Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask His Majesty's Government what plans they have to undertake an impact assessment of the closure of the Work and Health Programme this autumn and the impact of this on enabling disabled people to enter the job market.

As part of the government’s Back to Work Plan we have launched and plan to deliver a range of other support which will put in place an offer to a broader range of disabled people, for example, Universal Support will support up to 100,000 disabled people, people with health conditions and people with additional barriers to employment per year, once fully rolled out, helping them to find, enter, and remain in work.

The Work and Health Programme (WHP) has supported 300k people since it was introduced in 2017 to the end of November 2023, of whom over 130k have entered employment in this time. More recently WHP Pioneer, which is part of the first phase of Universal Support, aims to support up to 25k people through DWP contracts. The next publication of WHP Statistics on Gov.UK is due at the end of May 2024.