Recommendation 35

HM Government Not Addressed

Reject disability pay reporting. The Government is committed to reducing the disability employment gap and seeing a million more disabled people in work between 2017 and 2027. Disabled people are supported to enter employment and stay in work through a range of programmes such as the Work and Health Programme, Access to Work and the Intensive Personalised Employment Support Programme. In November 2018 the Government published a Voluntary Reporting Framework (VRF) to support employers to report and publish on disability employment and mental health. This is aimed at large employers (with over 250 employees) encouraging them to have open and transparent conversations in the workplace with their staff. The framework can also be used to support smaller employers who wish to drive greater transparency within their organisations. Disability Employment Advisers support DWP colleagues by developing their skills to understand the interaction between individuals, their health and disability and employment, to help them to provide more personalised support, tailored to each claimant’s individual needs. They proactively share knowledge and information with work coaches about health and disability, national and local provision, services, training and employment opportunities. Considering ethnicity pay reporting. In 2018/2019 the Government consulted on options for employer-level ethnicity pay reporting. Following this, the Government met with businesses and representative organisations to understand the barriers to reporting and to explore what information could be published to allow for meaningful action to be taken. Following the consultation, we ran a methodology testing exercise with a broad range of businesses to better understand the complexities outlined in the consultation. This highlighted the genuine difficulties in designing a methodology that will produce accurate figures that facilitate analysis, interpretation and meaningful action. The Government is continuing to analyse this data. We will respond to the Ethnicity Pay Reporting consultation in due course.