Watchdog investigates possible failures at mental health hospital after 24 alleged rapes
The care watchdog is investigating possible safeguarding failures at an NHS trust after a documentary uncovered figures showing there were 24 alleged rapes and 18 alleged sexual offences in just three years at one of its mental health hospitals.
The Care Quality Commission (CQC) told Disability News Service (DNS) yesterday that it had suspended the trust’s ratings for wards for people with learning difficulties and autistic people while it carried out checks, following the documentary’s revelations.
The figures were secured by the team behind Locked Away: Our Autism Scandal, a film for Channel 4’s Dispatches, which revealed the poor and inappropriate treatment and abuse experienced by autistic people in mental health units.
None of the alleged rapes at Littlebrook Hospital in Dartford, Kent, led to a prosecution, with allegations of 12 rapes and 15 further sexual offences dropped because of “evidential difficulties” and investigations into 12 other alleged rapes and two sexual offences failing to identify a suspect.
The hospital is run by Kent and Medway NHS and Social Care Partnership Trust.
The only disciplinary action taken related to just one of the alleged sexual offences, and saw an agency nurse removed from duty by the trust and reported to the police and their employer.
A trust spokesperson said it did not recognise the Kent Police figures, that none of the reports resulted in criminal action, and that it was working with Kent Police to understand the data.
It was unable to say how many different patients made complaints of rape and sexual assault in the three-year period, for data protection reasons.
It had failed to comment on the CQC’s actions by noon today (Thursday).
But a CQC spokesperson told DNS yesterday: “Inspectors are reviewing information in relation to care at the hospital, to decide whether we need to take further action to ensure people are safe.
“Additionally, we have today (28 March) visited the secure inpatient services for people with learning disability and autism as part of a focused inspection to ensure people are being given the best care possible.”
CQC had responded after DNS pointed out that the watchdog had raised concerns about safeguarding and the high number of agency staff at Littlebrook in 2016, when it was rated as “requires improvement” for safeguarding.
There was also an unannounced inspection in June 2021 after concerns were passed to CQC “about the safety and quality of the services” – during that inspection, the trust was unable to show inspectors that the agency staff working on the day of the inspection had completed their inductions.
A CQC spokesperson said: “Safe staffing and staff induction form part of our key lines of enquiry and engagement with the trust. We will report on these as soon as we are able.”
CQC said its inspectors were now reviewing information about care at Littlebrook “to decide whether we need to take further action to ensure people are safe”.
It also visited the trust’s secure inpatient services for autistic people and people with learning difficulties as part of a “focused inspection” on Tuesday (28 March) to “ensure people are being given the best care possible”.
Dispatches was told how one young autistic woman had been kept in long-term segregation for her entire stay at Littlebrook, although not in a unit for autistic people or people with learning difficulties.
She was kept locked in a room with a mattress on the floor for 551 days.
Her mother told Dispatches that this was “effectively solitary confinement”.
But she said her daughter had also revealed that she had been taken to areas in the hospital where there were no cameras, where she was sexually assaulted and raped.
Her daughter, who also has an eating disorder, was later moved to a psychiatric hospital 320 miles from her home in a specialist unit in Northumberland, and “deteriorated in almost every possible way” while she was there.
She was then taken to a ward in a general hospital where she was refusing to eat and was being surgically fed through a tube.
The documentary was written, filmed and directed by Richard Butchins, a disabled writer, journalist and presenter, who also made The Truth About Disability Benefits, the award-winning Dispatches exposé of links between the Department for Work and Pensions and the deaths of benefit claimants.
Butchins, who talks in the film about being autistic and his fears about having to ask for mental health treatment himself, told DNS: “While it is gratifying to see action taken in response to my film, it should not take the spotlight of publicity to improve the care for disabled people in vulnerable situations, and it is concerning to see places deemed not to provide safe and caring environments left open to admissions.
“Often the source of any problem is seen as the fault of the patient – rather than one of the toxic dynamic of the care system.”
A Kent Police spokesperson said: “Between 1 January 2020 and 1 January 2023 a total of 24 rapes and 18 other sexual offences allegedly committed at Littlebrook Hospital, Dartford, were reported to Kent Police.
“Each have since concluded with the evidential test for prosecution not being met or no suspect being identified, with one resulting in further action being taken by another body or agency.”
Detective superintendent Mark Weller, of Kent Police’s protecting vulnerable people command, said: “Tackling rape and other sexual offences, including those committed against women and girls, is a top priority for Kent Police.
“Such offences are among the most serious we deal with and we carry out a full and thorough investigation into every incident reported to us based on the information available.
“We also work very closely with the Crown Prosecution Service to bring offenders before the courts when there is sufficient evidence to do so.
“Protecting vulnerable people, including those suffering through mental ill health, is of the utmost importance, and we record and investigate every incident reported to us to a consistently high standard.
“Victims’ welfare is at the heart of everything we do, and we take steps to support and safeguard them in partnership with independent sexual violence advisors and other support agencies, even when it is not possible to pursue a criminal prosecution.”
A CQC spokesperson said: “Sexual offences are a matter for the police in the first instance.
“However, we take reports of sexual offences seriously and review them all, and raise these issues directly with the trust.
