retain and develop disabled people in the workplace. No employer is too small or new to start the journey and even the most experienced employer will still find new techniques and best practice that can help them. As of 28th February 2021 over 19,900 employers had signed up to the scheme. Disability Confident is only part of a wider range of services that will support disabled employees into work and stay in work.