Jodey Whiting: DWP tells high court her death was isolated case and not sign of systemic failure… despite years of evidence
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has told a court that the death of a disabled woman who took her own life after her benefits were removed was not part of a widespread “systemic” problem, despite years of evidence to the contrary.
A DWP lawyer made the argument in the high court this week, despite nearly a decade of high-profile tragedies, legal cases, campaigns, research, protests, television exposés, parliamentary debates, and reports by MPs and other organisations into deaths linked to the department’s “fitness for work” regime.
The court was being asked to order a second inquest into the death of Jodey Whiting in February 2017.
DWP was told of the court case before Christmas last year, and it was told then of the substantial evidence of the “systemic issue”, but the court heard that it had made no effort to dispute that evidence until this week.
Whiting, a mother-of-nine and grandmother from Stockton-on-Tees, took her own life in February 2017, 15 days after her employment and support allowance (ESA) was mistakenly stopped by DWP for missing a work capability assessment.
But the original inquest into her death lasted just 37 minutes and did not investigate DWP’s role in her death.
This week, the high court has been considering a request by Whiting’s mother, Joy Dove, who attended this week’s hearing in London, for a second inquest into her daughter’s death.
David Griffiths, DWP’s barrister, argued this week that Whiting’s death was the result of errors by individuals within DWP, but was not caused by flaws in the benefits system itself.
He said her death should be placed in the “context” of the “scale and scope” of the millions of claimants who DWP deals with.
But Mrs Justice Farbey, one of three high court judges hearing the case, replied: “There are a large number of claimants. It ought to be basic stuff.
“This is largely stuff that the DWP does every day and it should have systems that work to surveil.”
Griffiths said it was clear that, “on this occasion”, the systems that look out for the “well-being of the recipient” were “not adhered to”.
He said: “People make mistakes. I can understand in this arena and with the tragic events that happened that those failures are highlighted, and rightly so.
“The system has failed but it does not fail a great many times.”
He claimed that if there was a systemic problem then “given the quantity the numbers of people who are dealt with one would see far greater problems within the DWP than apparently is the case”.
Another of the judges, Lord Justice Warby, said DWP had provided no evidence about other such cases in which claimants had died.
Griffiths said that if there was a “systemic problem”, it would be “known and public to a great extent” and he assured the judges that DWP would have told the court if there was any indication that this was a systemic problem.
But Jesse Nicholls, representing Joy Dove, said there was a “very substantial amount of material available in the public domain” that indicated there was a “very serious problem” with the way DWP makes its decisions on benefits.
He said deaths had been raised in parliament, some even at prime minister’s questions, while the Commons work and pensions committee had reported on the concerns, and last year the National Audit Office had investigated the information DWP held on the suicides of claimants.
Nicholls said DWP had had six months to provide the evidence to the court “to rebut the suggestion that there is a systemic issue”.
But, he said, “they didn’t”.
Lord Justice Warby added: “They had plenty of opportunity… to put in evidence and they haven’t done it or suggested that they have evidence to put in.”
Nicholls said: “The only inference… that can be drawn is that there is a systemic problem here. It cannot possibly be suggested that that is not the case.”
Griffiths said DWP accepted that it did fail when the individuals concerned did not comply with their duties appropriately.
He said: “It had tragic consequences. That is not to say there are not systems and procedures in place which if followed would have prevented this error.”
But Lord Justice Warby told him: “An inference may be drawn that despite the appearance of working systems, there is a non-working system in the problem of culture and training and arguably so.”
He said the court would reserve its decision to a future date, but he said that he and his two fellow judges knew that it was “an important case” and were “very conscious of the importance of the legal issues, but also the personal issues”.
24 June 2021
Jodey Whiting: Judge asks why DWP failed to ‘pick up a phone’ before claimant’s suicide
A high court judge has asked the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) why it did not take the “common sense” step of phoning a disabled woman with a long history of mental distress – who later took her own life – before it removed her benefits.
