Employment: Disability

(asked on 7th January 2020) - View Source

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what evidence there is that organisations signed up to the Disability Confident Scheme (1) are more inclusive of disabled employees and jobseekers, and (2) employ disabled people in larger numbers, than employers who have not signed up to that scheme.


This question was answered on 14th January 2020

The analysis and recommendations in ‘A Response to the UK Government's reforms of Disability Confident level 3’ are a useful contribution to the debate about the future policy development of Disability Confident. On 6 January 2020, Department for Work and Pensions officials met with the authors, Kim Hoque and Nick Bacon, and Philip Connolly of the Leonard Cheshire organisation, to discuss the report.

In November 2018, we published the results of survey research commissioned from Ipsos MORI, which explored the effect that signing up to the Disability Confident scheme had on recruitment and retention attitudes towards disabled people. Half of all employers interviewed for the study said they had recruited at least one person with a disability, long-term health or mental health condition as a result of joining the scheme. Among larger employers, nearly two thirds reported the same. It was not technically possible to compare employers who are signed up to Disability Confident with other employers not signed up to the scheme but otherwise similar in every way.

As at 31 December 2019, over 15,000 employers had signed up to Disability Confident. We are not able to accurately estimate the total workforce currently working for Disability Confident organisations.

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