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 (a) potential implications for her policies of trends in and (b) adequacy of her Department's policies for tackling regional differences in worklessness.

The Get Britain Working White Paper set out the biggest reforms to employment support for a generation to support our ambition to achieve an 80% employment rate and reduce regional disparities. The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) will shift from being a department for employment support and welfare to being a department for work. This means introducing reforms to achieve a new, locally led system of work and health support being available for those who are unemployed and economically inactive, no matter where they live.

To support this, we have asked every area in England to develop a local Get Britain Working plan. These plans will help to join up new support and enable local areas to develop a system wide approach to tackling their needs in partnership with key local stakeholders including Integrated Care Boards and Jobcentre Plus.

At a national level our policies will be assessed against our Get Britain Working outcomes which includes local variation in employment rates. DWP will provide an annual update outlining recent trends in these metrics, with the first update coming later this year.