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Document reveals government’s delays in fixing ‘shocking’ COP26 access failures
The UK government failed to ensure that serious faults exposed by an accessibility audit were fixed in time for the start of the Glasgow COP26 climate change conference, an official document released to Disability News Service (DNS) has revealed.
The access audit, provided to DNS under the Freedom of Information Act, shows that conference registration desks had no induction loops, the accessible entrance to the conference was missing clear signage, and many temporary platforms were left without step-free access.
Some of the failings were only put right on the second day of the conference (1 November) while others were not fixed until its fourth day, the document shows.
DNS had submitted the freedom of information request after the government admitted last month that there had been a series of access failings at the conference.
The new information is taken from an accessibility audit carried out by the government’s contractor, the events company Identity, following inspections on 20, 21, 22, 23 and 24 October.
The report shows that access failings that had been spotted by Identity at least a week earlier had not been fixed by the time the conference opened on 31 October.
Among the failings, the audit revealed on 22 October – nine days before the conference started – that hearing loops needed to be installed on conference registration desks, but the “date of completion” on the work is marked on the report as 3 November.
On the same day, 22 October, Identity said there was “no clear signage” at the main entrance to show where the accessible entrance was.
Again, this was not fixed until 3 November.
DNS reported last month how disabled conference delegate Jason Boberg, who had been attending COP26 on behalf of the SustainedAbility Disability and Climate Network, said there had been “massive issues” with the accessible entrance to the conference.
He had pointed to poor signage, and the lack of information about the existence of an accessible entrance – among other access issues – which meant “many people don’t know it exists, let alone where to go and what to do”.
The audit report also highlights how a number of temporary “pavilions” in halls four and five of the venue did not have ramped, step-free access, a problem which was not fixed until 3 November after 26 ramps were bought or otherwise obtained.
It also reveals that step-free access to the pavilion used by the NDC Partnership – a major international body that helps countries meet their climate change commitments – was not provided until 3 November.
Susie Fitton, policy manager at Inclusion Scotland, who herself spoke at a conference side event and raised concerns at the time about access, said the report was “very concerning”.
She said: “Making a very large event like a COP accessible to disabled people requires months of forward planning.
“It is very concerning that many access issues at COP26 such as a lack of induction loops on registration desks for those with hearing impairments, or a failure to provide clear signage to the accessible entrance, were only being addressed when COP was well underway.
“These issues should have been dealt with well before the COP had begun.”
She said the COP26 access failings were symbolic of the way that disabled people are excluded or not expected to take part in high-level discussions about climate action.
She said: “Disabled people are not yet considered as key stakeholders in international action to address climate change.
“Accessibility has not been mainstreamed within the climate movement – we see this by buses being laid on to bring people to COP26 that were electric but not wheelchair-accessible, or livestreams to side events being provided to enable remote participation that were not captioned for people with hearing impairments, or the total lack of British Sign Language interpretation for many events at COP.
“What are we saying to disabled people by failing to provide these things?
“That we don’t expect them to have a seat at the table when we discuss climate change and that their rights, requirements for daily living and perspectives on climate action are not important enough to be an integral part of events like COP.
“This must change if we have any chance of responding to a changing climate in ways that work for all of us.”
Dzaier Neil, convenor of the Green party’s disability group, said the delays were “appalling”.
She said: “It just reinforces how, for this government, disabled people are invisible and are not of any value and whatever they have got to say is not important.
“It is reinforcing their view and ideology of disabled people.”
A Green party spokesperson added: “The government knew at least a week before COP26 that the conference was not set up in any way that was accessible to disabled people.
“This meant that vital voices on the climate crisis were either locked out or struggled to be heard.
“Disabled people are one of the groups most affected by climate change.
“Their voices should have been centre stage, not impeded by inadequate provision.”
Disabled climate activist Pauline Castres said: “It is shocking that the accessibility audit for the COP26 venue flags critical issues such as a lack of clear signage for the main accessible entrance that were only addressed several days after the conference had started.
“There can’t be climate justice without disabled people, and it starts with them being able to access climate spaces, including physically.
“Access needs are not something that can be put on the back burner or partly addressed.
“They’re essential, and a human right, as highlighted by article nine [on accessibility] of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.”
The Cabinet Office’s COP26 Unit has told DNS that issues identified by Identity after the audit of the conference’s temporary structures were remedied “as soon as possible”, and where this could not be done before the conference opened, staff were “appropriately briefed to support and mitigate any issues”, such as providing “queue walkers to enhance the visibility of the accessible entrance”.