Mrs Justice Farbey, one of three high court judges who will decide whether there will be a second inquest into the death of Jodey Whiting in February 2017, suggested that the court might be able to “infer” from the evidence it had received that there was a “systemic” failure by DWP.
Whiting, a mother-of-nine and grandmother from Stockton-on-Tees, took her own life in February 2017, 15 days after she had her employment and support allowance (ESA) mistakenly stopped for missing a face-to-face work capability assessment.
But the original inquest into her death lasted just 37 minutes and did not investigate DWP’s role in her death.
This week, the high court has been considering a request by Whiting’s mother, Joy Dove, who attended this week’s hearing in London, for a second inquest into her daughter’s death.
In December 2016, Whiting was sent a letter asking her to attend a face-to-face work capability assessment the following month.
But she failed to open the letter and so missed the WCA. She had been ill with pneumonia and receiving hospital treatment for a cyst on the brain and had been taking painkillers which affected her ability to cope with correspondence.
According to DWP’s safeguarding procedures, the department should have contacted “vulnerable” claimants like Whiting by telephone if they missed their assessment, but a report by the Independent Case Examiner (ICE) later found no evidence that this had been done.
DWP should also have considered a safeguarding visit to her home, but again there was no evidence that this was done.
The following month, on 6 February, DWP wrote to Whiting to tell her it was terminating her benefits, and she also received letters from the council telling her that her council tax benefit and housing benefit would be stopped.
She took her own life 15 days later.
The decision to remove her ESA was overturned the following month, after her mother had asked DWP to reconsider its decision.
Mrs Justice Farbey told DWP’s barrister David Griffiths this week that Whiting had been on out-of-work disability benefits since 2006, and had been in the ESA support group since 2012, after she was transferred across from the old incapacity benefit system.
She asked Griffiths: “Why on earth in these circumstances didn’t someone pick up the phone?”
She said it was “surely common sense” for DWP to call Whiting about her missed assessment if she had been claiming benefits for so long, and she asked him: “Why shouldn’t this court infer that this is a systems failure?”
The Independent Case Examiner concluded in 2019 that DWP was guilty of “multiple” and “significant” failings in handling Whiting’s case, and that it had failed five times to follow its own safeguarding rules in the weeks leading to her suicide.
Griffiths said the judge’s criticisms were “well founded” and that ICE identified “a lot of failures” around the “sad time of Miss Whiting’s death”.
But he told the court: “One has to put it in the context of the scale and scope of what DWP does.”
He added: “The system has failed but it does not fail a great many times.”
Griffiths said DWP accepted that individuals had failed to comply with their duties appropriately.
He said: “It had tragic consequences. That is not to say there are not systems and procedures in place which if followed would have prevented this error.”
Lord Justice Warby said the court would reserve its decision to a future date, but he said that he and his two fellow judges knew that it was “an important case” and were “very conscious of the importance of the legal issues, but also the personal issues”.
24 June 2021
Jodey Whiting: Fresh evidence shows need for second inquest into death ‘caused by DWP’
Fresh evidence shows that the actions of the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) were a “central cause” of the death of a disabled women who took her own life after her benefits were wrongly removed, the high court heard this week.
The court has been asked to order a second inquest into the death of Jodey Whiting in February 2017.
Whiting, a mother-of-nine and grandmother from Stockton-on-Tees, took her own life in February 2017, 15 days after her employment and support allowance (ESA) was mistakenly stopped for missing a face-to-face work capability assessment.
But the original inquest into her death lasted just 37 minutes and did not investigate DWP’s role in her death.
This week, the high court has been considering a request by Whiting’s mother, Joy Dove, for a second inquest that would examine how DWP contributed to or even caused her daughter’s death.
Dove’s barrister, Jesse Nicholls, told the court that fresh evidence had emerged since 2017 which “overwhelmingly leads to the conclusion that the substantial truth” about how she died had not been revealed at the first inquest.
He said that evidence showed that DWP had been “a central cause of her death”, but that that “substantial truth” was not investigated at the first inquest.
