Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask Her Majesty's Government, in the light of the recent report from the Centre for the Study of Financial Innovation The Dependency Trap—are we fit to face the future?, what steps they are taking to reduce the rates of economic inactivity in the UK due to preventable chronic conditions among those aged over 50.

The number of workers aged 50 and over currently in employment is at a record high of 10.1 million aged 50 plus in the UK: an increase of 1.4 million over the last 5 years and an increase of 2.2 million over the last 10 years

The Government has in place a comprehensive Fuller Working Lives strategy to support older workers to remain in and return to the labour market and tackle the barriers to doing so.

The Government has appointed the Business in The Community (BITC) Age at Work leadership team, as Business Champion for Older Workers; the BITC team of employers spearhead the Government’s Fuller Working Lives work. The Department has also expanded its network of Older Claimant Champions to all 34 Jobcentre Plus districts to work collaboratively with over 11,000 work coaches.

The Government understands the importance to individuals and the wider economy of preventing avoidable ill-health and enabling more disabled people and people with long-term health conditions to get into and stay in work. We continue to support and encourage employers to recruit and retain with confidence; to build our offer of personalised employment support and are exploring how to improve access to Occupational Health services.

From 2013 to 2017; the number of people with a long term health condition in work increased by nearly 600,000 to 7.4 million; with an employment rate of 62 per cent that is an increase of 4.3 percentage points in the same period.

The Government has also committed to seeing one million more disabled people in work over the next ten years. On 30 November 2017, we published ‘Improving Lives: The Future of Work, Health and Disability’, which sets out actions we are taking across three key settings; in the welfare system; in the workplace and in health services – with health professionals ready to talk about health barriers to work.

We are investing up to £115 million of programme funding to support the work and health agenda to enable investment in new models and the evidence of what works this includes:

o more than doubling the number of Employment Advisers in Improving Access to Psychological Therapies services;

o mental health trials; and

o the Work and Health Innovation Fund – which is funded by contributions from Department for Work and Pensions , Department for Health and social Care, and NHS England.

Background note:

Please note that Office for National Statistics did recently release some more recent employment estimates for people with disabilities and people with long-term health conditions. However, these are subject to health warnings while ONS complete their investigations into an apparent discontinuity in the figures. Therefore, we have advised that public statements should be based on estimates up to quarter 2 (April-June) 2017, the most period for which ONS have published estimates without health warnings.