“We do this alongside involvement from police and local authority safeguarding teams’ own investigations and monitor any actions and outcomes taken by the trust to ensure people are kept safe.
“We speak regularly with the trust to monitor the care it provides and to ensure they are taking the right steps to address any areas for improvement.
“Each and every person is entitled to safe, high-quality care and we remain fully committed to using all of the powers available to us to make sure action is taken against services that are not providing this.”
Kent and Medway NHS and Social Care Partnership Trust said new safeguarding policies and procedures were introduced following the 2016 CQC report, including more regular and strict supervision of staff, and new incident reporting systems, while it claimed that all staff, including agency staff, undertake mandatory safeguarding training.
It said that very few allegations made against its staff were substantiated and none of the reports made to the police had resulted in prosecutions.
The trust’s chief executive, Helen Greatorex, said: “We take the safety of our service users, their loved ones and our staff extremely seriously and do not tolerate any form of sexual harassment or misconduct.
“As a safety focused organisation we encourage the reporting of all incidents so that appropriate action can be taken.
“This can include involving the police, putting safeguarding arrangements in place to protect those involved and supporting service users and staff.
“Whilst none of the reports made to the police resulted in criminal action, we can confirm that between 2020-2023 we took immediate action against one individual, an agency nurse.
“We removed them from duty and reported them to both the police and their employer.
“The specialist national services for people with autism are not where we all want them to be.
“The purpose of in-patient mental health services is to care for people experiencing severe mental illnesses.
“Autistic people need specialised settings that cater to their needs which are often not met in acute psychiatric settings.
“We have stepped in to help individuals with autism when there is nowhere else for them to go and have been transparent and clear about our concerns in doing so.
“We remain committed to contributing to the work being done across our region and nationally to create much better options for autistic people who need a period of inpatient care.”
30 March 2023
DWP minister asked to predict how many will die due to stricter sanctions regime
The work and pensions secretary has been asked to “anticipate” the number of benefit claimants that he thinks will lose their lives due to government plans to reintroduce the “harsh and severe” benefits sanctions regime first launched 10 years ago.
Labour’s Debbie Abrahams told Mel Stride that the “punitive” nature of that regime, introduced by the 2010 coalition government, had been “so detrimental” to claimants, particularly those in vulnerable situations.
Stride was giving evidence yesterday (Wednesday) to the Commons work and pensions select committee.
Abrahams highlighted evidence that showed the impact of sanctions on disabled people, including government research which showed that sanctions were “harmful and counter-productive”, and long-term research by academics which showed imposing strict conditions on claimants was ineffective and harmful.
She also pointed to the death of David Clapson, who died in July 2013 after being left destitute by having his benefits sanctioned.
He had diabetes and died from an acute lack of insulin, three weeks after having his jobseeker’s allowance sanctioned.
Because he had no money, he couldn’t afford to pay for electricity that would have kept the fridge where he kept his insulin working, and he had also run out of food.
Abrahams said: “In your response to this committee will you provide an assessment of what you consider to be the impacts of reintroducing the harsh and severe sanctions regime that was introduced back in 2012 and include please your anticipation of deaths of claimants.”
Stride said he had met nobody working for DWP so far “who has anything other than complete compassion and care as an attitude towards people in the kind of situation [she described]”.
He said it was “very easy” to describe ministers and DWP officials as “heartless and uncaring” when discussing sanctions and that was “most certainly not the case”.
Stride said the sanctions regime was “fundamentally the right system” but he added: “I’m not going to argue that it is always perfect on every single occasion.
“I do think that within the way that the system is designed and operates there are appropriate protections in there.”
But Abrahams told him: “It is the punitive nature of the 2012 sanctions regime that was introduced that is so detrimental to vulnerable people especially, but to all people as well.”
She also raised concerns about a return of the “narrative” that had returned over the last few weeks “that claimants are shirkers, they are workshy”.
She asked him: “Do you not think that that language… is detrimental to the claimants who we want to encourage to come into the jobcentre?”
Stride said: “I totally agree, I think it is entirely wrong to demonise large numbers of people in the way in which you are suggesting may be happening, I think that is completely wrong.”
After questioning from the SNP’s David Linden, Stride had admitted earlier in the hearing that he could not remember ever having met or spoken to a single benefit claimant who had been sanctioned by DWP.
He also admitted that he did not know the average amount that a claimant loses when they are sanctioned.
Linden told him it was £600.
Stride said he accepted the “vast” sanctions system was not “entirely perfect” but that the “fundamental principles and the processes employed here are pretty right”.
He told Linden that sanctions were there “for the purpose of trying to have a system that ultimately ends up with more people going into work and work being the way out of the kind of difficulties and pressure you’re rightly describing”.
But Linden told him: “I meet people just about every week who have been subject to conditionality and what a lot of them tell me is that being sanctioned pushes them into destitution.
“They have to be fed by local foodbanks, they have to rely on the charity of people in their community. They experience mental health crisis as a result of that.
“If you’re looking to get people back into work, plunging them into further poverty and destitution is not a particularly good way of doing that.
“It seems to me perhaps your understanding of sanctions is very theoretical and not actually based on how it interacts with people on the ground.”
Stride insisted that the government took a “measured and proportionate approach to sanctioning”.
