In the Newcastle-under-Lyme constituency, we 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 such as Employment Advice in Talking Therapies programme, which combines the expertise of therapists and employment advisers to give those with mental health conditions the support they need to find work tailored to them.

Measures also include support from Work Coaches and Disability Employment Advisers (DEAs) in the Newcastle-under-Lyme Jobcentre and Access to Work grants. Our Work Coaches in the constituency collaborate closely with DEAs to ensure a coordinated package of support. Together, they connect customers with suitable opportunities, including work experience placements and vacancies with Disability Confident employers. For those who are job-ready, we offer a weekly Job Club within the Jobcentre, supported by our Health Team, DEAs, and local partners such as Support Staffordshire.

Our national, voluntary Supported Employment Programme, Connect to Work, is supporting disabled people, people with health conditions and people with complex barriers to employment across England and Wales. In the Newcastle-under-Lyme constituency, Connect to Work is being delivered through Staffordshire County Council, working in partnership with Stoke on Trent City Council. Staffordshire County Council has been awarded grant funding of up to £19 million, to support around 5,250 people by March 2030. You can direct interested constituents to the local Connect to Work website here: Connect to Work.

We know that work can support health and wellbeing, so we want everyone who can to get work and get on in work as far as possible. 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 that join up employment and health systems such as WorkWell and Employment Advisers in Talking Therapies. Existing measures include support from Work Coaches and Disability Employment Advisers in Jobcentres and Access to Work grants and Connect to Work. We continue to oversee the Disability Confident Scheme.

In our Pathways to Work Green Paper we set out our Pathways to Work offer, backed by £1 billion a year of new funding by the end of the decade. We are building towards a guaranteed offer of personalised work, health and skills support for all disabled people and people with health conditions on out of work benefits, building on existing initiatives.

In November 2025, Sir Charlie Mayfield published the Keep Britain Working Review, setting out recommendations to help employers create healthier, more inclusive workplaces and to reshape how Government works with employers to improve work and health outcomes. We are now working with volunteer employers, providers and regions through a Vanguard Phase to test and refine approaches that support disabled people and people with long‑term physical and mental health conditions to thrive in work. This includes developing effective stay-in-work and return-to-work practices, strengthening prevention, and building the evidence needed to spread good practice so that disabled workers and workers with long-term health conditions receive the support they need to remain in employment successfully.

The 10 Year Health Plan builds on existing work to better integrate health with employment support and incentivise greater cross-system collaboration, recognising good work is good for health. The Plan states our intention to break down barriers to opportunity by delivering the holistic support that people need to access and thrive in employment by ensuring a better health service for everyone, regardless of condition or service area. It outlines how the neighbourhood health service will join up support from across the work, health and skills systems to help address the multiple complex challenges that often stop people finding and staying in work.

The Get Britain Working White Paper, published in autumn 2024, and Pathways to Work Green Paper, published in spring 2025, set out the Government’s plan on skills and employment support, including for those in receipt of sickness benefits.

Our Pathways to Work guaranteed offer of personalised employment, health and skills support for all disabled people and those with health conditions on out of work benefits is backed by £1 billion a year of new funding by the end of the decade. Once fully rolled out, we anticipate this will include a support conversation to identify next steps, one-to-one caseworker support, periodic engagement and an offer of specialist long-term work health and skills support.

In addition, Connect to Work is being made available across all of England and Wales. This is a voluntary, locally commissioned, Supported Employment programme for individuals that are disabled, have a health condition or experiencing non-health related barriers to work to find and sustain employment. There is no benefit-related requirement for this programme. Lincolnshire County Council is the Lead Authority for the Lincolnshire Delivery Area and we expect them to open their service in spring 2026.

WorkWell is a health and employment support service providing integrated holistic early help for health-related barriers to work. WorkWell is delivered in partnership with health systems and has so far supported approximately 25,000 disabled people and people with health conditions to stay in and re-enter work. Following the success of the pilot, it will continue to be delivered in existing sites and expand across all of England including the Lincolnshire ICB. The expansion is backed by up to £259 million investment over three years.

