Disabled campaigners set for legal action after PM ends self-isolation rule
Two disabled campaigners who have spent most of the pandemic shielding are set to take legal action against the government, after the prime minister’s confirmation that he was ending the legal requirement to self-isolate after a positive COVID-19 test.
Fleur Perry and Doug Paulley are both considered clinically extremely vulnerable (CEV) to the virus and believe the move to end mandatory self-isolation in England from today (Thursday) puts disabled people at “needless risk”.
They have already passed the halfway mark of an £8,000 crowdfunding target to fund their legal action.
Since March 2020, Perry has visited only five indoor locations, two of which were for medical reasons, and has not seen most of her family and friends for two years.
She believes the government’s decision to end the self-isolation requirement for those with Covid will further restrict her life, as there are likely to be many Covid-positive people sharing public spaces with her.
Paulley, who regularly uses public transport, believes the increased circulation of COVID-19 in the community, with no requirement to self-isolate, will place him – and fellow residents of his care home – at greatly increased risk, and significantly restrict his movements.
This week, their solicitors at Rook Irwin Sweeney sent an urgent letter warning the government of possible legal action in connection with its “discriminatory and irrational” decision.
Perry and Paulley believe the government failed in its duty under the Equality Act to consult with disabled people before making the decision on self-isolation, and to consider what measures could have been taken to lessen the impact of the move.
They believe there has been “a complete failure to have due regard to the needs of disabled and CEV people”.
They want the government to withdraw its unlawful new plan, carry out an equality impact assessment on the future removal of COVID-19 restrictions, and apologise to disabled and CEV people for the “distress and anxiety” the government’s actions have caused them.
They have already sent one letter to ministers warning that a legal challenge would follow if the plans to end the self-isolation law went ahead, and stating that it was “unclear upon what data or scientific basis the decision was being made”.
They say the government’s decision to end the legal requirement to isolate puts them and another 3.2 million CEV people who have been shielding at huge risk, for example in schools and workplaces and public places, at a time when the number of new positive tests per week is still nearly 290,000 across the UK.
They believe that those most at risk from the government’s decision will be disabled people, particularly disabled women, just as they have been throughout the pandemic.
They said: “Restrictions are being lifted one by one, but the safety of those most at risk isn’t being discussed.
“Ending isolation early will increase the risk to disabled people, and cause avoidable hospitalisations and deaths.
“We want to call out the government for ignoring disabled people, and make sure they find and look at all the data on the safety of disabled people.”
Their efforts have drawn strong support from other disabled people and allies who have contributed to the crowdfunding bid.
One said, on the crowdfunding site: “High risk wheelchair user with a high risk child, shielding for two years, I won’t feel safe at needed hospital appointments if staff and other patients are untested and infectious.
“These are the only places we have been for two years. Our lives should count.”
Another said: “Thank you so much for what you’re doing! Signed, A CEV immunocompromised medical student.”
A third disabled supporter wrote: “Ending isolation will make it too dangerous to leave my home. Thanks for doing this.”
Another, who said they could not add their name because they were a civil servant, said: “Thank you for organising this. Lockdown and restrictions also have effects on disabled people but all disabled people need to have their needs considered when making decisions affecting the lives of the whole country.”
In a statement to MPs on Monday, the prime minister, Boris Johnson, said that “those who would wait for a total end to this war before lifting the remaining regulations would be restricting the liberties of the British people for a long time to come”, and that the government “does not believe that is right or necessary”.
He said restrictions placed “a heavy toll on our economy, our society, our mental wellbeing, and the life chances of our children, and we do not need to pay that cost any longer”.
Johnson said the government would “continue to protect the most vulnerable with targeted vaccines and treatments”.
He said the legal requirement to self-isolate following a positive test would end from today, as will self-isolation support payments, routine contact tracing, and the legal requirement for close contacts of someone with coronavirus who are not fully vaccinated to self-isolate.
Johnson later agreed with Conservative MP Lee Anderson that the country “should never return to a full lockdown” and that any future isolation should be targeted at “the clinically vulnerable” and older people.
After 1 April, the government will no longer even advise people who test positive to stay at home, but instead will encourage them to “exercise personal responsibility”.
On 1 April, the government will end free testing for the “general public”, although Johnson said the government would continue to provide free tests to “the oldest age groups and those most vulnerable to Covid” who have symptoms of the virus.
Perry said the combination of an end to both free testing and self-isolation rules was “very disappointing”.
She told DNS: “These changes will place a disproportionate increased risk and cost on disabled people, a group already disproportionately affected by the pandemic.