After Conservative MP Nigel Mills asked about his new disability benefits white paper, Stride told the committee that plans to scrap the work capability assessment would address the “fundamental flaw” in the system that meant there was a “disincentive for somebody who’s receiving disability or health benefits to try work and see if they can get into work and hold down a job”.
He said this was because of the fear that if the job did not work out, that person might not be able to return to the out-of-work disability benefits they received previously.
He said the new system – which would not be introduced until after the next general election – would see those eligible for a new universal credit health element restricted to those who also received the extra costs benefit personal independence payment.
He said this “could be a very, very powerful change which I think and I hope will help hundreds of thousands of people be able to try work and move into work”.
But Mills said the new system appeared to “raise the bar” for those who would currently be seen as not fit for work but would not qualify for PIP.
Katie Farrington, DWP’s director general for disability, health and pensions, claimed DWP was “not trying to raise the bar”, that “this is not about saving money by the back door” and that the measure was intended to be overall “broadly cash neutral” over time.
She said that “many of the people who do not currently claim PIP could come and do so”.
But Mills told her: “Many is not all.”
He suggested that DWP would be “moving that fear to a slightly different benefit… and with more money at stake” because those who now received PIP and tried work would now be concerned about losing their entitlement to PIP if they found a job and were later re-assessed because of the “pervasive fear” about “the way that these assessments happen”.
Farrington told him: “The PIP system is not designed to be anything to do with your ability to work or indeed your personal income, it’s all about the effect that the condition has on you and your life.”
30 March 2023
Watchdog gives Treasury go-ahead to keep budget equality impact secret
The information commissioner has told the Treasury it can continue to hide information that would show how measures in a controversial spring budget were predicted to affect disabled people and other groups protected by the Equality Act.
Disability News Service (DNS) has been trying for the last year to persuade the Treasury to release assessments it made of the equality impact of the measures in last year’s much-criticised spring statement.
DNS also asked to see an analysis of the overall impact of the spring statement on lower-, middle- and higher-income households.
But the Treasury refused to release the information, telling DNS it would not be in the public interest to release analysis that “could be misleading for a general audience”.
It also claimed that releasing the analysis would have a “chilling effect” on how it prepared evidence to support ministers as they draw up policies, which would “lead to poorer decision making”.
DNS lodged a complaint about the Treasury’s decision with the Information Commissioner’s Office.
But information commissioner John Edwards has now ruled – in a decision notice – that the Treasury was not acting unlawfully and is entitled to keep its analysis secret.
He said the Treasury was allowed to rely on section 35 of the Freedom of Information Act, an exemption clause that lets public bodies refuse to release information if it is linked to forming or developing government policy.
The DNS request was made after the spring statement, but the Treasury argued that even then it should not have to release the information because policy development can continue after budgets have taken place, particularly in 2022 with the cost-of-living crisis.
The Treasury admitted to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) that its equality impact assessments often present “extremely frank and blunt assessments of the likely impact of policies on protected groups”.
And it told ICO there was “a strong public interest in protecting information where release would be likely to have a detrimental impact on the ongoing development of policy” and would likely have “a ‘chilling effect’ on the future development of evidence to support policy making”.
Edwards told DNS in his decision notice that he “does not accept that information being complex means that the public would not understand it”.
And he said there was “a significant public interest in the disclosure of information as it would aid the public’s understanding of policy considerations in these areas”, would “make the policy making process more transparent”, and would provide stakeholders with “an insight into the analysis of the issues in question which they could use to engage with the government”.
But he said the Treasury analysis “would have attracted significant interest” and “resulted in particular attention and comment” which “would have had a direct and detrimental impact on the policy development process”.
He concluded that the Treasury should be allowed to keep the information secret because of the “significant, and ultimately compelling, weight that he considers should be given to the safe space arguments” and the “smaller but still substantial weight that he thinks should be attached to the chilling effect arguments”.
His decision suggests that the Treasury will be able to continue keeping secret the assessments it makes of how future budgets and spring statements will affect disabled people and other groups.
Disabled people had reacted with disbelief in March 2022 to the “cruel” decision of the then chancellor Rishi Sunak to all-but-ignore those who rely on benefits in the spring statement, even as the Office for Budget Responsibility was warning that the real value of benefits was set to fall by five per cent in 2022-23.
There was no mention in his speech of disabled people and how many of them were struggling to survive, and no attempt to increase benefits to match the sharply rising rate of inflation.
It was not until late May that Sunak was forced to announce a “sticking plaster” injection of £15 billion in grants and other funding in an attempt to ease the cost-of-living crisis.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) refused this week to comment on the ICO decision or to criticise the Treasury’s refusal to release the equality assessment information from last year’s spring statement.
Instead, an EHRC spokesperson pointed to a letter the commission had written to equalities minister Kemi Badenoch in December 2021, in which it pointed out that it was “good practice for public bodies to produce Equality Impact Assessments to show how they have fulfilled their obligations” under the Equality Act’s public sector equality duty.
The letter said government departments and public bodies should “publish their equality assessments when possible to ensure transparency, accountability and assurance to interested parties”.
30 March 2023
Government’s new access adviser questions release of discrimination evidence
The new chair of the body that advises the government on accessible transport has questioned whether it is right to release research that exposes the discrimination faced by disabled passengers.