He said that a report by the Independent Case Examiner, which followed a complaint lodged by Dove and was not published until after the inquest, had been “highly critical” of DWP’s conduct, and revealed “multiple breaches of procedures, flaws in decision-making and missed opportunities to consider Miss Whiting’s claim appropriately prior to the termination of her ESA”.
And he said a report by a consultant psychiatrist, commissioned after the inquest, concluded that there was “likely to have been a causal link between the DWP failings outlined in the ICE report and Jodey’s state of mind before her death”.
Nicholls said DWP was aware that Whiting had a history of suicide attempts and suicidal thoughts, had placed a “red flag” on its system to alert its staff to this “vulnerability”, and had also been aware that she had been referred to the community mental health team just months earlier for intensive treatment for suicidal thoughts.
As early as 2012, DWP’s assessment contractor Atos – later replaced by the US outsourcing giant Maximus – had concluded that she would be at risk if she was found fit for work or asked to carry out work-related activity.
Two years later, Whiting had written in an ESA questionnaire: “Most days I want to kill myself. If my doctor doesn’t get the pain under control I plan to kill myself.”
And in October 2016, she had written in a new ESA questionnaire: “Suicidal thoughts a lot of the time, I couldn’t cope with work or looking for work.”
But Nicholls said: “Her benefits were terminated, she felt unable to cope and she killed herself. And the DWP had been told by her of that risk.”
He said the inquest had not investigated DWP’s role in Jodey Whiting’s death “in any way”.
Jonathan Hough, representing the Teesside and Hartlepool coroner, said it had not been the coroner’s intention to “defend the clear multiple and admitted failures of DWP staff”, but that she had held a “proper and lawful inquest” that had investigated “the means by which Miss Whiting had died”, which was “sufficient” to discharge her responsibility.
He said the coroner had “treated Miss Whiting’s family with respect and sensitivity” and had mentioned in her summing up that she had had her ESA claim turned down and that that had had an impact on her.
Hough said that a fresh inquest would not “magically be able to psycho-analyse” what was the critical factor in her decision to take her own life.
He said it was “unquestionable” that the failings of DWP staff were serious but that did not mean that a second inquest was needed.
Nicholls said that a second inquest would provide Jodey Whiting’s family and the wider public with an “understanding of the facts of her death” and provide the family with “catharsis”.
He said it would also allow “public lesson-learning to take place”.
Lord Justice Warby said the court would reserve its decision to a future date, but he said that he and his two fellow judges knew that it was “an important case” and were “very conscious of the importance of the legal issues, but also the personal issues”.
Dove, who is represented by solicitor Merry Varney, a partner at law firm Leigh Day, sat alone at the back of the court throughout the two-day hearing.
She spoke afterwards of the frustration of not being able to give oral evidence during the hearing, which meant she had been unable to tell the three judges how DWP’s decision-makers had stopped her daughter’s benefits “without seeing her face”.
She told Disability News Service that this had made her daughter an “invisible woman”.
She said: “I wanted to say my piece but obviously I can’t say anything until the second inquest.”
Dove said she became tearful and had to “keep fighting to stop myself breaking down”, while listening to her barrister describe the events that led to her daughter’s death.
Dove, who was joined in court yesterday (Wednesday) by Jodey’s brother Jamie, said she was pleased that the judges had been fair in the way they had dealt with the evidence and asked their questions.
Now she is prepared to wait for weeks, or even months, for the three judges to deliver their ruling.
She said: “If it takes a long time to get a verdict I won’t mind, as long as it’s the right one.”
Even if she loses the case, she said, she will continue fighting.
She said she wants to “get some closure for Jodey where she has done something for other people to help change the system”.
But she added: “I can’t imagine ever coming to a stop fighting for my daughter. I feel as if I have to do this.”
While she was in London, she stayed at a hotel directly opposite DWP’s Whitehall headquarters.
She told DNS before the hearing that she hoped DWP staff and ministers would be able to see her.
She said: “I wanted to be here. I’m not bothered about them. I hope they can see me.”