“The emphasis on keeping yourself safe by limiting activities to avoid catching the virus, as opposed to those most likely to spread it carrying a share of responsibility, is something we’ve seen multiple times during the pandemic, and it’s leading to the spread of some worrying attitudes.
“I have been asked in different ways: ‘Why should we do anything for you? Why can’t you just stay safe at home indefinitely?’ with ‘you’ referring to anyone who was previously asked to shield.
“I remind them that they’re asking 3.2 million people to give up their lives or put themselves at risk, and that we’re not going to get the world we want working via exclusion.
“The government need to take the risk to disabled people seriously, and show that they have followed a decision-making procedure that is lawful and considers the needs and views of disabled people.”
New government guidance for England, also published on Monday, focused – in its section on “protecting people most vulnerable to COVID-19” – on access to vaccines and treatments, and continuing access to free personal protective equipment (PPE) for the adult social care sector in England.
The Department of Health and Social Care said yesterday (Wednesday) that it was unable to comment on ongoing legal proceedings.
Meanwhile, the prime minister’s announcements contrasted with those made on Tuesday by Scotland’s first minister, Nicola Sturgeon.
She warned that COVID-19 was “still a public health risk” and so lateral flow and PCR tests for those with Covid symptoms would remain free.
She said that those who test positive for Covid would continue to be told to isolate, with the Scottish government continuing to make self-isolation support payments available to those eligible.
Sturgeon said that “isolating when positive with a highly infectious virus [and follow-up tracing] remains one of the most fundamental public health protections that we have available to us” which “provides protection for those most at risk of serious illness from COVID, enabling them to return to more normal lives too”.
24 February 2022
Mounting evidence of assessment crisis, as DWP halts WCA reassessments
Mounting evidence suggests a crisis within the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) systems that assess disabled people for their eligibility for benefits.
Delays and backlogs across the assessment system have even led to DWP refusing to carry out any repeat work capability assessments (WCAs) for claimants already receiving universal credit (UC) who need a higher level of support.
Disability News Service (DNS) reported earlier this month how DWP’s own figures showed a picture of significant delays and backlogs across the personal independence payment (PIP) assessment system.
Now DNS has heard of serious backlogs within the WCA system, despite DWP’s refusal to publish official WCA figures for claimants claiming UC.
Zeeta Osborn, from Hastings, has been waiting for a year for a new WCA, but has been told by DWP that it is not currently offering repeat assessments to those already receiving UC, and is only booking assessments for new claimants.
This means that Osborn, whose health has deteriorated since her last assessment – which placed her in the limited capability for work (LCW) group, for those disabled people expected to move gradually towards the job market – is unable to work but is struggling to survive on the benefits she receives and sharp increases in the cost of living.
Her original assessment, more than two years ago, looked only at her mental distress in the wake of her mother’s death, but did not examine the impact of her scoliosis, which has since worsened and means she is now unable to work due to “excruciating constant pain” in her back, legs and arms.
She was told last week on her UC online journal – a message DNS has seen – that DWP “are still working on new claims and the reassessments will not be taking place for foreseeable”.
Finn Keaney, welfare rights team lead for Mind in the City, Hackney and Waltham Forest, told DNS that one of their clients had been in the same situation as Osborn, and had been waiting for a year for a reassessment that would allow them to move from the LCW group to limited capability for work-related activity (LCWRA).
This would entitle the client to a higher rate of support and less stringent conditions.
He said his colleague had been informed by DWP staff that they were not currently reassessing people with LCW.
He said: “We have noticed the beginnings of a trend wherein people who already have LCW are not being granted reassessments to determine whether they also have LCWRA.
“The impact of this is that some long-term sick and disabled adults, in particular those whose health may have deteriorated over the course of the pandemic, are being denied access to additional financial support and reduced conditionality.
“With COVID restrictions and COVID-specific support coming to an end it should not be impossible for the government to grant access to reassessments to those individuals who need them.”
A discussion on the Rightsnet online forum last month raised the same issue, with one welfare rights expert describing how her client, in a similar situation to Osborn, had been told by DWP that “the dept is not currently undertaking WCA reviews due to the ongoing pandemic”.
DWP continues to refuse to provide statistics that would show how many universal credit claimants have been put through the WCA process, how long they have had to wait for a WCA, and what level of benefit they received following their assessment.
The minister for disabled people, Chloe Smith, told Labour’s Steve McCabe this week that DWP did not have figures showing how many claimants have been waiting longer than three months for a WCA.
