DWP ministers fail to sign up to their own disability employment scheme, seven months after election

Work and pensions secretary Liz Kendall – along with three of her ministerial team – failed to sign up to her own department’s disability employment scheme, a government report has revealed.

The latest version of a list of employers signed up to Disability Confident shows that neither Kendall nor her employment minister Alison McGovern had signed up to the scheme by 31 January.

Their colleagues Andrew Western and Torsten Bell* had also failed to sign up, although Sir Stephen Timms – the social security and disability minister – was a member of the scheme.

Like all MPs, the ministers employ staff to assist with their parliamentary and constituency duties, which are separate to their ministerial roles.

The much-criticised scheme, launched in 2013, aims to encourage employers to “think differently about disability and take action to improve how they recruit, retain and develop disabled people”.

Sir Stephen praised the scheme during a Commons debate in November, when he described it as a “very important resource” that “provides a strong platform, with more than 19,000 employers participating in it”.

He told MPs in November: “It promotes good, inclusive employment and recruitment practices.

“It supports employers to deliver them and to become able to attract, recruit, retain and develop disabled people.”

But he did say the government would “examine how we can make the Disability Confident scheme more robust and how it can achieve more of its potential”.

Despite his praise for the scheme, four of his ministerial colleagues had failed to sign up by 31 January.

A spokesperson for Kendall thanked Disability News Service this week for “highlighting this gap to us” and added: “We are now signed up.”

A spokesperson for Western said they had “just applied to join the scheme”.

Despite these comments, DWP refused to provide a statement, and even claimed that DWP ministers were signed up to the programme.

It said work was underway to increase the sign-up of other ministers and MPs.

Neither McGovern nor Bell had commented by noon today (Thursday).

Mel Stride, the last government’s final work and pensions secretary, failed to sign up to Disability Confident when a minister, and is still not a member, while the current shadow work and pensions secretary, Helen Whately, has also not signed up. Nor has shadow work and pensions minister Danny Kruger.

Former work and pensions secretary Therese Coffey eventually signed up, after her failure to join the scheme was exposed by Disability News Service in October 2020, more than a year after she had been appointed secretary of state.

She has now apparently left the scheme after losing her seat last July.

One notable former DWP minister who has never signed up to the scheme is Iain Duncan Smith, even though he helped launch it as work and pensions secretary in 2013.

The Conservative party had not responded to requests to comment by noon today (Thursday).

In November 2016, DWP itself was declared a Disability Confident “leader” – the highest of the scheme’s three levels – days before it was found guilty of grave and systematic violations of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

In July 2020, a company that bragged of being a Disability Confident leader sacked more than 50 disabled staff when it fell into administration, and then hired mostly non-disabled agency staff to replace them.

And in October 2018, the government-funded British Council, which is responsible for promoting the UK’s culture and education abroad, asked an employment tribunal to allow it to dodge its Equality Act duty not to discriminate against disabled people, despite being a member of Disability Confident.

In the same year, nearly 7,000 employers that signed up to Disability Confident promised to provide just 4,500 new jobs for disabled people between them, less than one per employer.

*Torsten Bell was only appointed to his ministerial position last month

Picture: (From left to right) Andrew Western, Alison McGovern and Liz Kendall

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