Contents
Second coroner links universal credit flaws with death of a claimant 1
Committee of MPs rejects minority bid for report to push for assisted suicide legalisation 4
Disabled peer returns to the Lords to fight for victims of infected blood scandal 6
New questions over DWP fraud investigations after it wrongly threatens couple… over 88p 11
Access to Work waiting-list climbs again, despite DWP claims 13
Report highlights access barriers imposed by sustainability efforts at live events 14
Other disability-related stories covered by mainstream media this week 16
Second coroner links universal credit flaws with death of a claimant
A coroner has linked the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) and its universal credit benefit system with the death of a disabled woman, after its repeated failings and missed opportunities to protect her triggered a significant increase in her anxiety.
Coroner Fiona Butler is the second coroner in just three months to raise concerns about the safety of universal credit after the death of a claimant who took their own life.
She highlighted how DWP missed six opportunities to record the “vulnerability” of Nazerine (known as Naz) Anderson on its IT system while it was reviewing her universal credit claim, including failing to act on the mental distress she showed in phone calls.
It also repeatedly failed to act on requests to direct its telephone calls and letters to her daughter.
The review of her universal credit “continued to preoccupy her thoughts” and six days after receiving the final piece of correspondence from DWP, she took an overdose.
Although she did not intend to take her own life, the overdose caused irreversible damage to her liver, and she died a month later, on 19 June 2023, while receiving palliative care at Melton Mowbray Hospital.
Following an inquest earlier this month, Butler has now sent a prevention of future deaths (PFD) report to DWP, raising serious concerns about the department’s safeguarding failures.
Disability News Service (DNS) has now reported on three deaths of disabled people that have been closely linked with the safety of universal credit and its systemic flaws.
Three months ago, another coroner sent DWP a PFD report, calling on the department to take action to prevent those flaws leading to further deaths, this time following the suicide of Kevin Gale, from Penrith, Cumbria.
And in November 2022, DNS reported how a disabled woman left traumatised by the daily demands of universal credit took her own life just four days after being told she would need to attend a face-to-face meeting with a work coach. Her inquest has yet to take place.
The concerns raised by Butler in her PFD report also suggest that DWP has failed to learn key lessons from the death of Philippa Day, who died in October 2019.
That inquest, in January 2021, also led to a PFD report, with coroner Gordon Clow calling for changes to the personal independence payment system.
Clow had called for changes to the mental health training given to DWP’s call handlers and improvements to its poor record-keeping, and highlighted repeated failures to record on Philippa Day’s file that she needed additional support with her claim, while he also pointed to the failure to respond to the mental distress she displayed when she called a DWP telephone agent.
Naz Anderson, from Melton Mowbray, was admitted to Leicester’s Bradgate Mental Health Unit in December 2022 after a decline in her mental health that a consultant psychiatrist told the coroner was triggered by a review of her universal credit claim by DWP’s performance review team.
DWP had suggested she had been overpaid and would need to pay back the debt.
She was diagnosed with adjustment disorder, an “excessive reaction to stress that involves negative thoughts, strong emotions and changes in a person’s behaviour”.
But it took six months for the review to be completed and during that time DWP missed at least six opportunities to highlight her need for additional support on its universal credit system.
It failed to take this action “despite Naz being tearful and distressed on the telephone on more than one occasion and advising the DWP of information surrounding her mental health and her inability to cope”.
DWP also repeatedly failed to pass information between its performance review and universal credit case handling teams about the need to correspond with her daughter, a request made because “corresponding with Naz was of serous detriment to her mental health”.
Butler wrote: “This was a simple request and had been renewed by Naz during telephone calls and journal entries to the DWP.
“The request which had been made in writing by Naz’s daughter sat in another DWP computer system for a period of four months but even when uploaded to the main DWP computer system was not acted upon.”
In the four weeks before her overdose, the coroner wrote, she received two telephone calls asking for detailed information, a universal credit message through her online journal that she did not understand, and three letters warning her that the amount she owed was increasing.
