Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many people have been accepted onto a Kickstart scheme placement by (a) ethnicity and (b) gender.

As of 5^th December 2021, there have been around 112,000 job placement starts to the Kickstart Scheme.

The Department for Work and Pensions will be monitoring and evaluating the Kickstart scheme throughout its implementation and will continue to evaluate the longer term outcomes for Kickstart participants after they have completed their six-month job placements. This will include an examination of the demographic make-up of participants, including gender and ethnicity. We will gather data on the ethnicity of Kickstart participants through the planned Kickstart participant survey and using information recorded on UC systems. We will publish the findings of the evaluation once complete.

Although care is taken when processing and analysing Kickstart applications, referrals and starts, the data collected might be subject to the inaccuracies inherent in any large-scale recording system which has been developed quickly. The management information presented here has not been subjected to the usual standard of quality assurance associated with official statistics, but is provided in the interests of transparency. Work is ongoing to improve the quality of information available for the programme.