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The new minister for disabled people has refused to comment on figures that show how spending on Access to Work (AtW) plummeted during the pandemic, despite ministers plugging the programme during this week’s Conservative party conference. Chloe Smith highlighted the scheme […]
MPs and academics have dismissed claims by ministers in their new National Disability Strategy that the government has slashed the disability employment gap over the last seven years. The claim that the gap – the difference between the proportion of disabled […]
The failure of the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to ensure that the employment services it provides to disabled people through JobcentrePlus are accessible is “simply unacceptable”, according to a cross-party committee of MPs. In a new report on the […]
Buckingham Palace has refused to publish figures showing how many of its employees are disabled people, despite publishing similar figures for minority ethnic staff. The royal household’s annual report and accounts, published last week, show that 8.5 per cent of its […]
The minister for disabled people has provided some of the first details of how the government plans to reform the social security system for disabled people through its long-delayed health and disability green paper. Justin Tomlinson told MPs on the work […]
Disabled people are facing significant barriers to building careers in the music industry, according to new user-led research. The research* by Attitude is Everything found that nearly four-fifths (79 per cent) of Deaf and disabled people working in the music and […]
The government’s record on disability employment has come under fierce attack during a parliamentary meeting. MPs and peers on the all-party parliamentary group on disability heard from experts from business, academia and the disability movement on Tuesday on the employment proposals […]
A disabled-run social enterprise will be able to set up a national support service to help disabled people find jobs in the economic crisis caused by the pandemic, after fighting off competition to secure £125,000 in funding. Evenbreak is one of […]
Powerful criticism of the government’s performance on COVID-19 and disability employment by Labour’s shadow minister for disabled people was significantly watered down by her own party, Disability News Service (DNS) can reveal. An email mistakenly sent to DNS yesterday (Wednesday) by […]
The government’s repeated claims that its policies have transformed the employment prospects of disabled people over the last seven years have been challenged by academics who suggest their figures are simply the result of a statistical quirk. Disabled activists have been […]