Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of including an increase in employment among people aged 50–59 and 60–66 as a distinct intermediate outcome metric in the Get Britain Working framework.

A key outcome in our Get Britain Working outcome metrics framework is our ambition to raise the country’s employment rate to 80%. To achieve this ambition, we will need to improve employment across a range of groups of the population, including people aged 50 and over.

The outcomes framework intermediate outcome metrics monitor progress of the effect of policies announced in the Get Britain Working White Paper that provide extra support for specific groups of people - for example young people; people with health conditions and disabled people.