The COP26 Unit said there had been a “small number of issues” in relation to the scale and complexity of the event, and that the government apologised for any inconvenience that the “short delay to resolving these may have caused”.
It also pointed out that the pavilion spaces at the conference did not open until 1 November, the second day of the conference, and that portable ramps were available if needed.
A government spokesperson said in a statement: “Inclusivity and accessibility were key priorities at the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow and the venue was designed to facilitate these priorities.
“The SEC venue was awarded the gold charter of best practice in October, prior to the climate summit, by the disability-led charity Attitude is Everything, for the venue’s work in improving visitor experience for all types of events.”
22 December 2021
Disabled activists are prepared for prison after clampdown on right to protest
Disabled activists have said they are prepared to break the law, and even go to prison, if the government succeeds in bringing in new legislation that will crack down on the right to protest.
Dolly Sen and Ellen Clifford were speaking at the online launch of Sen’s new documentary, Broken Hearts for the DWP, which exposes the role of the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) in countless deaths of benefit claimants over the last decade.
Sen told those at the launch that she was “expecting to go to jail” for her fight against injustice, due to changes being introduced by the government through the police, crime, sentencing and courts bill that she said would have a worrying impact on the right to protest.
She said: “I do have plans to protest and resist the policing bill.
“If they say, ‘Dolly, you’ve got 10 years in jail,’ I’ll say, ‘Well, thank you, I’ll fight from the prison cell. And as I don’t have a pension, you’ll have to look after me now.’”
Clifford, a member of the national steering group of Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC), said the bill was one of the ways the government was finding to shut down disabled people’s attempts to protest its actions, which also include its attacks on the use of judicial reviews to over-rule ministers’ decisions.
Clifford said: “Judicial review has been one of the only tools where we have managed to get wins against the government over the last 10 years.”
She said the clampdown on judicial reviews was linked to the criminalisation of protest.
She said: “Every way we are successfully using, they are shutting down.
“We know from history that the only way to achieve fundamental change is from the grassroots up, when we all collectivise and we forcefully demand the change that we want to see.
“Unfortunately, there aren’t any easy or comfortable ways to do that, and I just think we absolutely cannot be afraid of criminalisation. We have to take it on as our next battle.”
She told Disability News Service (DNS) after the launch that disabled activists “have to not be afraid to risk prison, we have to protest and go to prison to get our voices heard.
“We can’t look for ways around it – softer options that might be more comfortable and convenient for us, but which will fail to get our message across or to raise awareness sufficiently, and most importantly present a challenge to those in power.
“Rights are being taken away rapidly from the entire working class, with disabled people at the sharp end.
“Those rights will never be given back without active struggle.
“It was only active struggle and sacrifices that won them in the first place.”
Clifford had told the launch: “There are people [in the disability sector] who think that the way that you engage and influence the government is to be reasonable.
“But you don’t. First of all, if they don’t want to listen, they are not going to listen however you put across your evidence.
“But also [the government] are unreasonable, they are violent, they create injustice, they have created a system that is deliberately designed to push people into poverty because our lives are worth less to them than other people’s.
“It’s right that we meet them with a level of anger that is completely justified.”
As part of her new film, Sen held two actions outside DWP’s offices in Whitehall.
In one of them, she and other campaigners – including Joy Dove, the mother of Jodey Whiting – held up heart-shaped boards, on which had been written the names of four disabled men and women who had lost their lives because of DWP’s benefits assessment regime.
In the second action, Sen attempted to “section” DWP for being a danger to benefit claimants.
Sen, a writer, performer, activist, artist and film-maker, told the launch event: “People say, ‘What’s the point of doing this if you change nothing?’ but even if you do change nothing – and I hope I do change things – I am offering in this film evidence of what has happened to human beings.”
Paula Peters, another DPAC steering group member, who took part in Sen’s film, told the launch about two of her friends who took their own lives – because of DWP reforms – in the years following the Labour government’s introduction of the work capability assessment system in 2008.
She said: “Protests like this are so massively important to make visually aware what’s going on but also to raise awareness of the wider public who are still completely unaware of the devastating consequences policies like this are having on disabled people’s lives and people in mental distress.”
She added: “The fear of the WCA put me in hospital back in 2011.
“It’s deliberately, intentionally cruel, to wear us down, to stop us claiming, and their attitude is the more of us who die the better, but what is important is we are living witness to what they are doing, via the artwork, via the films, via the photography.
