Committee publication · Report · 21 May 2026 · HC 1227
Large print - 7th Report - Employment support for disabled people: Disability at Work
Summary
The Work and Pensions Committee reports on employment support for disabled people, focusing on workplace barriers. The disability employment gap stands at 29.7 percentage points (52.8% vs 82.5% employment rates). The committee identifies two main obstacles: employer reluctance to make reasonable adjustments and inaccessible workplaces. It recommends statutory response deadlines for adjustment requests, mandatory disability workforce reporting for large employers, and clearer guidance on workplace accessibility and support.
Key findings
- The disability employment gap has flatlined at 29.7 percentage points since the pandemic; disabled people leave work at more than twice the rate of non-disabled people.
- Employers frequently fail to respond to reasonable adjustment requests, with a TUC 2024 survey finding 82% of disabled people waited 4+ months to over a year for implementation; 11% of requests in local government received no response.
- Inaccessible recruitment processes, physical environments, absence management policies, and return-to-office mandates systematically exclude disabled workers; remote working declined from 8.7% of job advertisements (2020-21) to 4.3% (2024-25).
- Employers and line managers lack awareness of legal duties and misconceive 'reasonable adjustments' as expensive; there is no single authoritative guidance source, leaving employers confused.
- Disabled people themselves often lack knowledge of adjustment rights or fear discrimination; the TUC found roughly one-third of disabled workers had not requested adjustments despite benefiting, due to discomfort (17%), unawareness (16%), or assumption of refusal (14%).
Recommendations
- Require employers to respond to reasonable adjustment requests within two weeks and, if refused, provide written grounds for refusal.
- Require employers to provide all new employees with information about disabled workers' rights, sources of support, and advocacy resources.
- Commission research into the impact of flexible working (especially remote work) on productivity and the costs/benefits of paid time off for disability-related medical appointments.
- Legislate to require large employers to report on the number of disabled people they employ (mandatory disability workforce reporting).
- Assess how consistently employers define disability and provide further guidance if necessary.
- Clarify the nature and details of Workplace Health Provision (WHP) proposals by end of year.
- Make workplace accessibility an explicit aim of the Healthy Working Lifecycle (HWL) and WHP, not relying solely on reformed Disability Confident scheme.
- Explore alternative WHP funding models for small employers and undertake full cost-benefit assessment of WHP compared to other disability employment interventions.
- Establish a single authoritative source of context-specific advice for employers on reasonable adjustments and workplace health support.
Tone
CriticalTopics
disability-employmentworkplace-rightsreasonable-adjustmentsaccessibilityemployment-support
Key actors
Debbie Abrahams (Chair, Work and Pensions Committee), Sir Charlie Mayfield (Keep Britain Working Review author), Michelle De Oude (Co-Chair, Greater Manchester Disabled People's Panel), Business Disability Forum, Scope, TUC, Dame Diana Johnson (Minister for Employment)
Notable line
“… for too many disabled people the workplace is a hostile environment. If the government is serious about reducing disability-related economic inactivity …”
Key Quotes
“… for too many disabled people the workplace is a hostile environment. If the government is serious about reducing disability-related economic inactivity, it must urgently address two of the main workplace barriers: the reluctance of employers to make reasonable adjustments, and the inaccessibility of workplaces …”
“It is the disability-related situations that are unplanned and where an employee may have to say to their manager, "I can't do X today," and the manager immediately responds and accommodates, which is what flexibility for many disabled employees really is.”
“… you could "paper the walls of Westminster with the generic guidance that is available to employers". She called instead for a support service that could provide context-specific advice to employers when they needed it.”
“… disability employment gap (DEG), which has flatlined since the pandemic. The DEG is stark evidence of the barriers that still face disabled people who want to work.”
“82% of disabled people who made a request had had to wait between four months and over a year for the adjustment to be implemented.”
“… the problem is not only that employers are rejecting people's requests for reasonable adjustments; in many cases, they are either failing to respond at all, or, having agreed to make them, taking far too long to implement them.”
“… disabled people, though more reliant on flexible working, tend to have less access to it than non-disabled employees. 25 This might be partly because they are more likely to be in lower-skilled and less well-paid work and so to lack the leverage needed to agree flexibility.”
Source · parliament.uk record ↗