24 June 2021
Labour says calling for free social care would ‘just give Tories a stick to beat us with’
Labour has given the strongest sign yet that it has gone back on its new leader’s pledge that he would introduce free social care if his party won power, after a shadow cabinet member said such a policy would be too expensive.
Thangam Debbonaire told female party members at a meeting last weekend that introducing free social care for disabled and older people would “give the Tories a stick to beat Labour with”, Disability News Service (DNS) has been told.
She apparently claimed that such a policy would cost “£100 billion” and would cost more than the annual budget of the NHS.
She also said that right-wing newspapers would attack the policy and that it would lose Labour the next election.
This week, Labour failed to deny she had made the comments.
Debbonaire, Labour’s shadow leader of the House of Commons, was speaking at a “composite meeting”, which was discussing how to combine various motions that had been proposed by constituency Labour parties (CLPs) into a single motion to be debated and voted on at this weekend’s Labour women’s conference.
Several CLPs had passed motions calling for free social care, and a draft composite motion included two references to free social care, including a call for Labour to promise “to make the provision of all social care free to the recipient as is the case for health care under the NHS” and for social care to be “needs-based and publicly funded, free at the point of use”.
But the final version of the motion, prepared just before the meeting, expunged all mentions of free social care.
One disabled party member who attended the virtual meeting told Disability News Service (DNS) afterwards that Labour had betrayed and silenced its disabled members.
She said the party was now run by “cowardly, unprincipled careerists” who “wouldn’t know solidarity if it hit them with a big stick”.
She said: “Right now, many of us are stuck fighting the DWP, the government and local authorities just to survive.
“But apparently promising us hope that we won’t always have to fight like this is too expensive.”
Only last month, DNS reported how Labour had refused to explain why a major speech by its shadow social care minister, Liz Kendall, had ignored disabled-led proposals for fundamental reform – including free social care – that were backed by Keir Starmer during his leadership election campaign.
Starmer supported the National Independent Living Support Service (NILSS) proposals during his successful campaign to be elected party leader last year, telling DNS in February 2020 that he backed a motion supporting those proposals which had been passed at Labour’s annual conference.
NILSS, which was drawn up by Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) and Reclaiming Our Futures Alliance (ROFA), would provide a universal right to independent living that was “enshrined in law”, and would introduce free social care in England, funded by national and progressive taxation.
But yesterday (Wednesday), a Labour spokesperson refused to say why the party had gone back on Starmer’s support for the NILSS motion; refused to say why the references to free social care were removed from the social care composite motion document; refused to provide the source for Debbonaire’s claim that free social care would cost £100 billion and more than the NHS budget; refused to say if the party agreed with her that calling for free social care would give the Tories a stick to beat Labour with, and that it would lose the party the next election; refused to say what the party’s message was to disabled people and allies who were fighting for free social care; and refused to say why Labour was not willing to fight for disabled and older people’s right to free social care.
But the spokesperson said in a statement: “The final motion was democratically agreed by all CLPs who attended the meeting and will be debated and voted on by National Women’s Conference this weekend.”
Meanwhile, an open letter from social care organisations – including the Social Care Future campaign group, which includes some disabled members but is not run and controlled by disabled people – has also failed to call for free social care.
The letter also fails to call for a legal right to independent living, which would allow the government to comply with article 19 of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, even though the Equality and Human Rights Commission made such a call last month.
Instead, it calls for “funding for short-term stabilisation”, “longer-term investment” and “investment in the short term to speed the shift towards a system of social care that is both sustainable and fit for the modern age”.
The letter to the prime minister, chancellor and health and social care secretary was also signed by the Think Local Act Personal partnership, the chair of the Local Government Association community wellbeing board, the Social Care Institute for Excellence, the Care Providers Alliance, and the president of the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services.
A SCIE spokesperson told DNS: “This was a letter agreed across a number of partner organisations and the issues that were raised by the letter were seen as the most important as we press for an update before summer recess.”
But Social Care Future has signed another statement on social care reform, which does call for free social care.