Butler wrote in her PFD report: “Those mental health professionals who had worked with Naz throughout seven months in which her mental health had deteriorated gave evidence to me that the recurrent and predominant cause of Naz’s increased anxiety was the DWP performance review.”
She said DWP had given evidence to the inquest of plans “to introduce a number of changes”.
But she said DWP had not told her how its staff “were going to be trained, upskilled and refreshed in their knowledge” to ensure the issues she highlighted in the PFD report were not repeated “with other vulnerable individuals”.
Imogen Day, Philippa Day’s sister, told Disability News Service that it was “upsetting” to see more people suffering in similar ways to her sister.
She said: “It takes me back to Pip asking me to promise to fight for her in the event of her death and how there is still more work to be done to fulfil that promise.”
She added: “It is clear from the PFD report of Naz Anderson that insufficient changes have been made within the DWP for vulnerable claimants since Philippa’s death in 2019.
“Their cases are extremely similar, with missed opportunities to register both people as vulnerable.
“I am struck by how Naz’s daughter’s simple request to be an intermediary could not be acted on.
“The DWP heard extensively in Philippa’s inquest about the effect of receiving letters from the DWP on her mental health from her community psychiatric nurse and mental health team.
“Disability activists and advocates are aware of the fear of the [DWP] brown envelope and the significant impact this can have on a person’s mental health.
“I continue to hope for changes to prevent further suffering.”
John McArdle, co-founder of Black Triangle, said it was clear that “no lessons have been learned” by DWP, which had led to another life lost, and that PFD reports appeared to be something that DWP “can just throw in the bin”.
He said: “They don’t seem to have learned anything. They are repeating their mistakes and they are exacerbating the situation at speed.
“They just carry on regardless. They reject coroners’ findings. It’s very grim.”
He said he had given up trying to convince the Conservative party after 14 years in government, but he called on Labour to “acknowledge the empirical fact that these deaths are avoidable and that not to change their policies and systems accordingly [if they win power] will make them complicit in tens of thousands of further tragedies”.
Linda Burnip, co-founder of Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC), said: “This is yet another tragic and avoidable death of yet another disabled social security claimant.
“Universal credit has always been toxic and is set to be even more dangerous for disabled claimants in the future as medically unqualified jobcentre staff will have the powers to decide what a claimant can and can’t do in relation to seeking work.
“That, together with the horrific ramping up of the sanctions regime, means DPAC is convinced this will result in many more deaths of disabled people.”
She added: “DWP continue to fail disabled people and it is past time that the Equality and Human Rights Commission made them more accountable.”
DPAC is organising a protest outside DWP’s Caxton House headquarters in London at noon on Monday (4 March), in which it will call for an end to deaths connected to benefit claims.
It is part of a national day of action in opposition to the government’s “brutal and horrific social security reforms”, which will be linked to the social media hashtag #NoMoreBenefitDeaths.
DPAC hopes local groups and allies will organise actions across the UK, alongside the London protest.
DPAC said it was “gravely concerned” at government plans to intensify conditions and benefit sanctions imposed on claimants and to tighten the work capability assessment, which will see social security cuts for hundreds of thousands of disabled people and “new powers for unqualified work coaches in jobcentres”, who will decide what work-related activity should be carried out.
A DPAC spokesperson said: “Kicking the poor – particularly those in receipt of benefits – is still somehow viewed by party policy wonks on both sides as a vote winner, while the richest in our society have seen their wealth grow by more than 20 per cent just since the pandemic.”
DWP declined to say if it now accepted the need for an inquiry into the years of deaths linked to its actions; how it could still be guilty of the systemic flaws that contributed to Naz Anderson’s death, three years after a coroner highlighted similar issues following the death of Philippa Day; and whether DWP finally accepted that there were systemic safeguarding flaws within the universal credit system.
A DWP spokesperson said in a statement: “Our thoughts are with Ms Anderson’s family at this distressing time.
“We will review the coroner’s report and respond shortly.”
