The Bishop of Leicester, Martyn Snow, has been involved in the House of Lords for nearly 18 months and he recently asked two separate questions about ‘Employment: Disability’. The first was here and the second here which are both on 15 April this year shown below. So far there have been people who did not like these second question!. The person who responded was Labour Baroness Sherlock, Maeve Sherlock who was also involved as a Durham Church person in the past.

Interestingly the Bishop of Leicester did have a contribution for two months ago which was included in the Spring Statement which was published on the 27th March. At the beginning of January he contributed to the Benefit: Eligibility. It was interested to see that Maeve was at St Nicholas Church, Durham from 2018-2022 and she was a priest at Durham Cathedral in June 2019.

The Bishop of Leicester: To ask His Majesty’s Government what steps they will take to evaluate the impact of disability benefits reform on the employment rate of people with disabilities.

Baroness Sherlock: The Office of Budget Responsibility has committed to produce an assessment of the labour market impacts of the proposals in the Pathways to Work Green Paper at the time of the autumn budget.

Information on the impacts of the Pathways to Work Green Paper will be published in due course, and some information was published alongside the Spring Statement. These publications can be found in ‘Pathways to Work: Reforming Benefits and Support to Get Britain Working Green Paper’.

A programme of analysis to support development and evaluation of the proposals in the Green Paper will be developed in the coming months.

The Bishop of Leicester: To ask His Majesty’s Government what analyses they carried out to suggest that disability benefit reforms will increase the employment rate of people with disabilities.

Baroness Sherlock: The Pathways to Work Green Paper sets out our plans for reform to stop people from falling into inactivity, restore trust and fairness in the system and protect disabled people.

The disability employment rate is affected by external factors such as the composition of the underlying disabled population and overall labour market performance, as well as DWP activity. The Office of Budget Responsibility has committed to produce an assessment of the labour market impacts of the proposals in the Pathways to Work Green Paper at the time of the autumn budget.

Information on the impacts of the Pathways to Work Green Paper will be published in due course, and some information was published alongside the Spring Statement. These publications can be found in ‘Pathways to Work: Reforming Benefits and Support to Get Britain Working Green Paper’.

A further programme of analysis to support development of the proposals in the Green Paper will be developed and undertaken in the coming months.