There were hopes that the appointment of wheelchair-user Matthew Campbell-Hill would lead to a new era of transparency at the Disabled Persons Transport Advisory Committee (DPTAC).
But he has told Disability News Service that whether it is a good thing to release DPTAC reports and letters exchanged with government ministers “depends on how that information gets used”.
Campbell-Hill said: “My question is: what is the use of it being released? If people weaponise it and put people on the back foot, you slow processes down.
“I can’t think of examples where that approach has helped with regulation in moving forward, but it doesn’t mean they don’t exist.”
He said he knows of organisations where releasing such documents to the public has reduced “confidence” in discussing policy, but he does not have examples of organisations where releasing that information has improved “outcomes”.
And he said that deciding whether DPTAC would do more to release its research reports and letters to ministers was not high on his list of priorities.
Campaigners have previously had to use freedom of information laws to obtain DPTAC documents that showed how the committee had criticised the government’s efforts to address the discrimination faced by disabled rail passengers.
Those documents have helped persuade the equality watchdog to take action under the Equality Act against both the Department for Transport and the rail regulator over concerns that cuts and reforms to train services were making the network ever more inaccessible.
Among them was DPTAC’s Rail Workforce Reform report, which was obtained by the Association of British Commuters (ABC) and concluded that staffing levels on a section of the rail network were “completely inadequate to deliver an accessible railway”.
In 2019, ABC obtained a letter to ministers from DPTAC’s then chair Keith Richards which warned that the government was falling “a very long way short” with its plans to ease the “toxic” impact on disabled people of running driver-only trains through unstaffed stations.
But Campbell-Hill has told DNS that it was not DPTAC’s role to “beat people into submission”.
He said: “That’s a slow way to create change. If things are weaponized, it puts people on their back foot and it slows down change.”
Instead, he wants the committee to offer advice “as early as possible” so access issues can be resolved before they become “live wire conversations” and DPTAC has to spend time in “firefighting positions”.
Campbell-Hill said it was too early to give his views about the impact on disabled passengers of government plans to close ticket offices and cut staff on the railways.
But he told DNS that he has had disability-related problems with every one of the eight or so return rail journeys he has taken as a wheelchair-user in the last 12 months.
He was dropped off at a rural station where the lifts had been shut off because it was after 10pm; he has been left on trains without assistance to disembark; and he has missed trains because he hadn’t arrived early enough for staff to arrange the assistance he had booked.
He said he does not feel he would be able to rely on rail transport if he had to use it every day to travel to and from work.
He reduced his use of public transport during the pandemic, and rarely uses buses – as he lives in a rural location where they are not accessible – and now makes most of his journeys in his car.
Other than his own experience of public transport as a passenger, his work in the transport field has centred so far on his role as a non-executive director at the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency, a Department for Transport agency, where he chairs the health, safety and wellness committee and leads on advice on self-driving vehicles.
Campbell-Hill – a technology and media consultant and retired international wheelchair fencer – was appointed as DPTAC’s new chair last month.
The appointment of a disabled person as the new chair was widely welcomed, but he told DNS that he does not believe that “lived experience is a basic requirement for a job around disability”.
He said: “I don’t see my disability as a qualification… I think it dumbs down what people do and what people have achieved to assume that their having a disability gives them a qualification above others.
“I would be very sad personally to think that I got the role because I was disabled and not because I have been working for quite a long time advising in novel technology adoption in highly regulated areas and looking at how we can ensure that the most people get access to these technologies.
“There are different types of data, and lived experience is an important part of that data. My experience of those train journeys, that is data.”
He said repeatedly during the interview that he wanted to improve the understanding of DPTAC’s role, which is to advise the government on issues around accessible transport.
30 March 2023
Six disability campaigners tell MPs: Government’s benefit reforms are not fit for purpose
Six disability campaigners have delivered scathing criticism of the government’s controversial new disability benefits reforms, in evidence to a committee of MPs.
The representatives of three disabled people’s organisations and two disability charities joined a Conservative disabled peer in delivering an almost completely negative assessment of the Transforming Support white paper, which was published earlier this month.
They were giving evidence as part of a Commons women and equalities committee inquiry into the government’s National Disability Strategy.
They mostly focused on plans in the white paper to scrap the work capability assessment (WCA), and to tighten the benefits sanctions regime.
Under the WCA plans, sick and disabled people who cannot work would only be able to qualify for a new health element of universal credit if they also received the extra costs benefits personal independence payment (PIP) or disability living allowance, or adult disability payment in Scotland.
This would mean that responsibility for deciding if a disabled person had to carry out work-related activity would be handed to work coaches, who would be likely to have no healthcare qualifications.
Fazilet Hadi, head of policy for Disability Rights UK, told the committee the WCA reforms were “so problematic” and the “direction of travel was all bad”, despite some apparent new money for employment support.
She said that leaving it to individual work coaches to decide what work-related activity a disabled person should carry out would leave disabled people “extremely exposed to bad practice”.
And she said there would be people who were not fit for work but would not qualify for PIP and therefore would be ineligible for the new health element of universal credit under the new system.
She said: “There could be a lot of disabled people who get regularly assessed for PIP who will live in fear of losing it because if they lose it, they then lose the health component of universal credit.”
She said that 50 per cent of PIP claims are initially rejected.