29 February 2024
Committee of MPs rejects minority bid for report to push for assisted suicide legalisation
A cross-party committee of MPs has rejected attempts by a minority of its members to try to use a new report to push the government towards legalising assisted suicide in England and Wales.
The report follows a 14-month inquiry, with more than 68,000 responses from members of the public to an online survey, more than 380 pieces of written evidence, and oral evidence from 29 experts and politicians to the health and social care select committee.
An appendix to the Assisted Dying/Assisted Suicide report shows how the committee rejected an attempt by two of its 11 members to call on the government to put aside time for a “full debate” on the issue.
It also rejected an attempt by the same two members to insert a conclusion in the report that the experience of states and countries that have legalised assisted suicide showed assisted suicide “can be introduced safely and successfully”.
As a result of these votes, instead of reaching a conclusion on whether the law should be changed, the committee described the report today (Thursday) as “a comprehensive basis for future debate” on assisted suicide.
In all, committee members apparently opposed to legalisation rejected three attempts to add more pro-assisted suicide content and conclusions to the report, and they also succeeded in watering down criticisms of the current law through their own amendment.
There were both Conservative and Labour MPs on both sides of the votes.
Today’s publication could be welcomed by disabled activists who oppose legalisation of assisted suicide and have raised serious concerns about the impact of legalisation in those states and countries where it has taken place.
They have warned that more than a decade of cuts to social care has stripped disabled people of their independence and would leave them at “significant risk” if parliament opted to legalise assisted suicide.
The new report includes evidence on parliament and the current law, the government’s role in the debate, international examples of where assisted suicide has been legalised, assessing eligibility and capacity to give informed consent to assisted suicide, and issues around palliative and end-of-life care.
On the key issue of capacity and safeguarding, the committee said it was clear from hearing from healthcare professionals and their representatives that there was “hesitation around whether it is possible to accurately assess capacity, and safeguard the person, in every case”.
It added that some people had argued that there was a “similar risk” with current laws on assessing capacity and safeguarding people who opt to cease treatment, or accept end-of-life care, including palliative sedation.
The report also calls for an improvement in the support and care of people managing a terminal diagnosis, and for the government to commission research into how to improve mental health support for this group of people.
Legalisation is currently being considered on both Jersey and the Isle of Man, and the committee concludes that the government should be “actively involved in discussions” on what to do if they introduce a change in the law.
It also calls for improvements to palliative and end-of-life care, even though the UK has “long been a world leader”, as it says provision is “patchy”.
But there is a question-mark over the results of the committee’s online survey, as the report fails to say what proportion of those who expressed a preference said they agreed or disagreed with the current laws on assisted suicide.
Asked if the votes taken on amendments to the report suggested that, having heard months of evidence, the committee was opposed to a change in the law on assisted suicide, a committee spokesperson said: “The report before you, Assisted Dying/Assisted Suicide, has been agreed by the health and social care committee.”
And asked why the report does not include the number and percentage of those who responded to the online form who said they broadly agreed or disagreed with the current law, the spokesperson said: “The form was a means of engaging the public with the committee in a less formal way than through written evidence.
“The respondents to the survey are self-selecting and not reflective of the population overall, therefore we will not be publishing the percentage of respondents who agreed or disagreed with the current law.”
The committee’s chair, the Conservative MP Steve Brine, who did not vote on the amendments, said: “The inquiry on assisted dying and assisted suicide raised the most complex issues that we as a committee have faced, with strong feelings and opinions in the evidence we heard.
“We intend the information and testimony we present in our report today to have a lasting legacy and, as we set out in the initial terms of reference, be a significant and useful resource for future debates on the issue.”
29 February 2024
Disabled peer returns to the Lords to fight for victims of infected blood scandal
A disabled peer who lost her first husband through the contaminated blood scandal has called on the government to end its repeated delays in establishing a compensation scheme for those affected.
Baroness [Jane] Campbell was speaking for the first time in the Lords since she took a year-long leave of absence due to “severe burnout” caused by her parliamentary workload.
