Jonathan Reynolds – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Work and Pensions

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Jonathan Reynolds on 2015-11-02.

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what fiscal steps he is taking to support the Government’s aim of halving the disability employment gap.

Justin Tomlinson

The Government is committed to giving disabled people the opportunity to fulfil their potential and achieve their ambitions. Work is an important part of this. That is why we have committed to halving the disability employment gap, requiring us to transform policy, practice and public attitudes.

We must build on recent progress. We have already:

– extended Access to Work to provide support to more disabled people in pre-employment, such as work experience and also to undertake employment-based training, such as supported internships, traineeships and self-arranged work experience.

– launched Specialist Employability Support, an innovative new programme which provides intensive, specialist support to the disabled people who need the most help.

– continued to work with employers through our Disability Confident campaign to ensure that they understand the benefits of recruiting and retaining disabled people in work.

– announced new funding in the Budget of up to £100m per year for additional practical support to provide the right incentives and support to enable those who have limited capability, but who have some potential to prepare, for work to move closer to the labour market, and when they are ready, back into work.

– committed to spending £43m over the next 3 years to develop the evidence base on what works for those with common mental health conditions retain and return to employment. This will be done through a range of voluntary mental health and employment pilots that will go live next year

We set up the Work and Health unit in the summer to bring together the Work and Health agendas, to help disabled people and people with health conditions get into work, stay in work, and return to work with the right support and we are developing our plans in this area.

The Government will set out it its spending plans for this Parliament in the forthcoming Spending Review.