Another universal credit claimant, Barbara*, from Sussex, told DNS this week that she had been waiting for more than six weeks for a £7,000 backpayment that was now owed to her by DWP after she had been forced to wait nearly two years for a WCA.
She said she was “really angry about the whole system”.
She said: “I have been under so much financial and emotional stress, not eaten well, and got into debt over the two years.
“I tried to claim PIP three years ago too but failed that, mostly due to not enough evidence.
“I haven’t got the physical or emotional strength to go through that again.
“There are many people being treated like this and it is so wrong. At 51, I could be dead before they pay out.”
Meanwhile, there is also growing evidence of problems within the PIP assessment system.
Rebecca* acts as an appointee for her disabled daughter Jane*.
Jane finally had a PIP review assessment in January after eight months of DWP delays, mistakes and misinformation.
But when she received a copy of her daughter’s assessment report, Rebecca realised it was seriously inaccurate and was likely to lead to her daughter losing her PIP support.
Like many disabled people, her daughter experiences “overwhelming psychological distress” during the period of not knowing whether she will lose her support.
Meanwhile, the Benefits and Work website reported this week that PIP renewals were “in a state of chaos”, with claimants “left terrified that their PIP is suddenly going to stop because a new decision has not been made by the time their award is due to end”.
The website said evidence from its readers had made it clear that the PIP renewal system was “currently badly broken”.
The main cause, it said, appeared to be a rise in the number of new PIP claims and a decision by DWP “to prioritise these over existing claims, but without any effort to explain what is happening and give claimants a written extension to their award”.
But the website did say that it had not yet heard of any cases in which a PIP award had been stopped due to a failure to make a new decision.
DWP had not commented by noon today (Thursday).
*Not their real names
24 February 2022
Appeal hopes follow anger at universal credit £20 uplift court defeat
Disabled people have spoken of their anger and frustration after a judge ruled that ministers behaved lawfully when failing to offer recipients of so-called legacy benefits the same £20-a-week increase given to people on universal credit during the pandemic.
The long-awaited high court ruling found that the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) did not breach the European Convention on Human Rights by increasing the standard allowance of universal credit by £20-a-week at the start of the pandemic but not increasing the rate by the same amount for 1.9 million employment and support allowance (ESA) recipients, and claimants of jobseeker’s allowance and income support.
Although the ruling concluded that there had been discrimination towards disabled people on these legacy benefits – who will eventually be transferred onto universal credit in the years ahead – he ruled that this difference in treatment was justified.
One of the four claimants, Philip Wayland, told Disability News Service (DNS) this week that he and the other claimants were “going to do all we can to bring a successful appeal”.
In his judgment, Mr Justice Swift accepted the government’s position that the increase to the UC standard allowance had been aimed at supporting those who had just lost their jobs in the pandemic and were having to claim UC for the first time, even though the government also gave the uplift to those who were already receiving UC.
The high court had heard last November that the government’s decision was unfair, unjustified and discriminatory, and had been a “radical and unprecedented departure” from decades of social security policy.
The claimants’ legal team told the court in November that the refusal to extend the uplift to those on legacy benefits had been achieved with “almost no democratic scrutiny” by parliament, and “limited analysis of the consequences”.
This meant, they had told the court, that hundreds of thousands of disabled people, who were already disproportionately affected by poverty, had to survive on “historically low rates” of benefits during a pandemic that had led to a significant rise in their cost of living.
But the judge has now concluded in his ruling: “The central question raised by the Claimants’ discrimination claims is whether it was lawful for the Secretary of State to direct her attention to the position of new benefits claimants – all of whom would have made claims for Universal Credit.
“I consider that [it] was. New benefits claimants would need to adjust to a loss in income. They would be affected differently to persons already claiming benefits.”
Last March, as part of its #20More4All campaign, Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) had delivered mail bags full of the testimonies of disabled people to DWP, the Treasury and 10 Downing Street, describing the financial struggles they had faced during the pandemic.
Wayland told DNS this week that he “strongly” disagreed with the judge’s reasons for dismissing their judicial review and for the finding that the discrimination was justified.
He said: “The government has had a policy of forced hardship for people on welfare to try and force behavioural change. So it is very deliberate and direct discrimination.
“But that is the biggest problem with the case, the fact that the broader context, particularly political intentions, are absent.
“So without the true motivations of the government being acknowledged, you are never going to get an accurate outcome.”
This led to the judge accepting DWP’s “excuses”, he said.
He added: “It is clear from the past 12 years of Tory rule, that the government has no intention of changing their approach to the sick and disabled community.