She told the Lords that her first husband, Graham, had haemophilia and received blood products through the NHS that infected him with both hepatitis C and HIV.
He and his younger brother Anthony had been told in 1987 that they had been infected with HIV from contaminated factor eight clotting agents.
Baroness Campbell told her fellow peers on Monday: “Anthony was first to die, leaving a widow and a one-year-old daughter.
“Graham endured five years of misery, a barrage of associated illnesses, including pneumocystis pneumonia, epilepsy and intermittent blindness.
“He died 18 months after his brother. It must have been unbearable for him to watch what he knew was in store for him, but his courage took my breath away.”
He died on 19 December 1993.
Baroness Campbell said: “I count myself lucky. I eventually found a way to move on, enough to lead a good, purposeful life after Graham died, but the memory and the flashbacks do not fade.
“Many wives of infected men lost their childbearing years. Parents and countless partners gave up jobs to care for loved ones at a time when HIV/AIDS was stigmatising and isolating.
“There have been over 3,000 deaths to date, with an average of one more every four days.”
In 2017, prime minister Theresa May ordered a public inquiry into how contaminated blood transfusions infected thousands of people with hepatitis C and HIV.
Although interim payments have since been made to many of those affected, a proper compensation scheme has yet to be set up.
Baroness Campbell, a crossbench peer, said the inquiry’s chair, Sir Brian Langstaff, had expressed frustration with government delays in setting up such a scheme.
She said the government had “procrastinated”, and she called on ministers to pledge that a scheme would be ready to “go live” after the publication of the final inquiry report on 20 May.
She said: “The government accept the ‘moral case for compensation’, but these words are meaningless if actioning the inquiry’s recommendations is further delayed.
“Each delay means countless more deaths without the comfort of knowing that justice has been served for the infected victims, and their affected partners and children.”
She was speaking in the Lords as peers – including her fellow disabled peer Baroness [Sal] Brinton – pressed the government to act more quickly on compensation, during the committee stage of its victims and prisoners bill.
Baroness Brinton, former president of the Liberal Democrats, called for an interim payment of £100,000 for relatives of victims who have died and whose compensation claims have not yet been recognised.
She said compensation was due to those whose lives “over the last four decades have been severely affected or destroyed by acts of the NHS, and therefore also by the government”.
She said that nearly 5,000 people with haemophilia and other bleeding disorders were infected with HIV and hepatitis through contaminated clotting factors, with some of them unknowingly infecting their partners.
Since then, 3,000 people have died and of the 1,243 infected with HIV, fewer than 250 are still alive.
Baroness Brinton said that those infected and their families “have been victimised time and again by the NHS and by governments fighting them and all other victims over the years” and sometimes this had been done “with lies and prevarication”.
Her fellow Liberal Democrat peer Baroness [Lynne] Featherstone – whose nephew Nicholas Hirsch had haemophilia and contracted hepatitis C and died aged 35 – told the Lords that she and the head of Haemophilia Wales had met with Chris Wormald, the permanent secretary of the Department of Health*, to “show him the proof of obfuscation and lies”.
She said: “He lied to us there and then, and then he lied in writing – a lie for which he later apologised in writing, and which I submitted in evidence to the inquiry.
“It was shameful how many lies were told by officials to victims, as well as to the parents and families of those who were contaminated.
“The very least the government can do is to act, right now, before any more victims die.”
Earl Howe, for the government, said the “story of those who received infected blood as part of their NHS care and treatment is one of unimaginable suffering and terrible tragedy over more than four decades” and it was “still not yet over”.
He said: “The government accept the will of parliament that arrangements should be put in place to ensure, as far as reasonably practicable, that the victims receive justice as quickly and efficiently as possible.”
He said a new clause had been added to the victims and prisoners bill to speed up the compensation process, and that the government was “eager to avoid more needless delay”.
