Cost-of-living payments scrapped as spring budget ‘completely ignores disabled people’
The government has been accused of “another missed opportunity” to support disabled people, after ending all cost-of-living payments, including the annual payment to those on disability benefits.
Disabled campaigners warned that Jeremy Hunt’s budget could lead to further cuts to disabled people’s support and that it had “completely ignored disabled people”.
Budget documents confirm there will be no payment for those on disability benefits in 2024-25, following the £150 paid in 2022 and another £150 paid in 2023-24.
Chancellor Jeremy Hunt has also ruled out extending the cost-of-living payments that were set at £600 in 2022 and £900 in 2023-24 and which provided support to those on means-tested benefits, and the pensioner cost-of-living payments made in 2022-23 and 2023-24.
Instead, the focus of the budget was on further cuts to national insurance, which will only help those in work.
Hunt announced just six months more funding – £500 million – for the Household Support Fund, which assists “vulnerable” households in England with the cost of essentials such as food and utility bills.
And he extended the repayment period from 12 months to 24 months for benefit claimants who take a universal credit advance loan, while abolishing the £90 charge for debt relief orders.
He also announced another £105 million to fund an “additional wave” of 15 segregated special free schools across England, but no extra money to fund support in mainstream schools.
Disabled people’s organisations warned the budget was likely to lead to further cuts in support.
In January, Disability News Service reported how the government’s own figures, using a new measurement of poverty, found that 46 per cent of people in families with at least one disabled child and one disabled adult were living in poverty in 2021-22, even before the cost-of-living crisis.
Svetlana Kotova, director of campaigns and justice at Inclusion London, said the budget was “another missed opportunity to support disabled people”, with Hunt providing “little droplets of good news and a scary prospect of further austerity and cuts to support”.
Although Inclusion London welcomed the extension of the Household Support Fund, Kotova said another six months of funding was not enough, and she urged the Department for Work and Pensions and local authorities to ensure a greater proportion of households with disabled members benefited from the fund.
She said: “The cost-of-living crisis continues, and we are disappointed there were no announcements for further payments and nothing to support disabled people with high energy needs.
“Instead, the budget reconfirms plans for tougher sanctions for disabled people who get benefits, including those who work.
“There is no investment in social care and the only investment in education is to build more special schools.
“At the time of huge gaps in funding and struggling public services, this budget is likely to lead to future cuts in the already minimal support disabled people get.”
Rick Burgess, a spokesperson for Greater Manchester Coalition of Disabled People, said: “Nothing in this budget addresses 14 years of austerity that has been condemned by the UN for its devastating impact on disabled people.”
He said that “paltry consolations” such as another six months of the Household Support Fund “only underline that social security and social care remain in crisis, they do not pay enough to live on, and rather than small funds to address the worst poverty, we need to end austerity and put tens of billions back into public services.
“This investment would then begin to rescue the economy that this chancellor has tanked.”
Caroline Collier, chief executive of Inclusion Barnet, said it was “a huge disappointment that the chancellor has avoided saying or doing anything about poverty or the adequacy of disabled people’s incomes, in or out of work”.
She said: “In recent times, there has been some topping-up of low incomes through cost-of-living payments.
“Although never a substitute for a decent benefit system, these have now stopped altogether.
“The Household Support Fund has been temporarily reprieved, but only for six months.
“It is also highly questionable to prioritise what are effectively tax reductions when public services are in desperate need of further support.”
Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) said the budget appeared to “give rich people more and poorer people nothing”.
Paula Peters, a member of DPAC’s national steering group, said Hunt had “completely ignored disabled people”.
She said: “The government failed to renew the cost-of-living payments when the cost of living is still high – high food prices, high energy costs and council tax across the UK has risen again.
“Renewing the household fund for another six months is not enough. With local authorities setting tough criteria to access the support, many are turned away.”
