Disability: Departmental Coordination

(asked on 30th March 2023) - View Source

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what progress his Department has made on publishing a cross-government harmonised disability data as set out in the National Disability Strategy published in July 2021.


Answered by
Tom Pursglove Portrait
Tom Pursglove
Minister of State (Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery)
This question was answered on 17th April 2023

The 2021 National Disability Strategy set out an ambition to improve the lives of millions of disabled people in the UK. In January 2022, the High Court declared the strategy to be unlawful because the UK Disability Survey, which informed it, was held to be a voluntary consultation that failed to comply with the legal requirements on public consultations. The DWP Secretary of State has been granted permission to appeal from the Court of Appeal.

In order to ensure compliance with the Court’s declaration, we are obliged to pause a limited number of policies which are referred to in the strategy, or are directly connected with it. This policy is not one of the policies we have been obliged to pause.

The Disability Unit continues to work with ONS and statistical teams across Government to encourage wider use of harmonised disability concepts and definitions across departmental data and is working with ONS on the review of disability data harmonised standards to meet user needs and explore potential improvements.

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