Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what steps they have taken to operate a disability confident scheme for those seeking promotion in their Department; and how many and what proportion of those candidates who declared themselves as having a disability and who applied under the scheme were (a) interviewed and (b) promoted in (i) 2021 and (ii) 2022.

HM Treasury is a Disability Confident Leader, the highest of three levels in the Disability Confident Scheme, providing candidates who apply to the department under the scheme with a guaranteed interview if they meet the minimum criteria required for the role. This is available to all candidates, both internal and external, and is supplemented by our commitment to offering reasonable adjustments through the recruitment process.

To reach Level 3, Disability Confident Leader, an employer must run through a self-assessment of their disabled employment policies and practices, put this self-assessment up for external validation, produce a plan for encouraging and supporting other employers to become Disability Confident, and undertake to use the Voluntary Reporting framework to publicly report on how they support their disabled staff.

Of those candidates who declared themselves as having a disability and who applied under the Disability Confident Scheme:

• 299 (12.6% of those applicants) were interviewed in 2021
• 245 (14.6% of those applicants) were interviewed in 2022

Data regarding how many and the proportion of those candidates who were promoted is not centrally held in the requested format and could only be provided at a disproportionate cost. This is because the question of “applying on promotion” is only asked for vacancies advertised internally or across government.