She said 14 years of “brutal government austerity” had seen disabled people left “isolated and marginalised” and “paying a heavy price, falling into deeper poverty, freezing in cold homes, chased by bailiffs for social care costs, [and facing] punitive sanctions and stressful disability assessments”.
Peters said 14 years of “brutal Tory austerity” had seen thousands of disabled people “paying a tragic price with their lives”.
She added: “We cannot wait for a general election to hold the government to account for their failings and the tragic impact their ideological policies have had on disabled people’s lives.
“That’s why we have returned to disability resistance and street action (see separate story).
“We will continue to oppose austerity policy and community service cuts.”
GMCDP co-chair Dennis Queen added: “It’s essential that disabled people of all kinds keep coming together to fight back through groups like our coalition, DPAC and by joining other local campaigns fighting against the oppression faced by so many communities right now.
“We didn’t gain the rights we had without fighting for our liberation together, and we’ve been losing ground for far too long now.
“So please, we need more of our community to join us in the streets and behind the scenes, however you can, if you can – and if you cannot, just share everything you can and know that you are not alone.”
There were few mentions of disability in the budget documents, and no mention of disability or disabled people in Hunt’s speech.
But the budget documents do reveal more funding to “support the processing of disability benefit claims”, increasing the system’s capacity “to meet increased demand” and to handle “both new and existing claims”.
Neither the Treasury nor the Department for Work and Pensions had been able to clarify how this money would be spent by 11am today (Thursday), or to explain why they had decided to end cost-of-living payments.
The government will also underwrite the UK’s bid to host the 2027 Invictus Games in Birmingham, which it said would “ensure that injured service personnel and veterans are not forgotten” and “showcase the power of sport in recovery and rehabilitation demonstrating that there is life beyond disability”.
7 March 2024
Decade-long quest for justice ‘proves DWP was responsible for our father’s death’
Two children of a disabled man whose suicide was triggered by being wrongly found “fit for work” have told MPs how their decade-long search for justice has proved the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) was responsible for their father’s death.
Anne-Marie and Declan O’Sullivan have told the Commons work and pensions committee that completing “what feels like a 100,000-piece puzzle”, following a 10-year investigation, has “eliminated” any uncertainty and shows clearly that DWP breached its duty of care to their father, Michael.
They have now called on MPs to demand a change in the law to ensure that a new legal duty of care is placed upon the department.
And they have told the committee they believe DWP will only be forced to take responsibility for its “actions and omissions” if the government imposes a “clear and defined” statutory duty of care on the department.
They believe DWP “cannot be trusted to act appropriately” and that imposing a statutory duty of care is the only way to protect the lives of claimants in vulnerable situations, such as their father.
They have also joined those calling for an independent inquiry into how the actions and failings of DWP can be linked to countless deaths of disabled claimants of benefits.
They submitted the written statement to the committee as part of its ongoing inquiry into safeguarding vulnerable benefit claimants, and as disabled campaigners are preparing to give evidence to the UN committee on the rights of persons with disabilities in Geneva later this month.
The UN committee will be examining the government’s progress since being found guilty in 2016 of grave and systematic violations of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, with most of those breaches caused by policies introduced by Conservative DWP ministers.
It is now more than 10 years since coroner Mary Hassell concluded in January 2014 that the “intense anxiety” that triggered the suicide of Michael O’Sullivan, from north London, had been caused by his being found fit for work by DWP.
She found that both DWP and its private sector contractor Atos had failed to seek medical evidence about his mental health from his doctor, his psychiatrist and his clinical psychologist.
He was found fit for work, despite a suicide attempt months earlier when he had been forced into work-related activity after an earlier work capability assessment (WCA) that lasted just 12 minutes.
If DWP or Atos had asked the medical experts who knew him best, they would have been told he had experienced years of significant mental ill-health, and that he was not well enough to work, and had been diagnosed with long-term depression, anxiety and panic disorder with agoraphobia.
His children told the committee in their statement that the “fit for work” finding “was causative of our father’s death; that is the unpalatable cold hard fact”.