She said: “The linking of PIP, an extra costs benefit, with access to a higher rate of universal credit is so problematic.
“If you combine the greater imposition of sanctions, the failure to understand in a consistent way across the service the fitness for work of disabled people, and the link to personal independence payment, I think it’s a very, very scary prospect.
“The day of the white paper, the phones were hot with disabled people with anxieties about what was happening.”
She said the WCA would only be scrapped through new legislation after the next election, and even then the reforms would not initially affect current claimants.
But she added: “The direction of travel is all bad.”
Svetlana Kotova, director of campaigns and justice for Inclusion London, said: “We haven’t seen evidence that sanctions work in relation to disabled people and it is just so disappointing to see that again and again this is the main focus of policies to help as many of us as possible into work.”
She said there was “very little” in the white paper about “improving the workplace itself”.
Because of the number of people who currently receive extra support through the WCA system but do not receive PIP, this meant that “obviously there will be big losers and many of them will be in real trouble”.
She added: “We are really worried that people will be pushed to work and with a detriment to their health.”
The disabled Conservative peer Lord [Kevin] Shinkwin told the committee: “In effect, it is one step forward, two steps back in terms of creating concern and anxiety among disabled people, particularly on the PIP assessment point.
“I don’t think the PIP assessment was designed, intended to be fit for purpose for what it is now being proposed it should be used for.”
Fran Springfield, co-chair of the disabled people’s organisation Chronic Illness Inclusion, said: “Taking away the WCA and not replacing it with something else doesn’t make any sense to me.
“I can’t see how you can move PIP into part of universal credit, either, because PIP is a completely different system.”
She added: “We don’t think this has been properly thought out at all.
“I don’t think there has been any input into this from disabled people and this is going to make life much more difficult for those of us with invisible disabilities.
“We have to find a system that is compassionate and encourages people if they are well enough to go into work but accept that there are some people who will never be well enough to go into work, and those people deserve support and help.”
Martin McLean, senior policy adviser for the National Deaf Children’s Society, said it was “very disappointing” that there was “no recognition” in the white paper that “young people may need more tailored support”, with “an assumption that whatever was going to work for older adults… was going to be effective for young people as well”.
He said: “It’s just frustrating that disabled young people have not been considered within that because they can face the biggest barriers in terms of moving into work.”
He said disabled young people were often not aware of what support DWP offered, which “increases the risk of disabled young people leaving education and falling into long-term unemployment”.
Nil Guzelgun, policy and campaigns manager for Mind, said the charity welcomed government plans to scrap the “difficult and oftentimes humiliating” WCA but was concerned that it would be replaced instead by PIP assessments.
She pointed to a report published by Mind earlier this month, which surveyed more than 1,000 people with mental health problems.
Nearly half (46 per cent) of those who had been assessed for PIP said their benefits assessor did not understand mental health problems, compared with 36 per cent of those assessed through a WCA.
And nearly seven in 10 (69 per cent) respondents who had been assessed for PIP said going through the assessment made their mental health worse, compared with 62 per cent of those who had gone through the WCA.
She told the committee that the PIP assessment criteria were “not suitable for people with mental health problems” because of the fluctuating nature of their conditions.
She said: “We think government really needs to review urgently and improve PIP assessments so that they can be more appropriate for people who go through these assessments.”
30 March 2023
Disabled Tory peer tells MPs: DWP is ‘stuck in a time warp’
A disabled Conservative peer has told MPs that the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is “stuck in a time warp” and has a “culture of low aspiration”.
Lord [Kevin] Shinkwin said he believed DWP treated disabled people “as maybe people from ethnic minority backgrounds or even women would have been treated by men 50 years ago.”
He was giving evidence to the Commons women and equalities committee, which is carrying out an inquiry into the government’s National Disability Strategy, which was ruled to be unlawful by the high court in January 2022.
The government has appealed against the high court ruling and the Court of Appeal is expected to hear the case later this year.
Lord Shinkwin told the committee he did not believe DWP was capable of coming up with solutions to the widespread inequality that disabled people face and which were described in the strategy in July 2021.
He said he had written twice to the then work and pensions secretary Therese Coffey about the government’s engagement with disabled people and eventually received a “really quite curt, perfunctory response to a letter that had been perfectly warm”.
He said: “I can’t help thinking this was symptomatic of the DWP’s defensiveness and their inability to engage with disabled people as equals, as equal partners.”
He said he believed the co-production approach that has been taken in other parts of the country would be “completely undesirable as far as DWP is concerned”.
Fazilet Hadi, head of policy for Disability Rights UK, told the committee that the government’s decision to appeal the high court ruling had “wasted 15 months of energy and impetus”.
She said the government had promised to publish a new disability action plan this year, and then carry out a three-month consultation on that plan, while it said the action plan “will be about quick wins and not systemic change” because of next year’s general election.
She said: “It’s like we are going to have a Rolls Royce consultation – excellent – but we are going to have a ‘quick wins’ action plan.
“It’s quite hard to feel optimistic about this process.”
She said the National Disability Strategy had set out the evidence on the systemic inequality that disabled people are facing “very coherently, no holds barred” but then failed to match that with any kind of “systemic challenge”, while social care, education and benefit reform were all omitted from the strategy.
