Select committee: Work and Pensions Committee
Recommendation 33
Second Report - Disability employment gap
Published 30 Jul 2021
Paragraph 154
Addressed to Department for Work and Pensions
Work and Pensions Committee Disability employment gap All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Recommendation (the committee's words)
DWP must ensure that the Kickstart and Restart schemes are accessible to disabled people. Before September 2017, the Work Programme reported quarterly on job outcomes for disabled people: the Department should be able to do as good a job with Restart and Kickstart. Publishing an evaluation of how well the schemes have worked for disabled people only after they have ended is not good enough. In our report on DWP’s preparations for changes in the world of work, we recommended that the Department should immediately improve how it collects data about claimants’ characteristics in the Universal Credit system so that it can monitor, in real-time, how well the Kickstart and Restart schemes are working for particular groups, including disabled people. We reiterate that recommendation now.
From: Work and Pensions Committee, Second Report - Disability employment gap (HC 189), paragraph 154, 30 July 2021
Government response
The government responded to the whole report on 22 November 2021 (deadline 30 September 2021).
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The government says it shares the Committee's aim and is progressing its reforms, but keeps its existing goal of one million more disabled people in work by 2027 rather than adopting the Committee's proposed targets.
- On targets, it says it has "goals" rather than targets, because external factors affect disability employment, and that a 1.2 million goal is "very unlikely to halve the gap".
- On workforce reporting by large employers, it points to a Cabinet Office consultation, exploring "both voluntary and mandated workplace transparency", as "the right next step".
- On Disability Confident, it will review levels 2 and 3 and "consider" how to measure the scheme's impact and success, and says the review will provide an opportunity to seek views on external assessment.
- On the Work Capability Assessment, it says detailed proposals will be set out in a White Paper in 2022 following analysis of Green Paper responses.