They warn in their statement of the “danger of repeating mistakes from the past” by failing to consider “the truly harrowing impact” that reforms to the system can have on claimants like their father, who took his own life in September 2013.
They point out that DWP failed to share crucial evidence with five independent reviews into the WCA process, which took place between 2010 and 2014.
This evidence included numerous secret peer reviews carried out by the department into deaths linked to the WCA and two prevention of future deaths reports written by coroners, one written by Hassell after the inquest into their father’s death and another that followed an inquest into the death of Stephen Carré in March 2010.
They say in their statement that their evidence had been submitted in the name of their much-loved father, and in memory of welfare rights expert Nick Dilworth, who supported the family with their investigation for nearly a decade before his death last year.
They also praise the “unwavering” support they have received from their local MP, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer, and his senior caseworker Richard Banham, and their “decency, compassion and sensitivity”.
After more than a decade of fighting for justice over their father’s death, their complaint is now being investigated by the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman.
But they criticise the “inordinate” length of time that DWP and the Independent Case Examiner have taken to respond to their concerns.
They say they have wasted 11 years because of DWP’s “delaying tactics to try and wear us down and insult us”, which have “exacerbated an already difficult bereavement, prevented a natural course of grieving and blocked us from moving forward with our lives”.
They conclude: “The DWP will no doubt say to this Committee that they have learnt lessons in order to improve how they deal with their vulnerable clients, but they haven’t been able to say what they have specifically learnt from our father’s case or exactly what failings they have addressed.
“We would argue that the DWP are unable to improve anything when they haven’t faced or defined their own past failings.”
7 March 2024
Council’s plans to increase care charges ‘could have devastating consequences’
A disabled people’s organisation has warned its local council that plans to increase care charges for many residents by nearly £34 a week could have “devastating consequences” and “wreak havoc” on the lives of thousands of service-users.
The proposal, which will only affect those who receive care and support at home, could increase the amount paid by disabled people in the county by £3.5 million a year.
Conservative-run Kent County Council has launched consultations on this and another measure, each of which is designed to squeeze more revenue from disabled people who rely on care and support, in a bid to help it close an £85 million funding gap.
The changes could affect many of the nearly 16,000 disabled people who receive social care in their own homes from the council.
Disability Assist said the care charge policy “threatens to significantly burden those of us who rely on these services, potentially wreaking havoc on the financial stability of thousands of Kent residents”.
It has become the latest disabled people’s organisation to raise serious concerns about proposals by a local authority to try to help address a financial crisis by increasing charges on people who use council-funded care and support services.
It is calling on disabled people across the county to join the fight against the new measures by responding to the council’s consultations.
Sophie Fournel, chief executive of Disability Assist, told Disability News Service (DNS) that the changes would increase the number of disabled people who are finding themselves in debt to the council because they cannot afford their care charges.
She said: “We are already working with people who do not understand the charges or contributions they need to make towards their care and support packages.
“People who are desperate for care and are agreeing to it and then find themselves in debt, surprised when they receive invoices.
“We are also aware of people who are not accessing adult social care because they do not feel that they can afford it and are, therefore, isolated and unable to lead an active life, unable to do the things that they want to do.
“The proposed changes will make this worse and impact even more people.”
One of the two council proposals would see it taking into account – for the first time – the income received from the higher rate of attendance allowance (AA), the enhanced rate of the daily living element of personal independent payment (PIP), and the higher rate of the care component of disability living allowance (DLA), when deciding how much someone should pay towards their care costs.
This could mean care charges rising by nearly £34 a week for many residents.
Currently the council only takes account of the lower AA rate, the standard PIP daily living rate and the middle rate of the DLA care component.
The council’s other proposal is to introduce a one-off fee of £352 for those disabled people who can self-fund their care, but who want the council to start negotiating, arranging and managing services on their behalf.
This measure would cost disabled people in the county in total an estimated £140,800 extra a year in council fees.
Fournel said she was “very concerned about the impact these changes could have on disabled people in Kent”.