“The truth will fully be known in time and history will judge them for what they have done to us.”
More than 100 people attended the online launch, one of the events planned to introduce Deaths by Welfare, a project from Healing Justice London (HJL), which works with marginalised communities.
The project, co-designed by members of HJL’s user-led Litany for Survival group and led by researcher and lecturer Dr China Mills, is building an evidence base for the links between welfare reform and people’s deaths.
A core part of the project is to co-produce a timeline that documents evidence of the cumulative harm caused by DWP, and the actions of the disabled activists and bereaved families who have fought its fatal reforms*.
The timeline is likely to be launched through a new website in February or March 2022.
Mills told the launch event that DWP has claimed that it does “not accept the argument of those who seek to politicise people’s deaths by linking them inaccurately to welfare policy”.
But she said that the Deaths by Welfare project sees all welfare reform-related deaths as “political”.
She said the timeline was “a story of pervasive, cumulative devastation” but also of “unrelenting, incredibly creative resistance” by disabled activists and bereaved families.
*DNS editor John Pring is co-creator of the timeline, alongside Mills and welfare rights expert Nick Dilworth, with input from Clifford, Sen, disabled activist Rick Burgess and others
22 December 2021
Dispatches exposé sparks anger and frustration over ‘cruel and inhuman’ system
Disabled people who watched a documentary exposé of links between the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) and the deaths of benefit claimants have shared their own experiences of its “cruel and inhuman” assessment system.
The Dispatches documentary, broadcast on Friday, focused on four of the countless deaths – those of Errol Graham, Philippa Day, Roy Curtis and Jodey Whiting – that have been linked to DWP’s system for assessing eligibility for disability benefits.
The Truth About Disability Benefits, produced in association with Disability News Service (DNS) and filmed and presented by disabled writer, journalist and presenter Richard Butchins, showed how the DWP assessment system had helped cause each of their deaths.
It also revealed the results of a survey, designed in conjunction with the Centre for Welfare Reform, which showed that hundreds of disabled claimants had attempted to take their own lives because of their interactions with DWP.
More than 3,500 people responded to the survey, with nearly a third of them (1,154 individuals) saying that their dealings with DWP had caused them to plan to take their own lives.
More than 450 (13 per cent) said they had gone as far as attempting suicide.
And more than three-fifths (2,158 individuals) said that the way the system was run by DWP caused them to have suicidal thoughts, while four-fifths (79 per cent) said they felt the process of claiming benefits had made their physical health worse.
Many disabled people responded to the documentary by sharing their own experiences of DWP assessments on social media.
Among them was disabled researcher and writer Sue Jones, who said on Twitter: “A friend of mine was dying of a brain tumour.
“In the last weeks of her life, she couldn’t even feed herself, yet the DWP sent her a letter, saying if she didn’t attend a work-related interview, they would stop her lifeline support.”
One disabled claimant said on Twitter: “I attempted suicide in October 2017 due to the DWP. I was refused benefits and it took four years to get to Tribunal where I won.”
Another claimant who had watched the programme said the system was “unnecessarily cruel and inhuman”, and described how the written report produced by the healthcare professional who had assessed them had been “a work of fiction”.
And another said: “I have been subject to these dehumanising, degrading processes. Then the lies that follow in the reports. It’s cruelty.
“As someone who worked in safeguarding prior to losing my job through health, I don’t know how they can behave as they do.”
Buckinghamshire Disability Service, which has supported thousands of disabled people with their benefit appeals, released a series of case summaries which showed that the “horrific” examples of DWP “incompetence and cruelty” shown by Dispatches were not isolated cases, but “typical”.
One of its tweets said: “Margaret, a 64 year old pensioner, lost the disability benefits they’d had for 40 years after a telephone assessment at which the #ATOS assessor said ‘no sign of pain could be heard’. A GP letter and records were ignored.”
Many of those who watched the programme spoke of their frustration that there was not wider discussion of the impact of the assessment process on disabled people, and of the “utter indifference of the media and politicians”.
Caroline Collier, chief executive of Inclusion Barnet, said she could “not help wondering what it would take to get the whole country talking about this?
“It should be top of the news agenda. We should all be shocked.”
Another disabled campaigner, Nikki Clarke, said: “As a disabled person, the thing that angers me is the complete absence of a public uproar over thousands and thousands of premature deaths and suicides, since the Tories implemented such callous welfare reforms a decade ago.
“They have robbed many disabled people of any quality of life.”
Many others spoke of the distress they experienced watching the programme.
