Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what recent steps she has taken to address the disability employment gap.

Government set out a ten year change programme, to improve disability employment, in the Command Paper “Improving Lives: the future of work, health and disability” (2017). This describes actions across welfare, workplace and health settings.

Recent steps taken include:

• holding a consultation on how employers can best support disabled people and people with long-term health conditions to stay in and thrive in work;
• supporting disabled people into work through initiatives like the Work and Health Programme and Personal Support Package, and introducing the new Intensive Personalised Employment Support programme, which will be in place by the end of 2019;
• from April 2019, we introduced an enhanced Disability Employment Adviser and a new Disability Employment Adviser Leader role, in total more than 800 individuals supporting Jobcentre colleagues to provide high quality services to disabled people and those with health conditions;
• using an Innovation Fund funded by DWP, DHSC, and NHS England to test initiatives to support disabled people and those with health conditions to get into, and remain in, work;
• introducing, in November 2018, a voluntary reporting framework to support employers to record and voluntarily report information on disability and mental health in the workplace;
• providing support for nearly 34,000 disabled workers last year through the Access to Work scheme; and
• engaging with employers through the Disability Confident scheme.