Jon Trickett – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Work and Pensions

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Jon Trickett on 2015-10-09.

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps his Department is taking to ensure that disabled people are given appropriate support to lead an active and independent lifestyle.

Justin Tomlinson

This Government has an ambitious vision for disabled people, which is set out in our cross-government disability strategy: Fulfilling Potential which we published in 2013.

Fulfilling Potential aims to remove the barriers that disabled people face to enable them to fulfil their potential, live independently and have equal opportunities to play a full and active role in society.

We developed our approach with disabled people and it reflects what they have said is important to bring about the changes that will have a real and lasting impact on their day-to-day lives.

As part of our approach we are committed to continuing to provide support for those disabled people who need it, whilst enabling those who can work to do so. We continue to spend around £50 billion on services and benefits for disabled people. We are committed to halving the disability employment gap and over the last year, we have seen disability employment increase by over 226,000.