UK National Public Policy Initiatives and Regulations Affecting Disabled People's Labour Market Participation

This paper presents the contribution of the Institute for Employment Studies (IES) to the second stage of a research project on disability and employment, supported by the Norwegian Work Research Institute, with funding from the Norwegian Research Council.

The research involves a comparison of three contrasting sectors (construction, ICT and health) in three countries (Norway, the UK and the Netherlands).

In-depth studies of disabled people's employment in the three sectors in the UK have been conducted by colleagues (Linda Clarke and Elisabeth Michielsens) at Westminster University.

The IES contribution has been a statistical overview of disabled people's employment and labour market participation in the UK (work package 1), combined with the present paper (work package 2), which aims to provide an overview of the UK national public policy initiatives and regulations which affect the participation of disabled people in the labour market (building on the earlier work of Thornton and Lunt 1997).

The first work package, The Labour Market Participation and Employment of Disabled People in the UK, has been published separately.