One said they had been “in tears” watching the programme while thinking of the desperation that must have been experienced by the four disabled people whose stories were told.
But another pointed out that the programme did not even “scratch the surface of either the suffering, or the incredibly twisted and endless potholes put in the way of claimants”.
Asked for a response to the documentary, DWP said it had established a serious case panel in late 2019 to consider “thematic issues” identified from serious cases, and had consulted on the future of disability benefits through its Shaping Future Support green paper earlier this year.
DWP said its assessors were all trained and qualified health professionals, and that claimant surveys had consistently given assessment providers satisfaction scores of more than 90 per cent since the surveys started in 2016.
A DWP spokesperson said in a statement: “Our sincere condolences remain with the families of Philippa, Errol, Jodey and Roy.
“We support millions of people every year. Our priority is they get the benefits to which they are entitled as soon as possible, and to ensure they receive a supportive and compassionate service.
“This is what happens in the vast majority of cases but when sadly this does not, we take it very seriously and identify any lessons learned to inform future policy and improve the service we provide.”
*John Pring, editor of DNS, was an associate producer on the programme
**The following organisations are among those that could be able to offer support if you have been affected by the issues raised in this article: Samaritans, Papyrus, Mind, SOS Silence of Suicide and Rethink
22 December 2021
DWP admits assessment system is ‘fragmented’ and ‘inefficient’
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has admitted that its system for assessing disabled people for their eligibility for benefits is “fragmented” and “inefficient”.
The comments about the system were contained in documents shared earlier this year with companies seeking to win new assessment contracts from the department, and now released to Disability News Service (DNS) under the Freedom of Information Act.
Under the heading “why we need to change it”, one of the documents says there is a “lack of trust in the system” that is “exacerbated by a perceived lack of transparency in how decisions are reached and how evidence is collected and used”.
The DWP briefing document sent to would-be contractors describes the “fragmented, inefficient processes and ways of working, reliant on paper and clerical activity”, and points out that its assessment system currently relies on “multiple IT systems owned and operated by a number of suppliers”.
The assessment process – both for employment and support allowance (ESA) and personal independence payment (PIP) – has been linked to countless deaths of claimants and other serious harm over the last decade.
It has been repeatedly criticised, including through research and reports by disabled people’s grassroots groups, MPs and the National Audit Office.
Only last week, Channel 4’s Dispatches revealed the results of a survey of more than 3,500 disabled people who have been through the assessment system, which found that nearly a third of them (1,154 individuals) said their dealings with DWP had caused them to plan to take their own lives.
The survey was part of a documentary (see separate story), produced in association with DNS, which revealed how the system had led to the deaths of four disabled claimants.
And earlier this month, an expert who carried out two independent reviews of the ESA assessment system in 2013 and 2014 told MPs that the “operational” side of DWP had constantly resisted his ideas for improvements, and that the department was characterised by “inertia”.
The briefing document released to DNS, sent out to would-be assessment contractors in April, before the publication of a disability benefits green paper, provides details of the government’s plans for reforming the system, some of which have since been released or hinted at publicly by ministers.
It says the “long term intention” is to develop a single assessment service, supported by a “single, digital platform” owned by DWP that would “enable a more integrated claimant experience”.
The majority of the assessments dealt with through the service will be for ESA and the disability-related aspects of universal credit, through the work capability assessment (WCA), and for PIP, while the contractors will also be expected to assess disabled people for 14 “other smaller benefits”, such as the industrial injuries disablement scheme.
DWP has already announced that, from August 2023, the successful contractor in each of five regions will be carrying out all disability assessments – including those for both ESA and PIP – in that area.
The only exception is that PIP is being replaced in Scotland by the new adult disability payment, which will be run by the Scottish government.
The contracts will be split into northern England and Scotland; the Midlands and Wales; south-west England; London, south-east England and East Anglia; and Northern Ireland, which will be managed by Northern Ireland’s Department for Communities.
The contracts will be worth a total of £2.28 billion over five years.
The three current assessment providers – Atos, Maximus and Capita – have all faced significant and repeated criticism over their performance through the last decade.
DWP refused in the freedom of information response to name the organisations that have so far expressed an interest in tendering for the assessment contracts because it said this information was “commercially sensitive”, so it is not known which of the three current providers will be seeking new contracts.
Significant chunks of the documents released to DNS were redacted, for the same reason.
The tendering process should end with contracts being signed in September 2022, with the new providers taking over assessments from 1 August 2023.