She said: “For a government that should have joined up things, to leave those huge issues out that are fundamental to the life chances of disabled people was very, very strange.”
Svetlana Kotova, director of campaigns and justice for Inclusion London, said: “Our expectation was that the National Disability Strategy would look at disability equality from a social model point of view: that we are not disabled by our impairments but by society, and look at these fundamental barriers that we face that government could help to address in a coordinated way.
“It needs a coordinated approach, and we didn’t really see that.
“We want to see real commitment to disability equality, proper engagement mechanisms put in place, so our experiences are listened to and not denied.”
Kotova said there had been better engagement between disabled people’s organisations (DPOs) and the minister for disabled people following the high court ruling.
But although the DPO Forum England now had “regular facetime” with the minister for disabled people, Tom Pursglove, and the government had “committed to listening to us”, she added: “We are still not really involved in strategic engagement.”
And she said there had been no engagement around the government’s disability benefits white paper, which was published earlier this month, or on social care reform.
She said: “Although we have face time, it doesn’t necessarily always lead to real change.”
30 March 2023
Watchdog warns DWP over repeated failure on freedom of information laws
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has been warned by the information commissioner for “systemically failing to comply with the law” over how it has dealt with requests for information on disability benefits, universal credit and claimant deaths.
The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) issued a practice recommendation to DWP after finding it had a “consistently poor level of performance” on handling requests for information under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
This included “a pattern of requests” in which DWP had “failed to correctly interpret the request, locate all of the information falling within the scope of the request or has failed to confirm what information, if any, is held”.
The information commissioner has issued only about 15 practice recommendations in the last three years, mostly to councils, police forces and government departments, and just nine since launching a new “regulatory manual” last July.
But DWP has now been told it has repeatedly breached the Cabinet Office code of practice because of how it has handled a series of requests for information, including at least one from Disability News Service (DNS).
If DWP fails to confirm that it has complied with the report’s recommendations by 23 June, it could be issued with an enforcement notice and possibly be subject to an “adverse comment” in a report to parliament by the information commissioner.
In the new report, information commissioner John Edwards noted an increase in the number of complaints which have led to him ordering DWP to “disclose the requested information”.
He also pointed to an increase in the amount of information being withheld by DWP where it previously would have been “disclosed or proactively published”.
This included a report that showed how many disabled people who receive disability benefits had been unable to afford essential living costs such as rent, heating or food, even before the current cost-of-living crisis, and which was only published after it was obtained by the Commons work and pensions committee.
Edwards said cases were increasingly being brought to him where the public interest in releasing information was “not being adequately considered” by DWP.
He said that the nature and importance of DWP’s responsibilities meant there was a “high public interest” in its information because of the “vulnerable nature” of those who relied on its services and the “large amount of public money which funds the department”.
DWP admitted to ICO that staff responding to freedom of information (FOI) requests do not have to carry out any training, although “training, guidance and advice” is available if they ask for it.
Several cases examined by the ICO related to DWP’s failure to locate information about its decision not to extend the £20 uplift to universal credit to those on legacy benefits during the pandemic.
Others related to its refusal to confirm whether it held information that had been requested.
And one case saw it repeatedly fail to provide information that had been requested about secret internal process reviews into the deaths of benefit claimants.
One of the cases related to the repeated attempts by DNS to obtain figures that would show how many disabled people would lose out in the move to universal credit.
DWP even attempted to brand DNS “vexatious” for trying to secure the figures.
But the information commissioner finally forced DWP to release the information, which proved that at least one million disabled people would eventually be left worse off through the move to universal credit.
Ministers such as Justin Tomlinson, the former minister for disabled people, and former work and pensions secretary Therese Coffey had repeatedly claimed that around one million disabled households would receive a higher entitlement under universal credit than they would have received under their previous “legacy” benefits.
But every time they repeated the figure, they failed to say how many disabled households were expected to receive a lower entitlement under universal credit.
It took two-and-a-half years for DNS to force DWP to release the figures, with the information commissioner’s help.
Campaigner John Slater, who has spent years using freedom of information laws to hold DWP to account for its failings, said: “I’m delighted that the ICO has taken this action and I hope that it improves the culture within the DWP in respect of FOIA.”
He said he had made “numerous complaints” to the ICO about DWP using identical responses to different requests for information, particularly when it was arguing against there being a public interest in releasing the information.
He said: “In some cases the DWP used exactly the same text in responses to requests submitted years apart.”
He added: “I welcome the recommendation that training be provided to [DWP] people dealing with requests for information.
“It is incredibly frustrating to see exemptions being relied on when there is clearly no basis for the DWP to do so.
“I suggest that this [training] needs to be extended to people carrying out redactions.
“Hopefully, improved training will reduce the number of instances where the DWP relies on various exemptions throughout the investigation by the commissioner only to replace them with a raft of new exemptions when it appeals a decision notice to the [information rights tribunal].”
Jon Baines, senior data protection specialist at solicitors Mishcon de Reya, who provided pro bono legal support for DNS in a lengthy data protection case against DWP, said: “It’s encouraging to see the commissioner exercising his formal powers against public authorities who fail to comply with FOI.
“Delays in the FOI process, and the lack of sanctions for those delays, have been one of the biggest frustrations for requesters, but also – by extension – for the public, in recent years.”
