As part of a New Year fact-finding mission, Britain’s minister for work and pensions made a tour of a West Midlands region where British Bangladeshi women are being offered support to improve their employment opportunities.

Amber Rudd visited Yardley in east Birmingham on Friday to meet some of these women from the local Bangladeshi community using the government's Jobcentre Plus outlets to get back into work through special mentoring programmes being run by work coaches in the area.

The minister said: “It provides special training to British Pakistani and British Bangladeshi women to help get them into work for the first time.

“So when I talk about making our welfare system work better and fairer for women, the West Midlands is a regional leader in this respect and these are exactly the type of schemes I want to see more of.”

Rudd's tour is part of a wider Universal Credit fact-finding mission to review how welfare reforms are impacting people across the country.

UK government figures show that employment rates among British Bangladeshi and British Pakistani women are among the lowest in the country. Therefore, Jobcentre staff in Yardley launched a special mentoring pilot in September last year for women from these communities, identifying the barriers they faced to entering work. Working with local MP Jess Phillips to help women into the programme, they offered tailored support such as training, opportunities to gain qualifications and confidence-building exercises. Many of the women have since found jobs and the programme is expected to be rolled out even further this year.

“Universal Credit can be a huge force for good and has produced positive results here in the West Midlands,” Rudd said.

Since 2010 the region has seen 276,000 more people enter work – the vast majority in higher-skilled roles. As many as 128,000 more jobs were created in IT and business services for example, the government said.

Since taking over the Department for Work and Pensions in November 2018, Rudd has been reviewing Universal Credit – the UK government’s key welfare reform which replaces six different benefit payments with one single payment.

While the new system has been shown to get people into work more quickly and stay in work longer, the minister says she is committed to ensuring it works for all claimants by getting support to people faster.