She said: “The current cost of living means that disabled people are needing to use their income from PIP and other benefits to help cover their utility bills and everyday expenses as it is.
“This will take even more from them and push people into or further into poverty.”
She said this would leave disabled people “less able to lead a full and inclusive life” and without the resources they need to be able to do the things that their non-disabled peers take for granted, “taking away their choice and control and ultimately their independence”.
She said: “We cannot stress enough the importance of local residents participating in the consultation process.
“Their feedback will play a crucial role in shaping policies that directly affect the lives of all who rely on adult social care.”
In response to the consultations, Disability Assist has sent an open letter raising its concerns to Kent County Council’s head of adult social care.
In the letter, Disability Assist’s chair, Clive Bassant, warns that the charity has seen a “dramatic increase in referrals and requests for help” in the last year, even before the proposed measures are introduced.
He also sent the council comments made by disabled people in response to its proposals.
One said: “People are going without their basic needs being met, without food or heating because they can’t afford the contribution that you require.”
Another said: “Are you waiting for deaths through lack of care or potential suicides… before you will listen to our concerns?”
A third disabled person said: “Historically disabled people have fought long and hard to get changes to be considered equal members of society, which includes being allowed to live our own lives with dignity and choice.
“Incredibly sadly, it’s like we are moving backwards again, not forward.”
A Kent County Council spokesperson said that 9,623 disabled people could be affected by the care charges proposals, but she refused to say if this was the number whose charges would increase, or to say how many would pay the full £34 a week.
She said it was “not possible to know how many people would be likely to pay the new self-funding fee” although there were 400 new self-funders in 2023.
She said: “The concerns raised in the open letter received from Disability Assist will be closely considered alongside all other consultation responses.”
But the council refused to explain how it justified making disabled people pay even more for their care and support in the middle of both a cost-of-living and a social care crisis.
Instead, it directed DNS to a press release, in which Dan Watkins, the council’s cabinet member for public health and adult social care, said: “We’re facing ever-increasing demands for complex care services, rising costs of care and a lack of adequate funding from central government.
“It means that, along with many other councils in England, we’re having to make tough decisions and find ways to ensure our services are sustainable for the future.
“2014’s Care Act gave local authorities the power to change their charging policies to take in account higher, or enhanced, rates of disability benefits when assessing the contribution some people should make towards their care – subject to consulting and carrying out an equality impact assessment.
“A number of councils have subsequently since done so.
“Our set-up fee for self-funding care arrangements is also among the lowest local authority fees in the country and has not been reviewed since it was introduced in 2017.”
The consultations on care charges and self-funding fees both end at midnight on 7 April.
*Formerly known as Centre for Independent Living Kent
7 March 2024
DPAC demands ‘no more deaths from benefit cuts’ outside DWP headquarters
Disabled activists have explained why they travelled from across England to protest outside the headquarters of the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) at social security reforms they say will put the lives of even more claimants at risk.
Monday’s protest was organised by Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC), which brought life-sized photographs of three disabled people whose deaths have been linked to DWP’s actions and failings in the last decade.
The images of Errol Graham, Jodey Whiting and David Clapson stood facing the windows of DWP’s Caxton House offices in Westminster while activists spoke about why they were protesting.
Their deaths were linked to cuts to disability benefits, reforms to the work capability assessment (WCA) and benefit sanctions introduced in the post-2010 austerity era, with the government now pledging to make these areas of the social security system even harsher.
Among those protesting was Gill Thompson, David Clapson’s sister, who was holding two photographs of her brother as she stood outside Caxton House.
He had diabetes, and died in July 2013 due to 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.
His sister told Disability News Service (DNS) that she had wanted to attend the protest because of the government’s planned reforms, which will see an even harsher sanctions regime and an increase in the number of disabled people subject to sanctions due to a proposed tightening of the WCA.
She said she was “appalled” that she was still having to campaign more than 10 years after her brother’s death.