An ICO spokesperson said: “With the launch of our new FOI and transparency regulatory manual last year, we have been taking more proactive regulatory action against public authorities that are systemically failing to comply with the law.
“Practice recommendations are supportive tools that set out steps that public authorities can take to improve their service to those making information requests.
“While they are not enforceable in and of themselves, they may inform our consideration of whether further action is needed, depending on the authority’s future performance.”
DWP told DNS this week that it now responded within the statutory timeframe in 98 per cent of the requests received, an improvement which is mentioned briefly in the information commissioner’s practice recommendation but does not relate to the key issues covered by the ICO report.
In a statement, a DWP spokesperson added: “The department is carefully considering all points raised by the Information Commissioner’s Office and will take any necessary steps to implement any changes required ahead of the ICO’s deadline.
“The department takes very seriously its compliance with the Freedom of Information Act and compliance with the Cabinet Office code of practice.”
30 March 2023
Frustration over review’s failure to call Met police ‘institutionally disablist’
Disabled campaigners have criticised a review of standards in the Metropolitan police for failing to conclude that the force is institutionally disablist, and then refusing to explain that decision.
Baroness Casey’s review of the force’s culture and standards found one in three (33 per cent) disabled members of staff had experienced bullying, while she found there were 358 employment tribunal claims related to disability discrimination brought against the Met between 2017-18 and 2021-22.
Her review described the number of disability-related tribunal claims – which compared with 219 related to race and 131 related to sex discrimination – as “striking”.
And she found that eight per cent of staff grievances related to disability discrimination, compared with six per cent related to race and three per cent linked to sex discrimination.
But despite the apparent weight of evidence of disability discrimination across the force, Baroness Casey concluded that the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) was institutionally racist, sexist and homophobic, but not that it was institutionally disablist.
When Disability News Service asked why there was no finding of institutional disablism, bearing in mind the evidence within the report, a spokesperson for the review pointed to some of the references to disability discrimination in the report, and added: “I’m afraid we won’t be providing further quotes or commentary.”
An autistic detective in the Met who was bullied out of her dream job by the “toxic and discriminatory” actions of her managers told DNS last week that she believed the Met was a disablist institution.
This week, disabled campaigners criticised the review’s failure to condemn the Met’s “rampant institutional disablism”.
Louise Holden, a member of the Met’s disability independent advisory group (DIAG) and Inclusion London’s hate crime partnership project manager, said: “Once again, even with clear evidence of institutional disablism, it is not called out for what it is by this review, or in the mainstream media.
“Why are institutions so scared to call out all forms of prejudice; why focus on some and not others?
“It sends a clear message that disablism is not as important.
“I can’t imagine how it must feel to the disabled police officers in the Met who gave their personal experiences to know that it has been ignored as a priority yet again.”
She added: “I want to know that I am valued and respected as a disabled member of the DIAG, not there as a tick box exercise.
“I want to support the police officers I know in the Met who really want to make a difference and make the changes needed, to regain the trust of disabled Londoners.
“We are calling on MOPAC [the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime] and the MPS to set up disability leads who work across all workstreams, to make sure issues relating to systemic disablism are taken on as part of a whole system change to root out all forms of prejudice, bias and abuse.”
The grassroots, user-led mental health group Recovery in the Bin said: “We think the Casey Review exposed its own ableism by failing to properly identify and condemn the Met’s rampant institutional disablism.”
Dr David Wilkin, an honorary fellow at the University of Leicester’s School of Criminology, author of a book on disability hate crime on public transport and a coordinator of the Disability Hate Crime Network, said the Casey report was “a missed opportunity” as “the use of the term would have shone a more powerful light on a potential problem”.
He said: “What would however have been helpful is telling us why it was not mentioned.
“If they didn’t find institutional disablism, tell us. If they did find it, but were unable to reveal this, tell us why.
“What they have done therefore is to devalue institutional disablism within the police by citing that issues occur, without elevating them to an ‘institutional’ footing.
“This leaves the phenomenon as somewhat lesser in importance than the other biases.”
Anne Novis, a former DIAG chair, former chair of Inclusion London, and a long-time campaigner on disability hate crime, was another to criticise the review’s failure to conclude the Met was institutionally disablist.
She said: “Due to lack of awareness and recognition of how they should be working with Deaf and disabled people, including staff, the Met is institutionally disablist.
“Mainly because they do not integrate and sustain all the work of Deaf and disabled people who are advising them.
“Whilst I acknowledge it’s difficult for such a large institution, that’s no excuse, they have had input for many years, from Deaf and disabled people, yet the same negative attitudes and barriers continue.”
She added: “There is an ingrained expectation of physical fitness within all police services.
“Even when a member of staff becomes disabled by work-related injuries, or stress on mental health, they do find negative attitudes.
“There is a lack of understanding that enforces a medical model approach rather than the social model.
“Therefore, it’s down to the disabled person to prove themselves able, rather than the police service identifying the barriers that disable staff and service-users.”
30 March 2023
Disabled activists raise concerns over MPs’ assisted suicide inquiry
Disabled activists have raised fears that they may not be asked to give evidence in public at a high-profile Commons inquiry into legalising assisted suicide.
The health and social care committee began taking oral evidence this week, hearing from four peers and three academics, none of whom appear to identify as a disabled person.
