New DWP plans to help people with a disability or health condition find and stay in work
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has set out plans to help disabled people and those with health conditions on Universal Credit find and stay in work. Proposed changes to Personal Independence Payment (PIP) have been put on hold until the outcome of a review of the assessment process, which will be co-produced by Minister for Social Security and Disability Sir Stephen Timms and disability groups.
This is due to be completed by next Autumn, however, changes to Universal Credit are already underway. Minister for Employment, Alison McGovern, set out the plans in a written response to Independent MP Andrew Gwynne, who asked 'what steps are being taken to support disabled people to find work'.
Ms McGovern said: 'Good work is generally good for health and wellbeing, so we want everyone to get work and get on in work, whoever they are and wherever they live.'
The DWP Minister continued: 'Disabled people and people with health conditions are a diverse group so access to the right work and health support, in the right place, at the right time, is key. We therefore have a range of specialist initiatives to support individuals to stay in work and get back into work, including those that join up employment and health systems.'
Measures include:
Support from Work Coaches and Disability Employment Advisers in Jobcentres
Access to Work grants
Joining up health and employment support around the individual through Employment Advisors in NHS Talking Therapies
Individual Placement and Support in Primary Care
Ms McGovern said: 'We are delivering the biggest investment in support for disabled people and people with health conditions in at least a generation.
'We announced in the recent Pathways to Work Green Paper that we would establish a new guarantee of support for all disabled people and people with health conditions claiming out of work benefits who want help to get into or return to work.
'This is backed up by £2.2 billion over four years, including £200m in 2026/27 when our benefit changes begin to take effect and as announced in the statement on Welfare Reform (June 30) by the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, an additional £300 million over the next three years.
'This brings our total investment in employment support for disabled people and those with health conditions to £3.8 billion over this Parliament.'
She added: 'Backed by £240m investment, the Get Britain Working White Paper launched in November 2024, will drive forward approaches to tackling economic inactivity and work toward the long-term ambition of an 80 per cent employment rate.'
To increase employment opportunities and support for disabled people and those with health conditions, the Secretaries of State for Work and Pensions and Business and Trade asked Sir Charlie Mayfield to lead an independent review to look at how best to support and enable employers to recruit and retain more people with health conditions and disabilities, promote healthy workplaces, and support more people to stay in or return to work from periods of sickness absence.
Sir Charlie will deliver his final report in the Autumn.
Ms McGovern said: 'Employers are crucial in enhancing employment opportunities and supporting disabled people and those with health conditions to thrive in the workforce.
'Our support to employers includes increasing access to Occupational Health, a digital information service for employers and the Disability Confident scheme.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
‘We promised change but people aren't feeling it yet': Labour rues poor first year
In a stiflingly hot room at a health centre in East London, as he announced the government's 10-year plan for the NHS on Thursday, Keir Starmer was confronted with a brutal assessment of his first year in power. 'You've U-turned on your reforms, your MPs don't trust you, and markets worry that you've lost resolve on fiscal discipline. It's the epitome, isn't it, of sticking-plaster politics and chaos that you promised voters you would end?' a television journalist asked. Initially, Starmer avoided answering the question, but he eventually addressed the fall-out from his government's chaotic handling of its welfare bill. 'I'm not going to pretend the last few days have been easy: they've been tough,' he admitted. 'I'm the sort of person that then wants to reflect on that, to ask myself what do we need to do to ensure we don't get into a situation like that again, and we will go through that process. But I also know … that we will come through it stronger.' The jubilant crowds of flag-waving supporters that greeted the prime minister as he arrived in Downing Street on 5 July 2024, daring to hope for a brighter future after 14 long years under the Conservative party, felt like a very long time ago. Senior members of Starmer's inner circle now quite openly admit that their first year in power has not gone as expected. 'I always knew it would be hard, but I think I was probably quite naive about just how hard it would be,' one said. 'We had a difficult fiscal inheritance and there was this sense in the country that everything was broken. We promised change but people aren't feeling it yet. And they're not in any mood to give us the benefit of the doubt,' a cabinet minister added. Despite all the political misjudgements such as early gloominess over the economy when the country needed to feel hope, unforced errors over issues such as the winter fuel cuts and freebies and a party base unsettled over cuts to international aid and the welfare system, it is too simplistic to suggest that it has all been bad. Decisions to raise the national minimum wage, improve workers' rights, build more affordable housing and cut NHS waiting lists have all been popular. Even more starkly 'Labour' policies such as nationalising the railways, introducing VAT on private schools fees and threatening water firm bosses over sewage have been well received. But the government, slumping behind Nigel Farage's Reform UK in the polls and with Starmer's own personal approval ratings tanking, hasn't got the credit. Labour strategists keep themselves awake at night trying to work out where it went wrong, and what they can do about it. So for all the reflection on the year gone by, the focus has now inevitably turned to what comes next. 