“They are shameless, so their callous disregard for the lives of the most vulnerable will continue.”
He said the response to the ruling had to be “to continue fighting in any way we can to force change upon them.
“I and the other claimants are going to do all we can to bring a successful appeal.”
The judgment sparked anger on social media, with claimants saying it had left them “livid”, “disgusted” but also bemused.
Many praised the four claimants of legacy benefits who had taken the case, three of whom, including Wayland, are disabled people. Two of them receive ESA, a third receives income support and the fourth jobseeker’s allowance.
DPAC’s Paula Peters told Wayland on Twitter: “Want to say thank you to you and everyone involved.
“You made a stand. You highlighted the millions of us on legacy benefits who were denied £20 uplift.”
ESA claimant Jennifer Jones, from DPAC Sheffield, told DNS that she was “completely gutted and truly heartbroken” but also angry at the ruling.
She said the high court judgment felt like “a punch in the guts to every claimant who has been hanging onto the hope that someone in a position of power and authority would acknowledge and rectify the discrimination that we have suffered”.
She said: “It genuinely feels like the high court have said that our lives with regards to state benefits are worth less than other people’s, that our needs are less significant and that our struggle goes unacknowledged.”
Jones said that she and other disabled recipients of benefits had faced a sudden rise in living costs at the start of the pandemic.
This included “an increase in costs and difficulties in accessing online grocery shopping, having to take taxis rather than buses for our own safety and also sourcing and replacing PAs and carers when our regular people had to have time off sick or in isolation”.
At the same time she was struggling, disabled women in the same position as her, but on UC, were receiving an extra £20 a week.
She said: “For what reason was this justifiable when our lives were a mirror to each other?
“For me that is the crux of the argument as to the unfairness of this high court decision.
“Myself I have no shame in sharing that I owe nearly £2,000 on a credit card and that that money was spent on the most normal everyday items.”
Liz de Oliveira, a former practising barrister and now an ESA claimant, said that she had used benefit calculator websites to confirm that she would be worse off if she moved onto UC, and so had decided not to transfer until she was forced to do so.
She said: “I am sure that many, many disabled people did similarly. The amount paid is already difficult to survive on and therefore it would constitute an act of gross stupidity to knowingly cut your own income.
“To introduce a system that causes people on legacy benefits (in this I am referring in particular to those claimants who are disabled) to be financially worse off if they do transfer and then to penalise them for not doing so by not allowing them the UC uplift that they would have had if the system had ensured they were not worse off on the new system (UC) just cannot be fair or equitable.”
Fazilet Hadi, head of policy for Disability Rights UK, said the judgment was “extremely disappointing”.
She said: “Whilst the government may have awarded the £20 per week uplift to UC to cushion the economic impact for people losing their jobs during the pandemic, in fact the £20 was paid to everyone on universal credit, regardless of how long they’d been in receipt of the benefit.
“It is very hard to understand why not paying the same £20 to those on ESA and other legacy benefits isn’t viewed as discrimination against disabled people.”
She added: “In the real world, given the poverty level of benefits, the case for extending the £20 per week UC uplift to ESA and legacy benefits was overwhelming.
“Hopefully, this judgment can be appealed. However, the fight for a decent social security system for disabled people goes on.”
The claimants were represented by William Ford of Osbornes Law, Jamie Burton QC of Doughty Street Chambers, and Desmond Rutledge of Garden Court Chambers.
Burton said on Twitter: “Gutted for everyone affected by this judgment. It’s not what any of us were hoping for and will just pile misery upon misery for hundreds of thousands of people.
“Needless to say, we are considering an appeal very carefully. We don’t think the judge properly grappled with our arguments or evidence.
“The decision not to increase legacy benefits in line with universal credit was basically direct discrimination against disabled people. It was completely unjustified discrimination.”
A DWP spokesperson said: “We welcome that the court found in our favour.
“The temporary £20 uplift for universal credit claimants ensured vital support was given to those facing the most financial disruption due to the pandemic.”
24 February 2022
Disabled people will be forgotten again unless ministers change fire safety bill, say peers
Two disabled peers have warned the government that disabled people living in high-rise flats will again be forgotten – five years on from the Grenfell disaster – if its fire safety bill fails to make their need for protection explicitly clear.
Baroness [Tanni] Grey-Thompson and Baroness [Sal] Brinton proposed a series of amendments that would have added to the bill explicit references to the need to protect disabled people living in high-rise blocks of flats and other “higher-risk” buildings.