Through the Adult Skills Fund in the 2025/26 academic year, we are spending £1.4 billion for eligible adults aged 19 and above from pre-entry to level 3, to support adults to gain the skills they need for work, an apprenticeship or further learning. In South Holland and the Deepings, the Adult Skills Fund fully funds learners who are unemployed or earn less than £25,750 (annual gross salary).

Entitlement to health and disability benefits is determined by the eligibility criteria for the respective benefits. Each case is assessed individually based on the evidence provided.

We have also launched the Timms Review to ensure Personal Independence Payment (PIP) is fair and fit for the future. It is the ever first full review of PIP and will include consideration of whether the assessment effectively captures the impact of long-term health conditions and disability in the modern world.

I refer the Hon. member to the answer I gave on 2 December to PQ 93871.

The Get Britain Working White Paper, published in autumn 2024, and Pathways to Work Green Paper, published in spring 2025, set out the Government’s plan on skills and employment support, including for those in receipt of sickness benefits.

Our Pathways to Work Guarantee offer of personalised employment, health and skills support for all disabled people and those with health conditions on out of work benefits is backed by £1 billion a year of new funding by the end of the decade. Once fully rolled out, we anticipate this will include a support conversation to identify next steps, one-to-one caseworker support, periodic engagement and an offer of specialist long-term work health and skills support.

In addition, Connect to Work is being made available across all of England and Wales. This is a voluntary, locally commissioned, Supported Employment programme for individuals that are disabled, have a health condition or experiencing non-health related barriers to work to find and sustain employment. There is no benefit-related requirement for this programme. DWP has agreed up to £7.2m in funding to Buckinghamshire County Council to deliver Connect to Work support across Buckinghamshire to around 1650 people by the end of the decade. We understand that Buckinghamshire County Council expect to open their service to participants at the start of April 2026.

Through the Adult Skills Fund in the 2025/26 academic year, we are spending £1.4 billion for eligible adults aged 19 and above from pre-entry to level 3, to support adults to gain the skills they need for work, an apprenticeship or further learning. In Buckingham and Bletchley, the Adult Skills Fund fully funds learners who are unemployed or earn less than £25,750 (annual gross salary).

We have a team of colleagues that offer tailored support to people with health conditions in Newcastle-under-Lyme and the Shires District through our Pathways to Work programme. We set out our plan for the “Pathways to Work Guarantee” in our Pathways to Work Green Paper. Our dedicated team is committed to understanding and addressing the unique needs of these individuals. They spend extra time listening to their concerns, triaging, and directing them to the appropriate support for their complex needs, skills and employability.

Our efforts are closely linked with partners, including the Local Authority-led Supported Employment programme Connect to Work, and we collaborate extensively with broader health, employment and skills support networks. This integrated approach ensures that we provide holistic and effective support to those who need it most.

Newcastle-under-Lyme is part of the Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent Connect to Work delivery area. Staffordshire County Council is the Lead Authority for Connect to Work in the region. We have agreed their delivery plan and have approved a £19 million grant to fund this programme for approximately 5,250 participants by the end of the decade. The programme has recently opened, and local constituents can find out more through the Staffordshire Jobs and Careers page: www.staffsjobscareers.com/.

The “Pathways to Work Guarantee” is backed by £1 billion a year of new, additional funding by the end of the decade. We anticipate the guarantee, once fully rolled out, will include: a support conversation to identify next steps, one-to-one caseworker support, periodic engagement, and an offer of specialist long-term work health and skills support.

The NHS 10 Year Health Plan, published in July, stated the Government’s intention to break down barriers to opportunity by delivering the holistic support that people need to access and thrive in employment by ensuring a better health service for everyone, regardless of condition or service area. It outlines how the neighbourhood health service will join up support from across the work, health and skills systems to help address the multiple complex challenges that often stop people finding and staying in work.

We are taking steps to support people into work including for disabled people and people with health conditions on out of work benefits. In our Pathways to Work Green Paper we set out our plan for the “Pathways to Work Guarantee” and we are building towards our guaranteed offer of personalised work, health and skills support for disabled people and those with health conditions on out of work benefits. The guarantee is backed by £1 billion a year of new, additional funding by the end of the decade.

