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Written question asked by John Milne (Liberal Democrat) on Tuesday, 14 July 2026, in the House of Commons. It was due for an answer on Thursday, 16 July 2026. It was answered by Torsten Bell (Labour) on Tuesday, 21 July 2026 on behalf of the Treasury.

Access to Work Programme: Finance

Question

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, whether she has made an assessment of the potential merits of classifying Access to Work expenditure as Annually Managed Expenditure to help ensure the scheme can respond to demand from new and sustained employment of disabled people.

Answer

Access to Work is an important programme that supports many people to start and stay in work. We are committed to ensuring it can respond to demand. That is why we announced in May that we would recruit and train 480 additional staff to speed up decisions and tackle the existing backlog by September 2027. That is a 72.5% increase to the existing 658 staff already working on Access to Work.

Access to Work is funded within DWP’s Departmental Expenditure Limit (DEL) to support effective management of expenditure. Annually Managed Expenditure (AME) is generally reserved for spending that is particularly volatile or cannot reasonably be managed within departmental DEL budgets.

Secondary information

Type
Written question
Reference
18934
Session
2026-27
Transferred
Yes
Subjects
Finance Access to work programme
Link
View this Written question on www.parliament.uk