Minister suggests cuts are coming to Access to Work scheme

Ministers appear to be set to announce cuts to a flagship disability employment scheme, just as the government is trying to push more disabled people towards the workplace.

Sir Stephen Timms, the social security and disability minister, told MPs yesterday that the Access to Work scheme was “unlikely to be sustainable in the long term” and needed to be “better and more effective”.

He pointed to the “very high level of demand” and said ministers were looking at “whether actually employers could do more” through some “fairly significant reforms to Access to Work”.

His comments to the Commons work and pensions committee yesterday (Wednesday) suggest that ministers will take measures to cut the number of disabled people eligible for the scheme, and increase obligations on employers to make more adjustments themselves in the workplace.

Only last month, the prime minister, Sir Keir Starmer, said the government’s approach to social security would “ensure that work is accessible to as many people as possible”, including disabled people.

Sir Stephen’s comments follow years of rising numbers of recipients of Access to Work support – apart from the first year of the pandemic – and mounting backlogs and delays.

Employment minister Alison McGovern said last year that there were about 55,000 Access to Work applications yet to be dealt with on 7 October, while DWP figures later that month showed that 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 had been allowed for.

It also increased by 34 per cent in the last year, from £191 million in 2022-23 to £255 million in 2023-24, while the number of disabled people receiving Access to Work support increased from 34,800 in 2022-23 to 49,920 in 2023-24, a rise of 43 per cent.

Sir Stephen had been responding to concerns raised by disabled Liberal Democrat MP Steve Darling.

Darling said he was concerned that the backlogs in the system could be “exacerbating vulnerabilities”, and he pointed to two disabled women who had reported serious delays.

One of them, a constituent, was told she would need to wait six months for Access to Work support, while another disabled woman was facing the possibility of a job offer being withdrawn because “it had gone on for months with Access to Work failing to process the claim”.

He said: “We want to help people back into work and yet the department is part of the problem.”

Darling asked if DWP had set a 28-day target for dealing with new claims and processing payments on existing claims because disabled people can find themselves “thousands of pounds in arrears”, which he said was “impoverishing” many people.

Sir Stephen told him: “The problem is that there has been an enormous surge in applications for Access to Work.

“A number of us will remember that we used to talk about Access to Work as a kind of ‘best kept secret’ because nobody really knew about it and employers didn’t know about it.

“Well, that seems to have changed in the last two years and there’s been an enormous surge in applications for Access to Work and the department has done its level best to keep up.”

He said DWP had allocated more staff to deal with applications, but the system was still “not in good shape at the moment”.

He said: “So I think what we’re going to need to do and we will touch on this in the green paper [due to be published next month] as well, I think we’re going to need to make some fairly significant reforms to Access to Work, look again at the whole approach we’re taking, look at whether actually employers could do more. 

“There are legal obligations on employers to make reasonable adjustments. I’m wondering whether there’s more we can do there.” 

He pointed to the government’s Keep Britain Working review, which is being led by Sir Charlie Mayfield, former chair of John Lewis Partnership, and will focus on understanding what employers and government can do “to increase the recruitment, retention and return to work of disabled people and people with long-term health conditions”.

Sir Stephen said the review would look “specifically at what employers should be doing and can do to improve opportunities for disabled people, people with health impairments, to get into work and stay in work and do well in work. 

“So I think there’s quite a big issue here and I think the current style of Access to Work is unlikely to be sustainable in the long term. 

“We’ve got to come up with something better and more effective given the current very high level of demand.”