We anticipate the guarantee, once fully rolled out, will include: a support conversation to identify next steps, one-to-one caseworker support, periodic engagement - and an offer of specialist long-term work health and skills support.

We are already making progress and have deployed over 1000 Pathways to Work Advisors in Jobcentres across England, Scotland and Wales who are helping disabled people and people with health conditions towards and into work. A key focus of the Pathways to Work advisers is offering voluntary support to Universal Credit claimants with a Limited Capability for Work and Work-Related Activity (LCWRA) element. The support aims to help customers identify and overcome obstacles which may stop them from moving towards or into work and for those who are ready to access employment and wider skills support, and our employment programmes earlier.

Alongside this, our Supported Employment programme Connect to Work is rolling out across all of England and Wales throughout 2025 and early 2026 to help disabled people, people with health conditions and individuals with complex barriers to employment to find work and sustain work. This complements support delivered through the health and care system, including Employment Advice in Talking Therapies, which gives employment support for people being treated for mental health conditions, and WorkWell which is being trialled in 15 areas across England to deliver integrated work and health support.

More generally, DWP helps people build the skills they need to get a job and move forward in their careers. Work Coaches offer a wide range of support, including help with job searching and referrals to training opportunities. These can include apprenticeships, short skills courses, training in English, maths, and digital skills, support for learning English as a second language (ESOL), careers advice, and Sector-based Work Academy Programmes (SWAPs).

Long-term sickness continues to be the most common reason for economic inactivity among the working age population. 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. Backed by £240 million investment, the Get Britain Working White Paper launched last November will drive forward approaches to tackling economic inactivity and work toward the long-term ambition of an 80% employment rate.

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 and Access to Work grants, as well as joining up health and employment support around the individual through Employment Advisors in NHS Talking Therapies, Individual Placement and Support in Primary Care, WorkWell and NHS Health and Growth Accelerators.

It is also recognised that employers play an important role in addressing health and disability. To build on this, the DWP and DHSC Joint Work & Health Directorate (JWHD) is facilitating “Keep Britain Working”, an independent review of the role of UK employers in reducing health-related inactivity and to promote healthy and inclusive workplaces. The lead reviewer, Sir Charlie Mayfield, is expected to bring forward recommendations in Autumn 2025.

Additionally, the JWHD has developed a digital information service for employers, continues to oversee the Disability Confident Scheme, and continues to increase access to Occupational Health.

In our March Green Paper, we set out our Pathways to Work Guarantee. We will build towards a guaranteed offer of personalised work, health and skills support for all disabled people and those with health conditions on out of work benefits.

The NHS 10 Year Health Plan, published in July, stated our intention to break down barriers to opportunity by delivering the holistic support that people need to access and thrive in employment by ensuring a better health service for everyone, regardless of condition or service area. It outlines how the neighbourhood health service will join up support from across the work, health and skills systems to help address the multiple complex challenges that often stop people finding and staying in work.

We already undertake a number of face-to-face health assessments for people applying for sickness benefits. However, as announced in Pathways to Work Green Paper, we are planning to increase the number of face-to-face assessments. We will preserve alternative health assessment channels to meet the specific needs of people who require a different channel, for example as a reasonable adjustment.

To ask His Majesty’s Government whether they plan to reinstate in-person interviews for all applicants for sickness benefits.

My Lords, face-to-face assessments were stopped during Covid, as they clearly could not happen on public health grounds. They resumed in mid-2021, but the fact is that the levels have been left far too low. In the middle of last year, just 7% of assessments were face to face across PIP and the work capability assessment. That said, the assumption that the benefit bill will automatically come down if we change everything to face to face is not straightforward, based on the available evidence. I assure the noble Lord that, as he may know, in our Pathways to Work Green Paper, we committed to doing more face-to-face assessments while preserving alternative health assessment channels, because those who will not be able to do that will need a reasonable adjustment and another alternative. We will increase them as fast as possible and do it in the right way in order to make sure that we can recruit enough people and provide a good service. I am pleased to tell the noble Lord that that is our plan.

