Access to Work

Mr. Hunt
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what assessment his Department has made of the impact of withdrawing entitlement to Access to Work funding for (a) his Department’s employees on the numbers of disabled staff working in his Department and (b) other central Government Department employees on the number of disabled staff within these departments.

Mrs. McGuire
My officials will monitor the impact of the removal of Access to Work funding from employees working in central Government Departments. They will do this through a combination of analysis of administrative data from a range of sources, including DWP Access to Work Business Centres; Cabinet Office (data on employment and recruitment of disabled people across departments); and central Government Departments themselves, and qualitative research with disabled employees and other stakeholders, about their experiences.

The Office for Disability Issues (ODI) assesses the effectiveness of current policies and services for disabled people and reports annually on progress in delivering the Government's strategy to achieve equality for disabled people by 2025. As part of this, the ODI will work with the Department for Work and Pensions to consider the impact of the Access to Work changes.