Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps she plans to take to ensure that employers provide disabled people with the support they need to stay in work.

In our Get Britain Working White Paper, published November 2024, we committed support for employers to recruit, retain and develop staff.

The Secretaries of State for Work and Pensions and Business and Trade have asked Sir Charlie Mayfield to lead an independent review to consider how best to support and enable employers to recruit and retain more people with health conditions and disabilities, promote healthy workplaces, and support more people to stay in or return to work from periods of sickness absence. Sir Charlie Mayfield will deliver his final report in the autumn.

In January this year, we launched an expert academic panel to advise us on boosting neurodiversity awareness and inclusion at work. The panel will consider the reasons why neurodivergent people have poor experiences in the workplace, and a low overall employment rate, making their recommendations to employers and government in the summer.

DWP already promotes the Disability Confident Scheme which encourages employers to create disability inclusive workplaces and to support disabled people to get work and get on in work. It provides employers with the knowledge, skills, and confidence they need to attract, recruit, retain and develop disabled people in the workplace and to take positive action to address the issues disabled employees face.

We recognise there are opportunities to make the scheme more robust, and we will work with employers, disabled people, and disabled people’s organisations to realise the full potential of the scheme.

In addition, DWP has a digital information service for employers, (Support with employee health and disability – GOV.UK), which provides tailored guidance to businesses to support employees to remain in work. This includes guidance on health disclosures and having conversations about health, plus guidance on legal obligations, including statutory sick pay and making reasonable adjustments.

Access to Work aims to support the recruitment and retention of disabled people into employment. It is a personalised discretionary grant that provides support with workplace adjustments beyond an employer’s obligation as outlined in the Equality Act 2010, to support the recruitment and retention of disabled people into employment.

In 23/24 the Access to Work Scheme supported 67,720 people with workplace adjustments to move into or stay in work. This includes a wide range of support including travel to work, support workers, and specialist aides and equipment, as well as the Mental Health support service which provides up to nine months of non-clinical support for people who need additional help with their well-being.

As part of our Plan for Change, and as set out in the Pathways to Work Green Paper published in March, we are consulting on the future of Access to Work and how to improve the programme to help more disabled people into work and support employers, ensuring value for money for taxpayers. We will review all aspects of the Scheme following the conclusion of the consultation and carefully assess the impact of any proposed changes.

We encourage people to have their views and voices heard on how they think the programme and the wider welfare system could be improved.