He said the government would deliver a statement in response to the inquiry report within 25 parliamentary working days of its publication, and that interim payments of £440 million had already been made to infected individuals or bereaved partners registered with the existing support schemes.
He said one of the reasons for delays in announcing the details of compensation was the need for discussions with UK devolved governments, which were continuing.
The prime minister, Rishi Sunak, was asked about the compensation delays in parliament yesterday (Wednesday) by Labour’s Dame Diana Johnson.
He told MPs he was “acutely aware of the strength of feeling on this issue, and the suffering of all those impacted by this dreadful scandal” and that the government had “consistently acknowledged that justice should be delivered”.
*Now the Department of Health and Social Care. Wormald is still permanent secretary
29 February 2024
Pandemic inquiry is asked why Welsh government’s ‘humanism’ failed to prevent ‘mass death and suffering’
Two national disabled people’s organisations have questioned why the “humanist” aspirations of the Welsh government were unable to prevent “mass death and real suffering” during the pandemic.
Disability Wales and Disability Rights UK were delivering their opening statement to the section of the UK Covid inquiry examining decision-making and political governance in Wales.
Two-thirds (68 per cent) of the people who died of Covid in Wales were disabled people, even higher than the nearly six out of 10 across the UK, while people with learning difficulties were between three and eight times more likely to die of Covid in Wales than non-disabled people.
They suggested that the higher number of disabled people who died in Wales was due to how many older Welsh people have respiratory diseases caused by working in the coal mines.
In their statement (PDF), delivered on their behalf by barrister Danny Friedman, the two disabled people’s organisations (DPOs) asked why the Welsh government failed to do more to prepare itself to protect a population that it knew was “older, poorer”.
They said the Welsh government’s pandemic plan was no better than the UK government’s, despite its commitment to comply with the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
Disability Wales and Disability Rights UK told the inquiry that the Welsh population of disabled people was “seriously compromised in its resilience” because of austerity, while Brexit “had soured relations and monopolised resources”.
The two DPOs also pointed to serious errors by the Welsh government, including mistakenly assuming at first that food packages for those who were shielding would be distributed by the UK government, and introducing testing in care homes later than other parts of the UK, even though its experts “knew that care homes would be the greatest places of risk”.
And they highlighted the limitations of devolution, telling the inquiry: “Welsh government may have political commitment to developing equality and human rights, but it is not straightforward to create those things when so much of Welsh public law and economics remain part of the law and economics of England.”
But they said the Welsh government had proved better than other parts of the UK at partnering with its people.
Civil servants from the Welsh government approached DPOs in mid-March 2020 to “find out what the government needed to learn”, with regular meetings between DPOs and Jane Hutt, the deputy first minister and chief whip, starting in early April.
They said this was “fundamentally different from what the UK government did” and also contrasted with how the Scottish government “disengaged from civil society groups in the first weeks of the crisis”.
The Welsh government also commissioned a study of the effects of the pandemic response on disabled people, led by DPOs, which became the Locked Out report, and subsequently set up a Disability Rights Taskforce following one of the report’s recommendations, action which was “unprecedented” in the UK.
Despite this, the two DPOs told the inquiry that “relying too heavily on good relations was not enough”.
Without a dedicated minister for disabled people, “what worked was left too much to chance, based on the accident that Jane Hutt was committed to make things happen, which might equally have led to different outcomes if certain core personalities, like her, were not in place”.
The statement also highlighted how a medical model approach to disability made a “considerable comeback” in Wales during the pandemic, including in the way that “do not attempt resuscitation” notices “proliferated in an unaccountable fashion”.
This was highlighted by letters issued by a GP surgery in Maesteg, which suggested to some older, frail and disabled people that it was better to use resources on the young and fit, who were said to “have a greater chance” of survival if infected.
The two DPOs concluded: “Despite awareness of the risks, the issues already seen elsewhere in the UK, including lack of access to food and essential resources, collapse of health, care and independent living services, and the suspension of disabled people’s rights, all happened here.
