Employment: Disability
(asked on 6th September 2017) - View Source
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if he will make it his policy to report annually to Parliament on progress in tackling the disability employment gap as part of the annual report on full employment.
The Government is committed to improving employment outcomes for disabled people. The manifesto commitment gives a clear and time-bound goal to achieve this, which is to see 1 million more disabled people into work over the next 10 years.
Since quarter 1 2016, the number of working aged disabled people in employment has increased by around 170,000 to 3.5 million in quarter 1 2017. The disability employment rate has increased by over 2 percentage points and now stands at 49 per cent.
The number of disabled people in employment, according to the Labour Force Survey, is publicly available here:
We know that there is much more that needs to be done, so that everyone who can work is given the right support and opportunities to do so. That is why we published Improving Lives: the Work, Health and Disability Green Paper, which set out the action we plan to take to achieve this and start a far-reaching, national debate on what more we can do to ensure everyone is supported to reach their full potential. We are considering next steps, taking account of the Green Paper consultation, and will set out our response to this and future plans in due course, including supporting local effort and reporting arrangements.