Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they will commit to working with charities, such as Sense, to tailor employment support for disabled people to maximise their chances of successfully joining the labour market.

The Government is committed to continuing to engage with a wide range of stakeholders and partners, all of whom have an important part to play in making the transformative changes required to support disabled people and people with long-term health conditions to get into and stay in work.

For example, with the publication of the Work, Health and Disability Green Paper in October last year, the Government launched a three-month national consultation. During this time we engaged with a wide range of individuals with disabilities and long-term conditions, as well as charities with an interest, including Sense, in order to hear their views on the actions that need to be taken to transform the prospects of disabled people and people with long-term health conditions

We organised a series of face-to-face consultation events, hosted by partners from disability charities and employers, to collectively explore the green paper’s themes and questions. These were designed in close collaboration with a range of organisations, including Sense.

The consultation closed on 17^th February 2017 and we are now carefully considering all the submissions we received as we develop our policy options and set out our next steps.