“That lack of protection in what is otherwise a progressive state committed to the social model creates puzzles for this inquiry, including for those advocating for a change of values as important in its own right.”
Friedman told the inquiry on Tuesday: “Disabled people across the four nations have suffered because inequalities have been allowed to grow… Covid was not the great leveller of inequality and division, it was the great revealer of those things.
“Disabled people constitute the lived (and deceased) evidence of that reality.”
29 February 2024
New questions over DWP fraud investigations after it wrongly threatens couple… over 88p
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is facing fresh questions over how it carries out fraud investigations after it threatened to suspend the benefits of a disabled woman over a savings account it wrongly claimed belonged to her husband.
Chris Williams and his disabled wife Vicky, from Wolverhampton, were told they had just two weeks to provide information to clear their names before her income-related employment and support allowance (ESA) was suspended.
He was told in a letter earlier this month that DWP had “received information” that there was an ISA savings account and a current account in his name, with his national insurance number, address and date of birth.
Disability News Service (DNS) has seen the DWP letter, which added: “If you don’t send us the information we need by 29 February 2024 your claim will be suspended.”
But when Williams asked NatWest to provide written proof that the account was not his, so he could pass it to DWP, he was told there was nothing they could do as he was not a NatWest customer.
The DWP letter caused him and his wife significant distress.
His wife, Vicky Clarke-Williams, was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1986 and now relies on care from her husband – who became her full-time carer about eight years ago – as well as two care workers and a personal assistant.
But she also experiences significant mental distress, and her husband said the DWP “put her stress levels through the roof”.
She told DNS: “I feel insecure, angry, I feel like a second-class citizen and a scrounger.
“I just want to hide away from everyone, everything.
“When the phone rings I go into panic mode, then just sheer anger and frustration.
“I have no control over my life.”
Her husband added: “Vicky feels worthless and constantly tells me she would be better off dead because she believes that is what the government and DWP wants with people like her.
“We have both had sleepless nights and cannot relax. The worry of how to pay bills if they stop our money, the worry of losing our home if the housing benefit stops.”
He added: “If I don’t provide proof our benefit will stop on 29 February and proceedings will start to recover benefit paid based on accounts I have never held.
“We are at our wits’ end with this.”
When DNS contacted NatWest on the couple’s behalf, the bank said it could find no record of an account in the Wolverhampton area with his name and date of birth.
This week, DWP sent Williams a form that he can use to provide the department with written permission to approach NatWest.
After being approached by DNS, DWP admitted that because most of their ESA entitlement was not affected by capital, the total adjustment to their benefits – if they were suspended – would be just £0.88.
After hearing this, Chris Williams told DNS: “We feel angry, exhausted, and totally let down, but sadly not surprised.
“It seems we are easy targets in a system that protects the billionaire tax-dodgers and hounds us down for receiving 88p.
“Even some media outlets see us as scroungers trying to dodge work; the trouble is that the public seem to be pulled into the same lie.
“Before the disability, Vicky was a 10-tonne press operator, 50 hours a week in a factory, and I was a lorry driver working 60-plus hours a week, keeping our country moving.
“We paid our taxes, were law-abiding and contributed to society.
“Now, through no fault of our own, we have no money.
“We lost our house because we could no longer afford the mortgage, we get accosted in carparks by people saying, ‘you’re not disabled, they give out blue badges like smarties,’ and a government thinks this is a lifestyle choice.
“Well, we certainly did not choose any of this.
“We look after the most vulnerable, they say. Well, if this is looking after, we are doomed.”
Their case has also raised fresh concerns over how DWP carries out fraud investigations and its controversial use of artificial intelligence and algorithms to spot potential fraud causes, although DNS has not been able to confirm whether or how algorithms were used in this case.
It highlights again the dangers of new powers the department is seeking through the data protection and digital information bill.
Those powers would enable DWP to force banks to scan all their accounts to find those account-holders receiving benefits, as well as people connected with those accounts.
The banks would then have to report anyone who triggered what are seen as potential indicators of fraud to DWP.
