Recommendation 11

HM Government Accepted in Part

An equality impact assessment for the Bill was undertaken. As set out in the Green Paper, robust evidence underpins our plans to support individuals to move into employment (and thereby provide a healthy return on the investment). The Green Paper set out our intention to introduce a Pathways to Work Guarantee of personalised work, health and skills support for all disabled people and those with health conditions on out of work benefits. We anticipate that once fully rolled out, it will include: a support conversation to help identify next steps, one-to-one caseworker support, more intensive longer-term work, health and skills support and periodic engagement. The one-to-one support will be developed based on the learning from the Additional Work Coach Support intervention; the impact evaluation1 showed that after 12 months from starting the intervention, the employment rate for participants was 3 percentage points higher compared to non-participants with matched characteristics. For the more intensive support offer, learning from several previous programmes is being used for the development of this programme. For example, the evaluation2 of Work Choice, also showed clear impacts – the employment rate for participants was higher by, on average, 11.5 percentage points over an 8-year period after referral to the programme compared to non-participants with matched characteristics. For every £1 invested in Work Choice the central estimate was that £1.67 would be returned to the Exchequer in benefit savings and taxes, or £2.98 returned to the wider society. Based on the range of evidence from previous comparable programmes, we anticipate that the longer-term Pathways to Work interventions will contribute to improved employment outcomes for individuals within the scope of the Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payment Bill. We recognise the importance of NHS capacity and supportive employers. The Keep Britain Working independent review, being led by Sir Charlie Mayfield, will report later in the autumn on what more can be done to support and enable employers to promote healthy and inclusive workplaces. The OBR estimates that only a relatively small proportion of those inactive for health reasons are on the NHS waiting lists and that halving the NHS waiting lists would reduce working age inactivity by approximately 25,000. This is supported further by recent IFS analysis that found no clear relationship between NHS waits and changes to working-age health related benefit claims at the local level. The structure of the UK’s Health and Disability benefit system needs reform to improve employment outcomes and tackle rising expenditure. All major economies have seen rising prevalence in long-term health conditions and disability, but the UK is an international outlier in terms of its impact on benefits. UK spending on disability benefits has increased by over 30% since the pandemic, whilst over the same period, across 11 similar countries, all but one have seen stable or falling spends on their nearest equivalent benefits2.