I thank the Minister for her Answer. This problem goes back a long time. I saw in the Times on 28 June that assessors in the department are apparently paid a bonus on interview numbers—the higher the number, the higher their bonus. This may or may not be reasonable but, at a time when there is a need to reduce expenditure on benefits and we know that in-person interviews tend to lead to a stricter application of the rules, would the Minister consider reintroducing in-person interviews before new benefits are awarded or existing benefits are confirmed?

My Lords, most assessments are done in assessment centres. Many of those are conducted by providers because we have to have health providers to do them. My noble friend may be glad to know that we have specific, clear rules about what an assessment centre must do. For example, it must be appropriately accessible and reasonably easy to get to—so that someone can get from their transport to the front door—as well as DDA-compliant in terms of ramps and areas of ground-floor space, et cetera. There are specific assessment centres designed to be suited to this purpose.

My Lords, I am all in favour of face-to-face interviews, but they would be made a lot easier if we had not seen the closure of many jobcentres prior to 2024. In the last round of closures around eight years ago, 11 Jobcentre Plus offices were shut in London alone. Many of those closures contravened the Government’s own guidelines, and it was purely a cost-cutting exercise.

There are various ways in which you can do an assessment. The starting point is that assessments can be done on paper where there is clear medical evidence of somebody’s diagnosis and functional needs. Some of them are really straightforward. It may be for somebody who is nearer the end of life or somebody who, for example, engages a lot with a physiotherapist or a rehab team after a stroke or a brain injury, where there is clear evidence and a clear track record. There are other people where there is not any evidence for a range of reasons. In those cases, there would need to be an assessment. It can be done on the telephone, by video or face to face.

There are different reasons for different people. Some people are unable to get to a face-to-face assessment. They may be bed-bound or may suffer from a severe mental health affliction, but they can perhaps do a video interview. Some people prefer face-to-face interviews; they feel that they will be seen better and understood better. Our aim is to try to keep all channels available and to get the right balance, both to make sure that we get the right conditions for the claimant and the right decision for the Government and to make sure that we have all the people we need there in order to try to move as fast as possible on assessments.

My Lords, can the Minister expand on the purpose of a face-to-face assessment? Is this to help people get the sickness benefit they want and need, or is it in some way to

make it more difficult for people to get sickness benefit? What is the overriding reason for such attendance at an interview?

My Lords, I am sure that, if the noble Lord tracked those statistics back, he would see when the numbers began to rise—it was not under this Government. I know that he is making not a partisan point but a broader point; I fully accept that.

The good news is that, as the noble Lord may have noticed from the last labour market statistics, for the first time ever, we have managed to stop that growth in economic inactivity related to sickness and disability. We have a long way to go to bring that down. He is absolutely right to raise this as a major issue. We have seen such a significant rise in the number of people claiming sickness and disability benefits. Broadly speaking, one in 10 of our working-age population is claiming a sickness or disability benefit, and our population is ageing.

In terms of what we will do, it is partly about incentives. The noble Lord will be aware that we recently changed the incentives in the then Universal Credit Bill. For example, we halved the amount of

money that someone gets on the standard allowance for sickness and disability and increased the standard allowance overall to reduce those incentives. The truth is that there will be some people who just do not want to work. There are an awful lot of other people out there who would love to work but either cannot find the right job or do not have the confidence, skills, opportunity or support. Our job is to tackle this on all of those fronts. We are trying to transform the whole of employment support so that it is tailored to give people the chance to get into a job, to move up in a job and to get the skills they need, which will serve them and the British economy.

My Lords, how does the Minister explain some of the following statistics, all of which come from government sources? The number of people expected to go on to long-term benefits will rise from 3.3 million to 4.1 million over this Parliament. Some 3,000 people are signing on every day. In our second city, Birmingham, one in four working-age adults is not working. That is higher than it was during the great depression. In those days, it was considered the greatest problem in politics; now, we just shrug. I think it was Charlie Munger who said, “Show me the incentive and I’ll show you the outcome”. What does the Minister plan to do to switch the incentives for some of the people who are choosing to go on to benefits when they are capable of working?