Bob Niven, Chief Executive of the Disability Rights Commission said of John Hutton’s appointment:

“John Hutton has an historic opportunity to make a real impact on the lives of disabled people.

“He can achieve this by getting the balance right between the responsibilities of disabled people to find work and employers to keep them and introducing a flexible system which doesn’t punish, but puts the emphasis on high quality support - such as rolling out nationally the successful Pathways to Work scheme.

“Then he will liberate the one million disabled people who want  work from a system which writes them off rather than invests in them.”