Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment his Department has made of trends in the number of people in Newport West constituency out of work due to (a) sickness and (b) disability since outbreak of the covid-19 pandemic.

Individuals who are out of work will be either economically inactive (where a person is not in work, nor looking for, or available for, work) or unemployed (not in work, but actively seeking work). Whilst data is held on a person’s main reason for being inactive, data on the main reason for being unemployed is not readily available. Therefore, no assessment of trends in the number of people in Newport West who are out of work due to sickness or disability since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic has been made.

However, data on the number of people who are economically inactive and state long-term sickness as their main reason is available. Between April 2022 and March 2023, there were an estimated 2,900 and 5,500 people in Newport West who were economically inactive and gave long-term sickness as the main reason. This compares to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic (April 2019 to March 2020), when the corresponding estimate was between 2,200 and 4,300 people.

In general, there is a higher degree of uncertainty around estimates for parliamentary constituencies because at this granular level sample sizes are small, and historic trends can be volatile. Resultantly, differences in the figures for Newport West over time may not be statistically significant (which is the case for the figures quoted above), and therefore any change may be reflective of chance or the variable nature of the sample, and not represent actual change.

Source: Labour Market Profile - Nomis - Official Census and Labour Market Statistics (nomisweb.co.uk).