They both spoke out on Monday during the bill’s committee stage in the House of Lords, just days after disabled campaigners launched a legal action over the government’s decision to award a fire safety contract to consultants who have repeatedly argued against introducing written evacuation plans for disabled residents of tower blocks.
Claddag, a leaseholder action group led by disabled people, is seeking a judicial review of the home secretary’s decision to award the £210,400 contract to C S Todd & Associates (CSTA).
In 2011, CSTA was responsible for drafting and editing a fire safety guide for the Local Government Association (LGA)* that stated that it was “usually unrealistic” to expect landlords to put in place arrangements for disabled people to evacuate blocks of flats in case of an emergency.
Six years later, with the guidance and advice still in place, 72 people lost their lives in the Grenfell Tower disaster, including many disabled residents.
None of the disabled residents had evacuation plans in place, with a single staircase the sole means of escape in the event of an evacuation.
Although their suggested amendments to the fire safety bill were eventually withdrawn, Baroness Grey-Thompson promised to return at the next stage of the bill with amendments that focused on “ensuring that we have protection for disabled people”, which she said peers will be asked to vote on.
The crossbench peer told fellow peers on Monday: “If they are not specifically mentioned, disabled people will be forgotten, however good the intention right now may be.”
Baroness Brinton, former president of the Liberal Democrats, said it was “vital that the specific needs of disabled people are taken into account in the bill”.
She also said that many disabled people were “very concerned” at the award of the contract to CSTA.
She said: “This organisation was responsible for drafting and editing a fire safety guide for the LGA that said it was ‘usually unrealistic’ to expect landlords to put arrangements in place for disabled people to evacuate blocks of flats in the event of an emergency.
“That is an interesting turn of phrase, because, as we know, there were a lot of disabled people in Grenfell and flats are increasingly being built, so evacuation for disabled people is vital.”
Baroness Brinton praised Claddag for taking the legal action.
She said: “The fire service has recognised that the ‘stay put’ advice for residents in high rise blocks must be changed, but there is no evidence from either the government or from C S Todd & Associates that things have changed.
“In fact, a further set of advice has been published by Colin Todd on behalf of BSI that repeated this same arrangement.”
Baroness Grey-Thompson said that she starts to think about how she would be able to escape whenever she enters a building.
She described how she was once stuck in an office building when a fire alarm sounded – which was not a drill – and found herself discussing with another wheelchair-user which one of them had the greater need for the sole evacuation chair.
She allowed the other wheelchair-user to use the evacuation chair and descended five flights of stairs in her wheelchair, which – as a former professional athlete – she can do if she has a handrail to hold onto.
She told fellow peers that the evacuation solutions non-disabled people come up with for disabled people “are very much based on the medical model, rather than the social model, of disability and do not take into account a disabled person’s reality or life”.
Baroness Grey-Thompson said someone once suggested to her that “it would be far easier if disabled people had a curfew so that they went home at night and we knew where they were”.
She also dismissed the idea of “tagging” disabled people electronically so as to check if they are in a building if there is a fire, a suggestion put forward by Colin Todd, CSTA’s managing director, in an article published this month.
She said: “We need to be more forward-thinking and, in essence, we need to future-proof the decisions we take.”
Baroness Hayman, a Labour housing and local government spokesperson in the Lords, said the bill left “a range of fire safety issues unresolved, from the lack of a national strategy as to how to evacuate high-rise buildings to the absence of a requirement to plan for the escape of disabled residents”.
Lord Greenhalgh, the fire minister, did not accept their amendments but assured the two disabled peers that “where the bill refers to residents, this includes residents with disabilities”.
He said: “The government and the Health and Safety Executive are committed to providing residents with diverse backgrounds and lived experiences, including disabled residents, with a strong voice in the new regulatory system.
“The Health and Safety Executive is actively seeking representation of the disabled community on its statutory residents’ panel and is committed to working with and seeking the views of organisations that represent disabled interests.
“I engaged extensively with Claddag; I think it is a fantastic group that we need to continue to learn from.”
He also confirmed that the government’s response to its consultation on proposals to force owners and managers of high-rise residential buildings to prepare personal emergency evacuation plans (PEEPs) for all residents who may find it difficult to “self-evacuate” – a recommendation made by the Grenfell Tower Inquiry – would be published within weeks.
*At the time of its publication, the organisation was known as the Local Government Group
24 February 2022
DWP snubs coroner’s call for change after severely-ill patient was told to visit jobcentre
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has refused to “make any changes”, despite admitting that a disabled patient was told to leave hospital to visit a jobcentre when he was severely ill with a condition that later killed him.
