Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps she is taking to support economically inactive people back into work in (a) West London and (b) other parts of London.

The Get Britain Working White Paper published in November set out plans to deliver fundamental reform of our health, employment and skills system, that will help support economically inactive people in all areas in England get back into work.

We committed to:

• Delivering a new jobs and careers service to support people to get into and on at work, available to everyone regardless of whether they are in receipt of benefits.
• Asking local areas across England, including the Greater London Authority, to develop local Get Britain Working plans which are intended to join up new support and enable local areas to develop a system wide approach to tackling economic inactivity.
• Funding Trailblazers to help accelerate a more locally led and joined up approach to tackling economic inactivity and the rising number of young people who are not participating in education, employment or training.
• Delivering a Youth Guarantee for 18-21 year olds in England so that young people benefit from support to access education, training opportunities or help to find work.
• Launching Connect to Work, a forthcoming voluntary, locally led, Supported Employment programme that will help, primarily economically inactive, disabled people, people with health conditions and other complex barriers to employment to get into and stay in work.

The Greater London area will host several Trailblazers, covering both inactivity and youth. This will involve working closely with a range of local partners, including those based in West London. Additional funding will also be given to the Greater London Authority to support the development of their local Get Britain Working plan, to cover the four sub-regional London partnership areas delivering Connect to Work.