But the department’s errors with this latest case raise serious questions about whether DWP could ever be trusted with such sweeping powers.
A DWP spokesperson said: “Our enquiries into this matter are ongoing and as such it would be inappropriate to comment.”
29 February 2024
Access to Work waiting-list climbs again, despite DWP claims
The number of disabled people waiting for a decision on their Access to Work (AtW) claim has continued to rise, six months after the government insisted it had improved the system and was hiring extra staff.
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) claimed last July that its “improvements” had seen “processing times fall in the last year” for those seeking support through the disability employment programme.
But now, unpublished DWP figures show that the number of disabled people waiting for a decision on their AtW claim has risen even further, from 23,289 on 1 June 2023 to 25,063 on 1 December.
This is another eight per cent increase in the waiting-list.
The latest figures were obtained by Labour’s shadow minister for disabled people, Vicky Foxcroft.
She told Disability News Service (DNS): “On the one hand, they say they want to support more disabled people and people with long-term health conditions into work, and then on the other hand, they don’t deal with the Access to Work backlog.”
Other figures show that the longest wait for a decision on an AtW application was 354 working days, which DWP said was “due to issues with the claimant gathering and returning the supporting evidence needed to verify details of the case before it could be further progressed”.
But Foxcroft said this response “kind of goes to where the problem is” because “it isn’t that simple for people, it isn’t always that accessible… how do they think that that is acceptable?
“They really need to get a grip of it.”
A third set of figures, obtained this week by the Liberal Democrat MP Wendy Chamberlain, shows the number of civil servants employed by DWP to run Access to Work rose from 335 in December 2022 to 494 in December 2023, an increase of nearly 50 per cent in just one year.
But in another response to a written question about the scheme, Mims Davies, the minister for disabled people, told Labour’s Alex Sobel that it would be too expensive (“incur a disproportionate cost”) to provide figures showing how Access to Work applications had risen or fallen since October 2023.
DWP has told DNS that in 2022-23 more than 49,800 people received an Access to Work award, an increase of 36 per cent on 2021-22, while spending increased to £183 million, a real terms increase of 15 per cent on 2021-22.
But DWP refused this week to explain why it thought the number of disabled people on the waiting-list had risen again, and declined to say if Davies would apologise for not getting to grips with the issue.
A DWP spokesperson said in a statement: “The government is committed to supporting disabled people in work, with record numbers – nearly 50,000 people – supported by the scheme in this last financial year.
“We have also recruited extra staff to deal with increased demand which, combined with our new Back to Work Plan, will break down barriers to work for over a million people.”
The concerns over Access to Work inefficiency are long-standing.
A report commissioned by Inclusion London found in 2017 that the scheme was “a cornerstone of the movement for equality and civil rights for Deaf and disabled people in the UK” but had been “beset with so much bureaucratic incompetence and obstructionism in recent years that, in many respects, Access to Work is no longer fit for purpose”.
Last summer, a report from the Commons work and pensions committee criticised Access to Work for being “highly bureaucratic in terms of the evidence and administration of paperwork required to apply for, renew or claim back costs” and described the system as “outdated”.
29 February 2024
Report highlights access barriers imposed by sustainability efforts at live events
A new report aims to ensure that efforts by organisers of festivals and other live events to address the climate crisis do not impose further access barriers on disabled people.
The idea for the project came from Suzanne Bull, founder of the disabled-led accessible music charity Attitude is Everything (AiE), who grew concerned during the Covid pandemic that disabled people were being “left behind” in the move towards sustainability.
She felt they were being excluded from climate change conversations, and their access requirements were not being considered, which meant practical solutions to address the climate crisis often damaged access.
The No Climate Action Without Us report and guidance has been developed by AiE and two non-profit organisations that work to provide climate change solutions for the arts and culture, Julie’s Bicycle and A Greener Future, with funding from Arts Council England.
The report highlights the key barriers that disabled people experience with sustainability initiatives, and describes some of the ways in which live events can introduce accessible solutions to combat climate change.