The admission by a senior DWP executive came in response to a call for DWP to take urgent action by Sonia Hayes, assistant coroner for Mid Kent and Medway, after the death of 58-year-old Terence Talbot.
Health professionals had told an inquest into his death that they had never heard of such a “severely ill inpatient” being told to leave hospital to make a benefit claim in person.
Talbot, who was also being detained under the Mental Health Act, was being treated at Maidstone Hospital for drug hypersensitivity syndrome (also known as DRESS syndrome), because of a rare reaction to medication that had been prescribed for his mental distress.
The severe allergic reaction had left him “very vulnerable to infection” and at risk of death, but he was told by DWP contractor Serco to leave the hospital and attend Maidstone jobcentre to confirm his identity as part of a new claim he had made for universal credit (UC).
The letter to Hayes from the senior DWP executive reveals that Talbot had made an online application for UC on 24 January 2020, with the help of a nurse, and told DWP he had been in hospital for more than six weeks, that he was receiving moisturising treatment to his whole body four times a day due to DRESS, and that he had bipolar.
He was instructed to phone a helpline, run by Serco, so he could book a face-to-face appointment in the local jobcentre to verify his identity, and the Serco adviser told him to attend the appointment four days later, on 28 January.
Following that visit to the jobcentre, which he attended in a wheelchair, a note was added to Talbot’s file to show that his next appointment should be by telephone.
The next day, on 29 January, a nurse told DWP of the hospital’s “concerns surrounding his mental health and ability to participate in appointments”.
Five days later, another phone call led to his commitments to being available for work, and to search and prepare for work, being “switched off” by DWP.
On 11 February, DWP decided he was eligible for universal credit.
Terence Talbot died in Maidstone Hospital, less than two months later, on 9 April, from multi-organ failure caused by the lung conditions pneumonia and empyema, which themselves were caused by DRESS.
Following the inquest last year, Hayes wrote a prevention of future deaths report to work and pensions secretary Therese Coffey to warn her that other claimants could die if she did not make urgent changes to how DWP deals with such cases.
This week, DWP’s response to Hayes’s letter was published on the Courts and Tribunals Judiciary website.
But DWP says in its letter to Hayes that it does not plan to make any changes to its policies or practices in response to the concerns she raised.
It claims that the department had not been aware of the “severity of Mr Talbot’s illness” at the time of his UC application and had not “held any evidence” to suggest that he had been sectioned under the Mental Health Act.
It adds: “This information was not included in his online application form and we hold no evidence which suggests that Mr Talbot’s physical condition was considered to be potentially life-threatening at that time.”
The DWP letter also stresses that it had not been aware the inquest was taking place and that the coroner had “made no findings that DWP’s actions in any way caused or contributed to Mr Talbot’s death within her conclusions”.
The letter to Hayes also reveals that DWP’s processes around UC identity verification changed last November so that there is now a “remote option to verify ID where possible and safe to do so”, which “reduces the number of customers that we ask to come into the Jobcentre”.
Because of DWP’s “audio recording retention policy”, the recording of the 24 January call with Serco has been deleted and it is not clear what the Serco helpline adviser was told or what he told Terence Talbot.
DWP insists in the letter to Hayes that “on the information currently available to the DWP, we received no evidence to suggest that Mr Talbot was unable to attend that appointment on account of his illness, or otherwise”.
In the letter’s conclusion, the DWP executive says the department is “committed to ensuring that claimants are given the right support at the right time” and that if a claimant cannot attend a DWP jobcentre “due to a disability or health condition, reasonable adjustments can be made”.
It claims that it made reasonable adjustments for Talbot once it was aware of his circumstances, and that because of the November 2021 changes it is “satisfied that the appropriate support is available to allow vulnerable claimants with complex needs to access benefits”.
It adds that “on that basis, we do not propose to take any specific actions or make any changes at this time in response to the concerns raised by HM Assistant Coroner”.
A spokesperson for Serco, which still has the DWP appointment booking contract, said: “Due to GDPR* requirements and in accordance with our contract with DWP, all recording of calls are deleted after 14 months so we have no records of any calls with Mr Talbot.”
He said that Serco – as with DWP – had not been aware the inquest was taking place and that the coroner had made no findings that its actions had caused or contributed to Talbot’s death.
But he had declined by noon today (Thursday) to say if Serco had any information about what details were shared by Talbot with its adviser during the phone call on 24 January 2020.
He also declined to say if the company was comfortable with the actions it had taken, and whether it carried out its own investigation into the phone call.
