Access to Work spending doubles in seven years

Spending on supporting disabled people in work through a disability employment scheme has more than doubled in real terms in the last seven years, new government figures have revealed.

The new Access to Work statistics, published by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), show the amount spent on assistance such as equipment, travel and support workers increased from £127 million in 2016-17 to £255 million in 2023-24, once the effects of inflation have been allowed for.

Spending rose even faster last year, increasing by 34 per cent, from £191 million in 2022-23 to £255 million in 2023-24.

The largest proportion of spending was on support workers, with £178 million spent last year, followed by £43 million on travel to work and £21 million on aids and equipment.

The number of disabled people receiving Access to Work (AtW) support increased by more than 15,000 last year (from 34,800 in 2022-23 to 49,920 in 2023-24), a rise of 43 per cent.

There are now more than twice the number of people receiving Access to Work support than there were in 2017-18, when there were just 22,460.

But the figures also show that the average level of support per disabled person has fallen significantly in the last six years.

In 2017-18, the average level of support was £5,922, but last year it was only £5,112.

There are also continuing concerns with the way the scheme is run.

Last month, Disability News Service reported that disabled people working in the creative and cultural sectors were increasingly seeing cuts to the support they receive through AtW.

And employment minister Alison McGovern said early last month that there were about 55,000 AtW applications yet to be dealt with, in a response to a written question from Liberal Democrat work and pensions spokesperson Steve Darling.

Despite the figures apparently showing a significant investment by the last government in supporting disabled people in jobs, Conservative ministers rarely if ever highlighted how much they were spending on the scheme.

At last year’s Conservative party conference, the minister for disabled people, Tom Pursglove, twice spoke about the importance of the scheme without mentioning a huge real terms increase in spending of 15 per cent on the previous year.

Instead, Conservative ministers focused their efforts on attacking disabled people who were not able to work and were economically “inactive” and receiving “welfare”.

Prime minister Rishi Sunak spoke at the 2023 conference of how supporting so many disabled people on out-of-work benefits was “not good for our economy” and “not fair on taxpayers who have to pick up the bill”, and he called it a “national scandal”.

The chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, spoke at the same conference of 100,000 people every year who were leaving jobs “for a life on benefits” after being found not fit for work.

For years under successive Conservative-led governments from 2010 onwards, spending on the scheme was restricted, with the numbers of disabled people receiving AtW support only passing the 2010 level in 2018-19.

Picture: Tom Pursglove (left) and Alison McGovern

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