Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment she has made of the effectiveness of employment support programmes in getting long-term unemployed disabled people back into work.

The Pathways to Work Green Paper announced our plans to invest £1 billion a year by the end of the decade in new employment, health and skills support – one of the largest ever packages of specialist employment support. This investment will provide services based on this evidence of what works.

This is on top of other support we are already providing, including:

• The new Jobs and Careers Service is part of the reforms outlined in the Get Britian Working White Paper, which in total, is backed by £240m for 2025/26.
• Connect to Work funding which will, in 2026/27, support up to 100,000 disabled people, those with health conditions or those with complex barriers to employment.
• Deploying 1,000 work coaches in 2025/26 to specifically support around 65,000 disabled people and those with health conditions who are interested in moving into work.

• WorkWell pilot, which joins up health and work support in 15 areas in England and is helping up to 56,000 people with support to remain in and get into jobs.

We provide a range of employment support for disabled people and people with health conditions, and we have a strong commitment to evaluating these programmes.

We know that being in good work is good for peoples mental and physical health and wellbeing, and is the best route out of poverty. Recent evidence shows that support can make a real difference in the number of people getting and keeping work.

The recent evaluation of the Work Choice programme, a voluntary programme for disabled people that gave them skills, advice and ongoing support, that we published Work Choice impact evaluation - GOV.UK showed that eight years after referral, participants had a payrolled employment rate of 11 percentage points higher than the comparison group and the programme was estimated to return £1.67 back to the Exchequer for every £1 spent.

We also recently published an evaluation of Additional Work Coach Time Support, which offers voluntary appointments with tailored support. This showed positive outcomes on peoples’ mental health and improvements in confidence and motivation to find work. The impact analysis showed that 12 months after the intervention, 11% of participants were in work compared to 8% of the comparison group – a 3 percentage point employment impact. The support also had a positive and statistically significant impact on earnings in each year, 2 to 3 years later.

The European Social Fund, a voluntary programme available from 2015-2023, increased the amount of time spent in employment and reduced the amount of time spent on inactive benefits. On average, in the three years after using the programme, people spent 39.7 more days in employment. The ESF made a societal return of £1.50 for every £1 spent.