This statement has also been signed by disabled-led organisations Disability Rights UK, Inclusion London, Reclaiming our Futures Alliance, Bristol Reclaiming Independent Living and Shaping Our Lives.
It follows the government’s latest pledge to publish its repeatedly-delayed plans for social care reform by the end of the year.
They believe that organisations led by disabled people are being excluded from current discussions being held by the Department of Health and Social Care.
They want organisations and individuals to sign the statement by 4 July, before it is shared with the government.
24 June 2021
DPOs welcome Disability Rights UK’s decision to quit charities’ lobby group
A leading national disabled people’s organisation (DPO) has announced it is quitting a powerful lobby group of disability charities as part of a move to work mostly with other DPOs rather than non-user-led organisations.
Disability Rights UK (DR UK) said the move to quit the Disability Charities Consortium (DCC) was part of a strategy review that was intended to ensure “greater amplification” of the voices of disabled people.
The consortium is frequently consulted by the government, and these discussions are often used as proof that ministers are talking and listening to disabled people and their organisations, but it makes few if any public announcements and has no website.
DR UK’s departure means the consortium will no longer have any member organisations that are run and controlled by disabled people.
The other members are Mencap, the National Autistic Society, Mind, Leonard Cheshire, Scope, Action on Hearing Loss, RNIB, Sense and the Business Disability Forum.
Kamran Mallick, DR UK’s chief executive, said in a statement that his organisation had been looking at how it could “work more deeply, with greater listening, and greater amplification of the voices of Disabled people”.
He told Disability News Service (DNS) later: “As a leading national DPO we already work closely with a network of grassroots DPOs across the UK.
“We want it to be crystal clear to disabled people that we are disabled people working with disabled people to ensure our voices are heard directly by government.
“We want to create a stronger DPO voice based on the lived experience of disabled people, so that government listens more closely and takes action, and we want to be part of this.”
He said there had been no particular decisions taken by DCC that had persuaded DR UK to leave the consortium.
In the statement, he said it had become “clearer than it had ever been” at the start of the pandemic that disabled people’s voices were “in danger of becoming lost”.
But he said the crisis had strengthened the resolve of disabled people “to gather together our voices, speak truth to power, loudly and clearly, and make sure that we are heard”.
Mallick pointed to the new, 15-strong Our Voices group of DR UK member DPOs that has come together since the start of the pandemic, which meets regularly “to share what is working and what is not working in their local areas across the UK”, and which he hopes will expand.
He said DR UK also wanted to “make full contribution and support” to the new DPO Forum England, which has been set up by DPOs to lobby government.
He said that DR UK had “always been user-led” and was “committed to remaining user-led”, while its board, leadership team, membership and the “vast majority” of its staff are disabled people.
He said the bulk of its work would now be with DPOs, which are led and run by disabled people, although it would continue to work with DCC organisations where their collective knowledge and experience “works stronger together”.
Tracey Lazard, chief executive of Inclusion London, another influential DPO, which works with user-led organisations across the capital, said: “We welcome DR UK’s long-awaited decision to leave the DCC.
“We cannot think of one example where the DCC has used its leverage, facetime with ministers or its own huge, combined resources to support DPOs or amplify our voices.
“But we do know both the DCC and the government have benefited hugely from pretending they consult with DPOs via DR UK’s long-term membership of DCC.
“It’s vital DPOs and our wider movement work together in solidarity to ensure the needs, issues, experiences and aspirations of disabled people and our organisations are heard and we look forward to working with DR UK to make this happen.”
Ellen Clifford, a member of the national steering group of Disabled People Against Cuts, also welcomed the DR UK decision.
She said: “Over the years the government has consistently used engagement with disability charities as cover for cuts and changes that have devastated disabled people’s lives.
“There have also been dubious claims about engaging with DDPOs [Deaf and disabled people’s organisations].
“In leaving the DCC, DR UK is effectively taking away from the government the chance to justify highly regressive measures through engagement via DCC.
“This is of especial significance given the upcoming examination of the UK under the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the duty under that on governments to engage specifically with DDPOs as opposed to charities.”