'We're only 12 months in: if we can learn not just from what we've got right but also from what has not, then we still have time to get it right,' one No 10 source said. Starmer talks of a decade of national renewal, his assumption being that Labour will win a second term, and that he'll still be at the helm of the party. But not everybody shares that view. Even though the odds are still – despite everything – of Labour being the largest party. Some ministers believe they should focus on the first five years instead, as a way of injecting some urgency. Backbench MPs, many with small majorities and fearful of what the next election could bring, are pushing to make the most of what time they have. They may recoil when asked about a reset, but No 10 political strategists do acknowledge there will be a 'next phase' that allows Starmer to move on from his difficult first year and get the government on to a steadier footing. They believe the prime minister needs a big unifying message that allows him to make ideological arguments – akin to the way Tony Blair used 'modernise'. The theme of the strategy will be 'fairness' – a word that peppered Starmer's speech on the NHS on Thursday, and which they hope they can use in a provocative way and use to pick political battles. 'It's an invitation to make proper arguments,' an aide said. In his autumn conference speech and the run-up to the crucial political test of next May's local elections, Starmer will be able to argue there has been an imbalance in the economy or in previous political priorities that he will now set about to change. At the heart of it, Labour wants to speak to a pervasive feeling in the country that no matter how hard you work, nothing improves, and life gets tougher and tougher. Fairness, they argue, provides a platform to argue that big decisions – choices such as VAT on private schools or workers' rights reforms – were the right things to do. But also small ones such as investments in crumbling local heritage, which has become such a symbol of decline. It was an argument, strategists believe, that could have been made much better, to make the case for cuts to winter fuel and the dysfunctional state of the welfare system. Crucially, aides hope the message will resonate right across the Labour coalition, bringing together progressives to the left of the government and the more socially conservative voters who were the focus of the last election. 'Those people are in many ways often similar in circumstances but very different in values,' one senior strategist said. 'We should be a government for all those people.' But there are some senior Labour figures, including some in cabinet and party grandees, who favour a much more explicit progressivism, to shore up Labour's own voters and take on the right when the Reform hordes are at the gates. They believe that this is much closer to Starmer's own politics and would allow him to speak and act more like himself, addressing a view held inside and outside Westminster that he often comes across as inauthentic. 'He's been dressed up in all sorts of different incarnations, as an insurgent disruptor or the hammer of the civil service, which I don't think he's felt comfortable with,' said one ally. 'I think the reason why he went out of his way to express regret over the immigration speech where he talked about an island of strangers was because it just wasn't him.' On the progressive wing of the party, where Labour is losing more votes, there is frustration about what many perceive to be leaning to the right in response to Reform UK. 'It's the wrong approach. We should acknowledge that people really care about small boats, about housing, about the cost of living, but have our own answers to those problems, not try to ape Reform,' said one senior MP. 'Authenticity is a big problem for Keir. It's much better that he goes out and makes a Labour case for what we want to do for the country.' Some in No 10 believe that it would be disastrous to pivot back to the Labour base, comparing it to Ed Miliband's '35%' strategy that aimed to unite progressives but which ultimately cost Labour the 2015 election. While Starmer is generally praised for his role on the international stage, and has strong relationships with his fellow world leaders – including, perhaps counterintuitively, Donald Trump – the same is not true of the domestic sphere. There is a strong desire within No 10 for Starmer to reconnect with voters at home, to spend more time out in the country with ordinary people, on the campaign trail, with businesses, with industry, in hospitals – and with his own MPs. 'We have got to get him off a fucking plane,' one senior aide said. 'It becomes so easy to not think too much about what is going on at home. It has been at the root of a lot of problems.' The party finds itself at a crossroads. Morgan McSweeney, Starmer's fabled chief of staff, told staff as they entered government that they could govern as insurgents and that power would make them more radical. But the pace of change has been frustratingly slow and some aides believe there must be a serious strategic turn to speed it up. Many government figures compare this moment to the turbulent aftermath of the Hartlepool byelection. Starmer tells friends that he's used to people underestimating him, that it happened back then, too, yet he proved his detractors wrong by sticking to his plan. But others are less generous. 'Nobody knows what he's thinking,' said one senior Labour figure. 'He's delegated political decision-making to Morgan. He needs to get more of a grip.' But while advisers, including McSweeney, often get the blame for the government's woes, ultimately the buck stops with the prime minister. Veterans of Labour's last time in office believe that Starmer needs to articulate a more clearly defined purpose. 'Until and unless people know what the point of this government is … then nothing else will follow,' said one. 'What does Keir actually want? What does he stand for? For all the contradictions with Tony and Gordon, you knew they were driven by ideas. It seized them. What does Keir stand for? Whatever it is, we don't know,' said a senior Labour figure. 'It's all been show not tell. He thinks that if the government delivers gradual material change that will be enough. But it's not. It wasn't for Joe Biden. It won't be for Keir Starmer either,' said one minister. Senior party figures worry that Starmer's reputation for being competent, even if that doesn't include political flair, has taken a battering over the past year, and that he needs to turn that round. 'Everybody thought he was going to be a more professional, competent version of the succession of failed Tories that we had before. But instead many people have got the sense that he's a further instalment of them,' one said. Starmer's allies vehemently reject the suggestion that he can't turn things around. 'A big drum roll and clash of cymbals and fireworks wouldn't work. Keir can win a second term, not by dancing to Nigel Farage's tune, but by doing what Labour governments do in his pragmatic, hard-headed way, trying to make this country better. That seems to me a more authentic place for him, a better place for the government.' But not everybody is as optimistic. 'I just don't know whether he'll pull it off,' one senior figure said. 'Keir is a diligent and thorough person who every day jumps out of bed and thinks what he can do for the country. He goes to bed every night dissatisfied that he's not done enough. But somehow in between those two moments something doesn't quite connect.'
