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 effectiveness of the Disability Confident Scheme.

In 2022, the department commissioned a survey to understand from members’ perspectives the impact that signing up to the scheme has had on their recruitment and retention attitudes and practices towards disabled people. The survey can be accessed on gov.uk using the following link: Disability Confident: survey of participating employers, May 2022 - GOV.UK

There are currently over 19,000 employers signed up to the Disability Confident scheme. Collectively, these employers estimate over 12 million employees work in their organisations. It is not known how many of these employees are disabled, have a health condition, or are direct users of the scheme.

No assessment has been made of the impact of the scheme on the ability of disabled people to find work. I have been discussing with stakeholders in Disability Confident ideas for making the scheme criteria more robust, and plan to bring forward proposals for this in due course.