But Clifford was also critical of DR UK.
She said: “In 2017, Mike Oliver criticised DR UK for its lack of political activism and included them in a ‘stinging rebuke’ levelled at disability charities who he described as ‘parasitic’.
“Whether leaving DCC represents a solid new direction from DR UK remains to be seen but they are more than welcome to join the ranks of those of us who understand the importance of radical campaigning to resist the attacks on disabled people.”
A spokesperson for the consortium said its members did not think DR UK’s decision would damage DCC’s credibility, and that they “support them to do what they feel is right for them at this time”.
Asked if the consortium believed the government should now focus more on those organisations and networks that are DPOs or represent DPOs, she said: “The government needs to do much more to engage and work with DPOs and organisations that represent DPOs.
“The DCC has consistently pushed government to engage meaningfully with these groups and will continue to do so.”
Mark Hodgkinson and Diane Lightfoot, co-chairs of the consortium, said DCC had “always been an informal and flexible coalition of disability charities”.
They said that its members “continue to urge the government to engage and work proactively with a wide range of organisations, including DPOs and disabled people, to inform strategy development and to identify barriers and solutions with and for disabled people”.
They added: “As the current co-chairs of the consortium, we support Disability Rights UK’s decision to review how it operates, and seeks to maximise the impact it can have.
“Disability Rights UK undertake a hugely important role leading the sector and campaigning for change. We are extremely grateful for all DR UK has done within the DCC.
“We look forward to continuing to support them, and working with them to make sure the voices and experiences of Britain’s 14 million disabled people are heard.”
24 June 2021
DWP ‘may have unlawfully deprived tens of thousands of PIP claimants of back-payments’
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) may have acted unlawfully after potentially depriving tens of thousands of benefit claimants of thousands of pounds each in back-payments, campaigners believe.
Now, after taking legal advice from a leading social security barrister, the Benefits and Work advice and information website wants to hear from claimants who may have been affected to help with a potential legal action.
The call relates to a high court ruling in December 2017 that found DWP had acted unlawfully by introducing new rules that were “blatantly discriminatory”.
Those rules meant that people who were unable to plan or undertake a journey due to overwhelming psychological distress would receive fewer qualifying points when assessed for PIP, with many receiving a lower level of financial support as a result, or even no PIP at all.
The new rules were only introduced because an upper tribunal ruling had found – in the case of a claimant referred to as MH – that DWP was wrong to say such PIP claimants should not be entitled to those points.
After the then work and pensions secretary Esther McVey said she would not appeal the court’s ruling, DWP announced a huge review of 1.6 million PIP claims to see how many had been wrongly assessed and were now entitled to backdated PIP payments.
The cost of implementing the court judgement – and a separate DWP error in the case of a claimant known as RJ – was estimated to be up to £3.7 billion over the five years to 2022, while ministers initially said that about 164,000 disabled people could receive back-dated payments as a result of the MH ruling.
But Benefits and Work has grown increasingly alarmed at DWP data which has shown far fewer claimants have benefited from DWP’s trawl through its records.
Barrister Tom Royston, of Garden Court North Chambers, has told Benefits and Work that there is significant public interest in bringing a legal case to establish if DWP has acted unlawfully.
Royston, who also acted for MH, said the DWP figures showed that, by January 2021, it had examined nearly 900,00 cases but had made back-payments in only 3,700 of them, which meant the proportion of those benefiting from the trawl (0.4 per cent) was 35 times fewer than DWP had predicted.
Benefits and Work says DWP has remained silent on why so few claimants are benefiting from the review, while its attempts to secure answers through freedom of information requests had been “comprehensively blocked”.
Now the website wants to hear from PIP claimants who have received a letter from DWP about the review in the last three months to tell them their PIP award has not changed as a result of the trawl.
The letter is likely to refer to changes in PIP law “that affect how the Department for Work and Pensions decides PIP claims” and will mention the MH versus DWP tribunal judgement and how it “relates to how ‘overwhelming psychological distress’ is considered when assessing the ability of someone to plan and follow a journey”.