The committee has already received thousands of written statements, following a call for evidence.
But Not Dead Yet UK (NDY UK), the leading organisation of disabled people campaigning against legalisation in the UK, has told Disability News Service of its concern that it will not be asked to give evidence in public.
NDY UK said it was “deeply concerned” about the representation of disabled people and their organisations in the committee’s hearings.
They are calling for a guarantee that disabled people or their organisations will be able to give oral evidence in public.
Phil Friend, co-convenor of NDY UK, said: “As an organisation that strongly advocates for the rights and well-being of disabled individuals, we believe that the voices of disabled people must be included in any discussions that can directly impact their lives and the perception of their quality of life.
“We acknowledge the importance of hearing from peers, academics, and healthcare professionals during the inquiry.
“However, we firmly believe that the lived experiences and perspectives of disabled people are crucial in understanding the complexities and consequences of assisted dying and assisted suicide.”
Friend said it was crucial to examine the safeguards that would be needed to prevent abuse, coercion, or undue pressure on disabled people if assisted suicide was ever legalised.
He added: “Excluding disabled people’s voices from these discussions could lead to a skewed understanding of the issue and, ultimately, result in policies that may be detrimental to the disabled community.”
The committee declined to guarantee that it would hear from disabled people and organisations run and controlled by disabled people in the public evidence sessions.
But a spokesperson for the committee said: “In carrying out its inquiry into assisted dying/assisted suicide, the health and social care committee has received written evidence submissions from individuals and organisations from different perspectives in the debate.
“The first evidence session has taken place this week and members will move to hear from other voices in future sessions, which will be announced in due course.
“Guidance on giving evidence to select committee inquiries is available on our website.”
This week’s first evidence session saw Baroness Hollins, a doctor and psychiatrist, who has previously spoken out in the Lords against legalisation, tell the committee: “I am very, very worried about the unintended consequences and I think that no country in the world has succeeded in creating a law which actually protects people who find themselves in vulnerable situations.”
Baroness Meacher, chair of the pro-assisted suicide organisation Dignity in Dying, who has previous attempted – and failed – to legalise assisted suicide through a private members’ bill, told the committee: “At the moment, some people have to choose between suicide, suffering or Switzerland.
“Future generations are going to be appalled that we have taken so long to put this right.”
She said that 86 per cent of disabled people had supported an assisted suicide law for people who are terminally ill and “mentally competent”. This appeared to be a reference to a Populus poll carried out eight years ago on behalf of Dignity in Dying.
The crossbench peer Baroness Finlay, who has spoken out against assisted suicide in the Lords and is a consultant in palliative medicine, told the committee of a patient who was “desperate” for euthanasia in 1991, and was believed to have just three months to live, but is still alive today.
She said her own mother was strongly in favour of assisted suicide and had been given six weeks to live, and was angry with her daughter for opposing legalisation.
Four years later, she told her daughter she was “really glad” that she had had “the most incredibly rewarding time” with the extra time she had been given, including being able to see her new grandson.
Labour MP Rachael Maskell raised concerns about coercion by abusive relatives of those who have had an assisted suicide in countries where it has been legalised.
Professor Nancy Preston, a professor of supportive and palliative care at the University of Lancaster, who has carried out research on assisted suicide in the US, Switzerland and the Netherlands, said there had been a small number of cases in Switzerland where family members had first introduced the idea of an assisted suicide.
She said there was also a case where a physician had prescribed an assisted suicide – which had been backed by a Swiss right-to-die organisation – but the physician stopped the procedure because the patient “lacked competency” to agree to it.
Professor Preston said: “So is any system possible to have every safeguard in place?
“I think that is going to be very challenging, no matter what, but you’re always going to get some cases, aren’t you?”
30 March 2023
Other disability-related stories covered by mainstream media this week
The Civil Aviation Authority has told ITV News that treatment of some disabled air passengers has been “absolutely unacceptable”. Exclusive details of its new plan to improve standards were provided by the organisation. The initiative comes as accessibility campaigners prepare to take their fight for changes in the aviation sector to Downing Street, where they will outline their demands for better service: https://www.itv.com/news/2023-03-29/airline-authority-says-treatment-of-disabled-passengers-unacceptable
Dissatisfaction at social care services among those who have had to deal with them has spiralled to “unbelievably distressing” levels, according to a comprehensive study of the public’s experiences. Two-thirds of people who have used or had contact with social care were dissatisfied, an analysis of the British Social Attitudes survey has revealed. Among the public as a whole, only one in seven British people were satisfied with social care services, according to the survey: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/mar/26/shaming-misery-of-uk-social-care-uncovered
Ministers should ensure people with long Covid receive the support they need from employers, with two-thirds claiming they have been unfairly treated at work, a report argues. The TUC and charity Long Covid Support warn that failing to accommodate the two million people who, according to ONS data, may have long Covid in the UK will create “new, long-lasting inequalities”. Two-thirds of the 3,000 people with long Covid who responded to a survey had experienced some form of unfair treatment at work, ranging from harassment to being disbelieved about symptoms or threatened with disciplinary action. One in seven said they had lost their job: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/mar/27/long-covid-two-thirds-workers-unfair-treatment-report
30 March 2023
News provided by John Pring at www.disabilitynewsservice.com
