Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, following the Green Paper consultation <i>Improving Lives: Work, Health and Disability</i>, what assessment they have made of the ability to work of some disabled people with complex needs; and what measures they are taking to support those people.

We are committed to understanding what works for people in the ESA Support Group, many of whom have complex needs, and announced in the Green Paper that we will undertake comprehensive research and develop a large scale trial to test and learn from different approaches of offering employment support to people in this group taking into consideration views and ideas gathered through the consultation, which closed on 17^th February.

In the Green Paper, we also announced the details of the Personal Support Package. This package includes a broad spectrum of employment support, with specific provision made for the hardest to help Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) claimants placed in the work-related activity group (and Universal Credit equivalents). This comprises:

• More places on the Specialist Employability Support (SES) programme; and
• Trialling and testing new forms of employment support to continue to build our evidence base for the hardest to help, including:

1. Testing a jobcentre-led alternative to the SES programme;
2. Testing locally delivered Supported Employment; and
3. Testing the use of Supported Work Experience for young people.