Benefits and Work is asking anyone who has received a letter like this in the last three months to complete a short survey.
DWP told Disability News Service this week that its original published estimates were produced before knowing the full details of which claimants would be eligible for additional payments.
It believes it was clear that these estimates would probably change once the guidance implementing the judgment was produced and implemented.
A DWP spokesperson said: “The MH/RJ administrative exercise remains a priority for us and we want to ensure people receive any money owed to them as quickly as possible.
“In supporting the government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, this work was paused, but restarted again in October.
“We will issue a further update later this year.”
Meanwhile, the Northern Ireland Public Services Ombudsman has published a report that concludes that too many disabled people are having their PIP claims unfairly rejected, while the system for dealing with further evidence, “a critical part of how decisions on PIP are made”, is “characterised by confusion”.
The ombudsman, Margaret Kelly, said the report – which criticises both Northern Ireland’s Department for Communities and its contractor Capita – found that “repeated opportunities were missed to make the right payment as early as possible in the process”.
24 June 2021
Minister’s letter sparks fresh fears of government delays to accessible housing reform
Disabled campaigners have raised fears that the government is attempting to delay introducing measures that could help solve the accessible housing crisis.
Members of Greater Manchester Coalition of Disabled People (GMCDP) raised the concerns after seeing a letter written by a government minister to Manchester MPs.
Lord Greenhalgh, the minister for building safety and communities, had been asked about the government’s plans for increasing the supply of accessible housing, after the MPs had been approached by GMCDP.
GMCDP was concerned about continuing delays to government action, following an accessible housing consultation that ended last December.
The consultation offered five possible options for reform – including a “do nothing” option” – but the government did not suggest which of those options it supported.
One of the options – backed by GMCDP in the consultation – was to raise the minimum access standards for all new homes (apart from in exceptional cases) and to force a minimum proportion of homes to be built to an even stricter wheelchair-accessible standard.
Similar measures have been in place in London for the last five years, with a minimum of 10 per cent of new homes in the capital now having to be suitable for wheelchair-users.
Now, nearly seven months after the government consultation ended, Lord Greenhalgh has told the MPs in a letter that the government is also carrying out research into the “prevalence and demographics of impairment in England” and the “ergonomic requirements and experiences of disabled people”.
GMCDP’s member-led housing working group has raised concerns about this research programme.
It has told Disability News Service (DNS): “In the view of GMCDP this is an attempt to further delay making a decision about this issue.”
The group said the need for more accessible housing was “obvious” and “acknowledged”, while it said that many non-disabled people prefer the slightly more generous standards of an accessible home.
The need for a research programme on the “prevalence and demographics of impairment in England” was therefore “unnecessary to demonstrate the need for accessible homes”, the group said.
An MHCLG spokesperson said: “The number of accessible homes has nearly doubled in a decade and we have recently consulted on ways of improving the accessibility of new homes.
“We are also conducting vital research to ensure we have the most up to date information about the needs of disabled people so they can be fully taken into account when developing future policy.”
MHCLG said the research mentioned by Lord Greenhalgh was about collecting data on disabled people and their practical needs, and that it was linked to, but separate from, the accessible housing consultation and would inform the possible updating of technical standards.
If the consultation indicates the need for changes to the regulations or guidance, the research will make sure that these changes accurately reflect the prevalence of impairments and the need for accessible housing, the department said.
But MHCLG also admitted that the research, which has only just begun, is not expected to report for another 12 months, adding to concerns about delays in any reforms.
The department said the researchers would meet, survey, record and measure the lived experiences of disabled people.
And it denied that there had been any steps taken to delay action, suggesting that both the consultation and the research were designed only to improve the provision of accessible housing.
MHCLG said the research would cover both homes and non-domestic buildings, and will collect up-to-date data of relevance across government, in the interests of disabled people and disabled people’s organisations.