The document also provides further details of the pilot programme that is testing how to bring the administration of the assessments into a new, single digital service.
The Departmental Transformation Area (DTA), where this is being built, tested and developed on a “small scale”, started dealing with claims in April across five north and north-east London postcode areas: E5, N2, N3, N4 and N6.
The pilot programme will not be completed by August 2023, but DWP says the new assessment contracts will be flexible enough to allow “any lessons learned” through the DTA to be implemented within the “lifetime” of the five-year contracts.
Another document released to DNS – sent to potential contractors in July – says that DWP does not expect “full roll out” of the single digital service until 2028.
While DWP works on its single digital service, it will provide one IT service for PIP assessments, and another for the WCA and “specialist benefits”.
July’s green paper strongly hinted at the need to cut spending on disability benefits so that the system could be “more affordable in the future”.
Work and pensions secretary Therese Coffey later admitted to DNS at her party’s annual conference in October that merging PIP with universal credit as a further cost-cutting measure was also “on the table”.
22 December 2021
Coffey given one last chance to publish ‘unmet needs’ report
Work and pensions secretary Therese Coffey has been given a “final chance” to release a report that found disabled benefit claimants had “unmet needs”, before MPs use their powers to publish it themselves.
Stephen Timms, the Labour chair of the Commons work and pensions committee, has written to Coffey to warn her that she has until 11 January to publish the report, which was commissioned by her own department.
A whistleblower told Disability News Service (DNS) earlier this month how the report had been watered down on DWP orders after its authors concluded that claimants of disability benefits had “unmet needs”.
Coffey has refused to publish the report, The Uses of Health and Disability Benefits, despite it being watered down, and promises made to 120 disabled claimants who took part in the research that it would be published.
Now, after a series of attempts to persuade Coffey to publish the report, Timms and his cross-party committee have run out of patience.
He says in his letter to Coffey that the committee is “not persuaded that your decision not to publish the research is justified” and that if she does not publish it by 11 January, “we will use the power given to us by the House [of Commons] to require NatCen to provide us with a copy of it” and then “publish the report ourselves”.
The report was written for DWP by NatCen (The National Centre for Social Research), Britain’s largest independent social research agency.
After being shown the first draft of the report, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) had told NatCen to reduce the number of references to “unmet needs” and to delete some of its analysis.
The whistleblower, who is close to the team that prepared the report, has previously said that it was “obvious” that the “findings about unmet needs and adequacy of benefits were not what the government wanted to hear”.
They told DNS this week: “The letter from the select committee makes it crystal clear that the suppression of the NatCen report is totally unacceptable.
“The secretary of state has blatantly flouted the government’s own rules on publishing research, betrayed the trust of the 120 disabled people who took part in the research and shown contempt for parliament in the responses made to the legitimate requests of the select committee.
“The committee has had to resort to extreme measures to ensure that the findings on unmet needs and benefit levels are made public as they should have been over a year ago.
“Stephen Timms and his colleagues deserve our thanks for that.
“Ebenezer Scrooge had a famous change of heart one Christmas; let’s hope the secretary of state does the same.”
Timms said in a statement that Coffey had “consistently failed to give the committee a good reason why this piece of research should not be made public”, and that she “even admits that it falls within the government’s own protocol for publication”.
He said: “The continued refusal to publish the results of the research, as promised to the participants who gave up their time, will do further damage to disabled people’s trust in the department – which is already in short supply.
“The secretary of state now has a final opportunity to think again and publish the research.
“If not, the committee is firmly agreed that we will be left with no choice but to publish the report ourselves.”
A DWP spokesperson said: “The secretary of state has received the letter in question and will respond in due course.”
22 December 2021
Other disability-related stories covered by mainstream media this week
Town halls in England are calling for billions of pounds a year earmarked for the NHS to be diverted to social care, amid warnings of severe care worker shortages and hundreds of thousands of people not getting the help they need:
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/dec/21/councils-call-for-billions-of-pounds-to-be-diverted-from-nhs-to-social-care
It’s now five years since a tribunal ruled people with mental health difficulties should get more PIP benefits. But estimates that vast numbers would get back payments have turned out to be completely wrong… just 4,200 Brits have been handed welfare back payments in a massive review the Tories claimed could benefit 220,000: https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/dwp-said-up-220000-disabled-25728476
Delays in removing barriers which block disabled cyclists from accessing paths in York are “shameful”, campaigners have said: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-york-north-yorkshire-59699164
22 December 2021
News provided by John Pring at www.disabilitynewsservice.com