The coroner was also highly critical of Kent and Medway NHS and Social Care Partnership Trust (KMSCPT) – which provides mental health services across Kent and Medway – and Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust (MTW) for their failures.
She told KMSCPT that it had failed to subject all the decisions about Talbot’s care and treatment to formal Mental Capacity Act assessments at a time when he was “refusing medical interventions that were in his best interests”.
She had also concluded, in relation to MTW: “The absence of regular dermatology review, lack of application of emollients for whole body severe exfoliative dermatitis and food and fluid not being adequate to meet his needs leading to malnutrition amounted to a gross failure to provide basic medical care that would have prolonged but probably would not have saved his life.”
Both trusts have written to the coroner and – in contrast to DWP – have detailed a series of measures they have taken in response to the concerns she raised after the inquest.
*The General Data Protection Regulation
24 February 2022
Mystery deepens as DWP sends DNS 80 pages of redacted emails
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has sent 80 pages of emails that have been almost entirely blacked out to Disability News Service (DNS), in a bid to avoid complying with its legal duty to release information about DNS editor John Pring.
The 80 pages of redacted information were posted to Pring’s previous address after DWP was told by information rights legal experts at solicitors Mishcon de Reya that its ongoing refusal to release the data was a “serious contravention” of its legal obligations.
Pring has been trying for two years to obtain details of emails written about him by DWP’s communications department.
And although the Information Commissioner’s Office has already agreed that DWP’s failure to provide the information is a clear breach of data protection laws, it has repeatedly refused to release the emails.
Now, in its latest attempt to hide the content of emails that mentioned Pring and were sent and received by the DWP press office during 2019, the department’s right of access team has handed over 80 pages of redacted emails.
The content of the emails is almost completely blacked out, other than the occasional mention of Pring’s name and a small number of random words.
But the redacted pages do reveal the dates on which the emails were sent, which provide clues as to the subject of the discussions within the DWP press office.
One was sent shortly before DWP responded to a lengthy investigation by DNS into deaths of disabled benefit claimants that had been linked to the work capability assessment.
The timing of another, in June 2019, suggests it was discussing a DNS enquiry about a meeting between one of DWP’s director generals and Joy Dove, whose daughter Jodey Whiting had her out-of-work disability benefits stopped for missing a work capability assessment, and took her own life just 15 days later.
Several of the redacted emails appear to be discussing DNS requests relating to the personal independence payment assessment system.
The timing of another suggests it relates to the safeguarding failures of DWP and its private sector contractors, while another email is likely to relate to DWP’s decision to set up a new serious case panel to examine deaths of claimants linked to the department’s failures.
One email, on 25 February 2019, probably discusses a news story that DNS published later that week, which reported how the proportion of DWP staff who said they had been victims of disability discrimination at work in the previous 12 months had risen by about 50 per cent in just four years.
Mishcon de Reya has this week written again to DWP to warn the department that the redacted information it provided “utterly fails” to comply with its legal obligations under the General Data Protection Regulation.
The Mishcon letter adds: “The upshot of your… response to our client’s request is that he remains completely lacking full awareness of what personal data you process about him, and unable to verify the lawfulness of the processing.”
Mishcon says this means that DWP continues to be in “serious infringement” of its GDPR obligations.
In a covering letter accompanying the redacted emails, a DWP manager said she had enclosed “all of the documents that DWP Press Office holds for this period.
“Within these documents, the only information we hold is your name and email address.”
She said: “When you originally made your request, we determined that we did not consider the information that we held to be your personal information as defined by the Information Commissioner in their guidance of ‘What is Personal Data’, hence our response that the information was not held.
“However, in order to be helpful, we have included all the information we have identified as containing your name and email address.
“The email is a full and final response to your right of access request.”
A DWP spokesperson said yesterday (Wednesday): “The department will not be adding anything further.”
24 February 2022
Ministers ‘should admit figures show zero progress on disability employment’
Suggestions that ministers have reduced the disadvantage faced by disabled people in the jobs market are misleading and based on “flawed” measures, a disability employment expert has told Disability News Service (DNS).
Ministers have persistently claimed that government policies have narrowed the so-called disability employment gap, the difference in the employment rates of disabled and non-disabled people.
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) claimed earlier this month that the latest Office for National Statistics (ONS) figures showed the gap had narrowed by 0.7 percentage points in the year to June 2021, and by 4.8 percentage points since 2013.
DWP claimed there had been “strong growth in the number and rate of disabled people in employment and a narrowing of the gap” since 2013.