But the three charities warn that sometimes there might not yet be a solution that is both accessible and environmentally-friendly.
They add: “Disabled people sometimes might require the use of single use items, cars, or additional equipment but they should never be blamed or shamed for this.”
They say their report provides “foundations for the sector to build upon”, and they are now asking venue managers, festival organisers and promoters to test their ideas.
Responses to a survey by Julie’s Bicycle found that nearly half (46 per cent) of those disabled people who took part said they felt excluded from taking part in environmental efforts at festivals and live events.
A third (34 per cent) said they felt that environmental solutions were often not easy to use and failed to meet their access needs.
One of those who responded to the survey said: “We shouldn’t have to choose between what’s best for the planet and what’s best for us.”
When it comes to travel to and from events, public transport and shuttle services can be inaccessible, with links not close enough to the venue, while initiatives to make tickets cheaper for those using public transport can penalise disabled people who cannot use those services.
With facilities, the report says, many viewing platforms lack appropriate recycling bins; recycling systems often fail to account for single use or disposable items that are a medical necessity for some disabled people; there is a shortage of accessible compost toilets; and aids such as electric wheelchairs, medical fridges and CPAP machines can make it harder for event organisers to reduce their use of electricity.
On communication and information, sustainability staff are often not trained in accessibility, while accessibility staff are not trained in sustainability; and disabled people are ignored when planning sustainability schemes.
With food and water, the report says, many water stations are not low enough for wheelchair-users to access; the design of taps can be inaccessible; and plastic-free, organic food tends to be more expensive.
Disabled musician Blaine Harrison, lead singer and songwriter with the Mystery Jets and an AiE patron, said climate justice was “perhaps the most important conversation of our time, and from a grassroots level to the mainstream I feel that solutions around the environmental impact of our industry need to feel inclusive to all”.
Bull said: “Public demand is growing for businesses to take their environmental and access responsibilities seriously, and that public includes disabled people.
“More than one billion disabled people worldwide are more impacted by climate change than non-disabled people due to the additional access requirements and health concerns many of them have when disasters strike countries and our cities become clogged with polluted air.
“My hope is that this collaboration and the toolkit will be the catalyst for change.”
29 February 2024
Other disability-related stories covered by mainstream media this week
Ambiguous interview questions and application forms are keeping autistic people out of work, a report has found. While 53.6 per cent of all disabled people are in work, only 30 per cent of autistic people are, the latest figures show. The government has urged employers to “get behind” all the recommendations set out in Sir Robert Buckland’s report on autism in the workplace: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-68381352
One in five people on legacy benefits who are invited to move to universal credit do not claim and ultimately have their benefits stopped, a new report has found. Almost all these people are receiving tax credits. By the end of 2024, the Department for Work and Pensions plans to move 900,000 people receiving means-tested “legacy benefits” onto the newer universal credit. But the shift seems to be leaving some people behind: https://www.bigissue.com/news/social-justice/universal-credit-benefits-stopped-tax-credits-dwp/
Warwickshire County Council has asked a lawyer to look into complaints against three councillors accused of making offensive comments about children with special educational needs. The councillors have faced calls to resign after a backlash over the remarks in a council meeting. The council launched an investigation after receiving hundreds of complaints about comments by councillors Jeff Morgan, Brian Hammersley and Clare Golby: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-coventry-warwickshire-68403821
Young people are more likely to be out of work because of ill health than people in their early 40s, a report calling for action on Britain’s mental wellbeing crisis has found. People in their early 20s with mental health problems may have not had access to a steady education and can end up out of work or in low-paid jobs, the Resolution Foundation research revealed. According to official data, 34 per cent of people aged 18 to 24 reported symptoms of mental disorder, such as depression, anxiety or bipolar disorder in 2021-22: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/feb/25/people-in-20s-more-likely-out-of-work-because-of-ill-health-than-those-in-early-40s
29 February 2024
News provided by John Pring at www.disabilitynewsservice.com