Powys County Times
3 hours ago
- Powys County Times
Reeves says welfare fallout ‘damaging' and declines to rule out tax hikes
Rachel Reeves refused to rule out tax rises in the autumn budget, as she admitted the fallout over the Government's welfare Bill had been 'damaging'. The Chancellor warned there would be 'costs to what happened', as she faced questions about how she would cover a shortfall left by the Downing Street climbdown on planned cuts to disability benefits. The Government saw off the threat of a major Commons defeat over the legislation on Tuesday, after shelving plans to restrict eligibility for the personal independence payment (Pip) in the face of a backbench revolt. The original welfare proposals had been part of a package that ministers expected would save up to £5 billion a year, with economists warning that tax rises are now likely to plug a gap left by the concessions to rebels. The fallout threatens to cause lasting damage to morale in Labour ranks, with some MPs calling for a reset in relations between the parliamentary party and the leadership before fractures widen. Images of the Chancellor crying in the Commons on Wednesday also spooked the financial markets and led to questions about her future, though a Treasury spokesman said the tears were the result of a personal matter and Downing Street said she would remain in post. In an interview with the Guardian newspaper, Ms Reeves said she had never considered resigning, adding: 'I didn't work that hard to then quit.' She said she had gone to Prime Minister's Questions because she 'thought that was the right thing to do' but that 'in retrospect, I probably wished I hadn't gone in… (on) a tough day in the office'. Ms Reeves added: 'It's been damaging. 'I'm not going to deny that, but I think where we are now, with a review led by (disability minister) Stephen Timms, who is obviously incredibly respected and has a huge amount of experience, that's the route we're taking now.' Asked whether she would rule out tax rises now, she said to do so would be 'irresponsible' but warned 'there are costs to what happened' with the welfare Bill. Ms Reeves is said to have already told ministers that the decision to water down the welfare package means taxes will rise in the autumn. The Times reported she had warned Cabinet on Tuesday that the increases in her first budget, which included a £24 billion hike to employer national insurance, were 'painful' but 'the low-hanging fruit'.
Daily Mirror
4 hours ago
- Daily Mirror
Doctor's warning to anyone who takes omega-3 pills
Dr Federica Amati has warned about the potential risks of using supplements Dr Federica Amati, chief nutrition scientist at Zoe Health, has issued a warning to people who take omega-3 supplements. Earlier this year, the expert joined Davina McCall on her Begin Again podcast, where she spoke about the pitfalls she sees with people who take vitamins and nutrients in pill form. During the chat, Dr Amati shared her concerns and said: "Taking a supplement is easier than changing your diet... People take supplements and then they think 'okay, I've done my bit'." She added that many continue with unhealthy habits like poor diets, excessive drinking, lack of sleep, and inactive lifestyles. Dr Amati continued: "That supplement, in the grand scheme of things, is going to have a very marginal effect on your health." Her comments come as recent figures show almost half of UK adults regularly take supplements. The expert also recommends getting nutrients from food over pills, highlighting the difference with omega-3 intake. The doctor pointed to a "really good long-running clinical trial" that looked into whether omega-3 supplements deliver on their health promises, such as cutting down risks of cancers, heart disease, and mortality. She concluded: "It doesn't do it. It doesn't do it in the same way that eating fish does." Omega-3 fatty acids have an abundance of benefits, including supporting heart health, improving dry skin and eyes, lowering inflammation in the body. The NHS adds that omega-3s are "also important for women who are pregnant or breastfeeding, because it can help a baby's nervous system to develop". Health chiefs recommend you eat "at least two portions of fish a week, including one of oily fish". If you don't like seafood, other omega-3 sources include flaxseed, chia seeds, walnuts, soybeans, and spinach.