Earlier this month, DNS reported how ministers were set to spend £30 million on projects across England that could lead to more than 17,000 new homes, but were refusing to insist that a single one of them was built to strict accessibility standards.
The GMCDP working group said that a commitment to build 17,000 accessible new homes “would contribute significantly to addressing the current shortage and would support disabled people to live independent lives, so we find the information in your article truly shocking”.
They added: “GMCDP would support any campaign to encourage the Government to publicise the outcome of their consultation.”
Successive Tory ministers have been repeatedly warned of the dire shortage of suitable accessible housing.
24 June 2021
Theatre leaders ‘behaving almost criminally’ over call to reopen with no social distancing
Theatre leaders are behaving “almost criminally” by demanding the government allows them to fully reopen venues without any social distancing, according to one of the founders of the UK Disability Arts Alliance.
Andrew Miller, who has just completed three years as the government’s disability champion for the arts and culture sector, said he was “extremely alarmed” by claims from senior theatre leaders and executives that it was safe to do so for those who are “clinically extremely vulnerable” (CEV) to the virus.
He said such claims were “utterly without foundation or evidence, almost criminally so”.
Last month, the alliance marked the first anniversary of its #WeShallNotBeRemoved campaign, which has pushed for an inclusive recovery for the arts and culture sector and to ensure that Deaf and disabled people do not face discrimination as the industry reopens.
But Miller told a panel at The Stage’s Future of Theatre conference last week that the cultural sector was “fast heading to a two-tier reopening.
“For the fit and able first, then sometime later for disabled and ‘vulnerable’ people.”
He said this would represent a “catastrophic failure for a sector that prides itself on its ‘inclusivity’”.
Miller said that the government’s Events Research Programme (ERP) – which is testing how post-lockdown crowds can safely return to sports and cultural venues – would produce no evidence on CEV people as the ban on their participation in the test events was overturned too late to produce any useful data.
He said: “Both the sector, and CEV people, urgently need scientific data from the ERP to support a safe return for everyone.
“#WeShallNotBeRemoved has requested this from DCMS [the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport] and we are awaiting a response.”
He told Disability News Service (DNS) this week: “We have to move with caution to ensure the live events sector reopens for everyone.
“#WeShallNotBeRemoved was started explicitly to campaign for an inclusive recovery, as we foresaw reopening could become very messy for disabled people.”
Miller said that the data was needed to give the sector and CEV people assurances “that we are not any more at risk of COVID transmission at indoor venues than the encouraging results for the general population established at the initial trials where CEV people were banned”.
He said DCMS needed to capture data about the gender, disability and minority ethnic status of all those taking part in the next round of trials.
He said: “It is vital this data is publicly shared at the earliest opportunity to enable CEV people to assess their own levels of risk, and for venues to put in place any appropriate measures.
“And without the right data to guide my own decision-making, even as a doubly vaccinated individual, I would not feel personally comfortable or safe booking a theatre ticket in the current environment.”
He said venues needed to be “upfront” about their COVID safety measures for disabled audiences and share publicly how they had implemented the Seven Inclusive Principles the campaign published last September.
These principles include meeting the requirements of the Equality Act, ensuring the provision of reasonable adjustments, and adhering to the social model of disability, and the need for co-production with disabled people when developing operating or re-opening plans.
Miller added: “We already know that disabled people’s confidence in returning to live events attendance is trailing behind that of the general population.
“As disabled people represent 12 per cent of the national audience, it is a commercial as well as a moral responsibility for the industry to get this right.”
When approached by DNS, DCMS refused to confirm that there would be no data about CEV people from the first round of the ERP, and it refused to say if it accepted Miller’s concerns, and if it did, what action it would take to obtain data on CEV people and protected characteristics data.
But a DCMS spokesperson said in a statement: “It is the responsibility of the attendee to decide whether or not it is appropriate to attend a pilot event.
“The ERP science board advises caution for the clinically extremely vulnerable people attending the pilot events on public health grounds, however these groups are not excluded from involvement in the pilots.”
24 June 2021
News provided by John Pring at www.disabilitynewsservice.com
