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Employment: Migraines

Asked by Johanna BaxterLabourDepartment for Work and PensionsTabled Answered 28 April 2026UIN 128343

The question

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether migraine has been considered as part of cross government efforts to improve workforce participation among people with long term conditions.

Answered by Sir Stephen Timms

Good work is good for health, so we want everyone to get work and get on in work when they can including people who suffer from migraine. 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.

Disabled people are a diverse group so access to the right work and health support for every individual 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. Existing measures include support from Work Coaches and Disability Employment Advisers (DEAs) in Jobcentres and Access to Work grants. Our 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.

DEAs in the Jobcentres supporting the constituency hold in-depth Work Ability conversations that focus on strengths, suitable work options, workplace adjustments and confidence building.

Our Pathways to Work support offer will ensure a coherent and navigable offer of support, building on and bringing together initiatives such as Connect to Work, WorkWell and local Trailblazers. 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. We anticipate that the Pathways to Work offer, once fully rolled out, will include a support conversation to identify support needs and signpost to services, one-to-one caseworker support, periodic engagement and an offer of specialist long-term work, health and skills support.

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