Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment she has made of the effect of the covid-19 outbreak on the disability employment gap in (a) Coventry North East constituency, (b) Coventry, (c) the West Midlands and (d) England.

The information requested can be derived from the Annual Population Survey and is publically available through Nomis. This can be accessed with the following link:

https://www.nomisweb.co.uk/datasets/apsnew

Data on the disability employment rate at the constituency, local authority, regional and country level can be found here, along with the non-disabled employment rate. The disability employment gap can be calculated from the difference in the employment rate between the disabled and non-disabled employment rates.

However, it should be noted that:

• The Annual Population Survey dataset covers a one-year period. The latest available data is from January- December 2020 so does not cover the full pandemic period.
• Sample sizes at the constituency and local authority level may be small. Estimates for the disability employment gap at this level are therefore likely to be subject to a large degree of sampling variation and should be used with caution.