Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, how many people in the civil service have learning disabilities.

The Civil Service is committed to becoming the UK’s most inclusive employer and therefore needs to recruit, retain and progress the very best disabled civil servants.

The Civil Service publishes annual statistics, through the Office of National Statistics, on the number of disabled employees, which stood at 9.2%* in March 2016. Information on the specific nature of an employee’s disability is not collected centrally.

Line managers are responsible for holding confidential discussions with their disabled colleagues to consider the impact of disability in the workplace, whether visible or non-visible, and for putting in place workplace adjustments to remove any barriers.

*This figure is based on Civil Servants, who have recorded their disability status, as ‘yes’ or ‘no’ on departmental HR Systems. It is not mandatory for employees to record their disability status and employees are not asked for details of the specific nature of their disability of health condition.