Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps he is taking to help support young disabled people into work in Scotland.

With around one million young people not in education, employment or training, this Government will not leave an entire generation of young people behind. In Scotland, health, skills, careers and employment support are partially devolved to the Scottish Parliament, resulting in a mix of Scottish and UK-wide control. Our officials work closely with those in the Scottish Parliament, sharing best practice on providing employment support to disabled people.

We set out our plan for the Pathways to Work Guarantee in our Pathways to Work Green Paper and we are building towards our guaranteed offer of personalised work, health and skills support for disabled people and those with health conditions on out of work benefits. The guarantee is backed by £1 billion a year of new, additional funding by the end of the decade. We anticipate the guarantee, once fully rolled out, will include: a support conversation to identify next steps, one-to-one caseworker support, periodic engagement, and an offer of specialist long-term work health and skills support. The Scottish Government received consequential funding in the usual way.

Disabled people and people with health conditions can face a wide range of unique, yet intersecting barriers, relating to not just their health, but their employment and circumstance. We therefore have a range of specialist initiatives to support individuals to stay in work and get back into work, including those that join up employment and health systems. Existing measures include support from Work Coaches and Disability Employment Advisers in Jobcentres and Access to Work grants, as well as joining up health and employment support around the individual.

Youth Hubs, Youth Guarantee Gateway, work experience and training, jobs grant are available across Great Britain. This includes the expansion of Youth Hubs to more than 360 areas across Great Britain, and the introduction of a new Youth Guarantee Gateway in Jobcentres, to provide earlier and more intensive support to 16–24-year-olds on Universal Credit. Our investment will create up to 500,000 opportunities to earn and learn including 300,000 additional opportunities to gain workplace experience and training and up to 200,000 additional employment opportunities, through a new £3,000 Youth Jobs Grant for employers hiring 18–24-year-olds who have been on Universal Credit for over six months, and the Jobs Guarantee scheme, providing long-term unemployed 18–24-year-olds with a fully funded six month job. The apprenticeship system is devolved in Scotland.

We recognise the crisis of participation that Alan Milburn has so clearly laid out in his interim report. We will use this interim report to continue to build our reforms and look forward to final recommendations in the Autumn.