But once the figures have been adjusted to take account of an increase in the proportion of people describing themselves to ONS in surveys as “disabled”, the adjusted employment gap has remained unchanged since 2013*, and has even widened since the start of the pandemic.
Professor Victoria Wass, from Cardiff Business School, said that any implication in the latest DWP announcement that the government had made progress in addressing the disadvantage faced by disabled people in the employment market and workplace was misleading, and that this “disadvantage” had not changed since 2013, and even increased during the pandemic.
Although the latest DWP statistical release does now accept that prevalence has some impact on the number of disabled people in employment, it still suggests that government policies are having a positive impact.
Last December, the new minister for disabled people, Chloe Smith, said in a parliamentary debate that she was “determined to make further headway in reducing the employment gap for disabled people, building on the progress already made”.
Professor Wass, a member of the Disability@Work group of researchers, said the reason for the government’s disability employment gap figures narrowing since 2013 was a “massive” increase in the number of people reporting that they were disabled.
Her calculations show that the proportion of the working-age population prevented from working by disability-related disadvantage remained stable at about 5.6 per cent from 2013 until the third quarter of 2019, after which it rose to 6.2 per cent, an increase of 11 per cent (0.6 percentage points).
She said: “The measures currently used by the government as indicators of progress on reducing disability employment disadvantage are flawed.”
She said the concerns about the use of the disability employment gap measurement as a measure of progress on disability disadvantage have been repeatedly raised with DWP – and ONS – but have been “largely ignored”.
And she called on ministers to use a more “honest and helpful” approach, such as using a prevalence-adjusted figure in its statistical releases, which would show the real progress made against the disadvantage experienced by disabled people in the job market.
She said: “Using a disability-adjusted DEG, there has been no progress on reducing disability-related disadvantage since 2013.
“This is a shocking indictment on a series of governments which, from 2015 at least, have claimed to be targeting employment disadvantage through specific commitments and policy.”
Professor Wass said the last time that the prevalence-adjusted disability employment gap narrowed was between 1997 and 2010, under a series of Labour governments.
She said the importance of adjusting for increased reporting of disability also applied to any figures showing the differences in areas such as pay, job satisfaction and promotion rates, which are otherwise likely to show a more positive picture than the reality facing disabled employees.
The call for the government to take increasing disability prevalence into account when calculating the disability employment gap, and to use the prevalence-adjusted measure in monitoring national progress on disability employment is one of nine recommendations made in The Disability Employment Charter.
The Disability@Work group is one of the organisations that created the charter**, which also include Disability Rights UK (DR UK), the Business Disability Forum and the public services union UNISON.
A DWP spokesperson said: “Helping disabled jobseekers find, retain and progress in fulfilling work is at the heart of our efforts to level up and we remain committed to reducing the disability employment gap, which has narrowed by almost five percentage points since 2013.
“The current and preferred method of measuring the disability employment gap is well understood and used widely, there are many factors other measures suggested don’t take into account.
“The current measure will remain as the headline indicator.”
*The prevalence-adjusted gap has remained stable since 2010, but there were changes in the way the data was collected which means pre-2013 and post-2013 figures cannot be accurately compared
**The charter was drawn up by Business Disability Forum, the DFN Charitable Foundation, Disability Rights UK, Disability@Work, Leonard Cheshire, Scope, Shaw Trust Foundation, UNISON and the University of Warwick
24 February 2022
Other disability-related stories covered by mainstream media this week
A mother and stepfather have been sentenced to six years in prison for locking up and starving their autistic son in a room of “abject squalor and filth” for seven months: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/feb/18/matthew-langley-mother-stepfather-jailed-locking-up-starving
The government is finding a record number of disability benefits claimants have been wrongly rejected by its own assessments as the cost of correcting these errors soars, new figures show: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/dwp-pip-disabled-benefit-uk-b2009256.html?fbclid=IwAR1jJeFgEBXibvYW7zHNfR_rkMg33ZCk8FC0ht4Hu9GJnCOqnDRkgCV1K5I
Significantly fewer people with learning difficulties will be stuck far from home or in hospitals by March 2024, Scottish ministers have pledged. It follows a report looking at why people with complex care and support needs were in out-of-area placements and had inappropriate long stays in hospital. It recommended a new national register of those with learning difficulties stuck in hospitals, and a national oversight panel to hold local authorities to account: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-60347749
A plan to encourage people to walk and cycle more has made parts of Glasgow dangerous and inaccessible for visually-impaired people, it has been claimed: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-60431429
24 February 2022
News provided by John Pring at www.disabilitynewsservice.com
