Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether the Disability Unit has made a recent assessment of the (a) level of demand for and (b) adequacy of the availability of courses in British Sign Language.

The Disability Unit in the Cabinet Office has not made any recent assessments of the (a) level of demand for and (b) adequacy of the availability of courses in British Sign Language (BSL) as this is the remit of the Department of Education. However, following the passage of the BSL Act (2022), the Government established a non-statutory BSL Advisory Board who will continue to consider and advise the Government on matters of importance to the d/Deaf community.