Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, with reference to the statement in his Department's press release of 9 December 2013 that hundreds of people would benefit from the extension of Access to Work to cover work placements, how many people have so benefited to date; and what data his Department collects to enable assessment of the effects of the changes to the scheme.

We do not hold official statistics for these figures.

DWP publishes an annual report regarding all of the operations for the previous operational year in July, so the next publication will be July 2015.

Access to Work supported 35,450 disabled people to keep or get employment during 2013/14 (up from 31,510 in 2012/13)