She said: “It has made David’s death – all these deaths – seem meaningless.
“We are not criminals, we are human beings trying to survive.
“Benefit sanctions and all these cuts have no place in our society. They should spend more time trying to get all the taxes that are owed.”
The DPAC action later saw activists peacefully block Victoria Street, a major route to parliament, outside Westminster Abbey, while chanting “no more deaths from benefit cuts”.
A significant police presence eventually led to officers threatening activists with arrest, before the protest ended with no-one being arrested.
The final disabled activist to leave the road was Mary-Ellen.
She told DNS: “I am here for everyone who cannot be here because they are already dead.
“I don’t want to be complicit through silence or inaction in the austerity, welfare reforms and sanctions.”
She said she had found it impossible to separate her grief at the recent death of her mother from “babies being killed in Palestine and disabled people and pensioners going starving and hungry” and the countless other deaths and hunger caused by austerity.
She said: “I can’t be complicit in that. I refuse to be complicit. I have to speak. I have to be here.”
Andy Greene, a member of DPAC’s national steering group, said: “It’s really important that disabled people’s voices don’t get lost in the multitude of issues thrown up by the Tory mismanagement and culture war policies.”
He said it was “disappointing but predictable” that DPAC was still having to protest against social security cuts nearly 14 years after it was formed in 2010, while the current Labour party “offers us nothing, which is all too predictable”.
He said: “It’s good seeing that disabled people have not lost their voice and are willing to put their bodies on the line again.
“We know what we are capable of when we organise collectively. We frighten the shit out of them because we are not supposed to have a voice, we are not supposed to organise, and we are not supposed to push back.
“But we represent the lived experience of these failed policies.”
He said the government’s policies were “dangerous” because they had already been proved to fail over the last decade-and-a-half.
But, he added, “the harm that it’s done to our society is written large on the gravestones of those we have buried over the years”.
Disabled activist Anna Landre said she was at the protest because “so many of our friends and loved ones are suffering and dying because of the repeated cuts to disability benefits over the last several years” and because she was “very worried about further cuts”.
She said: “We are here today because of the budget coming up in two days and we hope that our elected representatives will see what we are asking for and do what is needed.”
Wheelchair-user Ari Rox, who travelled from Exeter to attend, said she was there to protest at “how unfair the benefit system is” as someone who relies on benefits.
She said disabled people were “going through hell through lack of money and lack of support”.
But she added: “This is nothing to what is coming. That’s what I feel.”
Rensa Gaunt, from DPAC Cambridgeshire, is one of the disabled activists who will be travelling to Geneva later this month as the UK government gives evidence to the UN committee on the rights of persons with disabilities.
The committee will be examining the government’s progress since being found guilty in 2016 of grave and systematic violations of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD), with most of those breaches caused by policies introduced by Conservative DWP ministers.
Gaunt said: “We know that there have been countless deaths attributed to DWP action or inaction, people who did not deserve to die navigating a system not built for them and in some ways made deliberately hard to navigate to cut the welfare bill.
“We are heading to the UN where we are going to hear the government’s excuses on why they are yet to implement the UNCRPD.
“We still don’t have all of our rights. We are here to say: enough people have died, no more deaths from benefit cuts.”
Asked why she had attended the protest, Janet Bell, from Harrow, who is herself currently in the employment and support allowance support group, told DNS that proposals to tighten the WCA “theoretically leave me unable to survive, and it’s a terrifying prospect”.
She said: “The idea of cutting down the support for those who are not able to work means we will have thousands of people who will be forced into a position where they either work themselves to death or they die without working.
“There’s going to be deaths either way.”
*DNS editor John Pring’s book on DWP and how its actions led to countless deaths of disabled people in the post-2010 era – The Department – will be published by Pluto Press in August
7 March 2024
Government rejects call to work with disabled people to draft new 10-year disability strategy
The government has accepted just two of the recommendations made by a committee of MPs who delivered a powerful attack on the government’s discredited National Disability Strategy.
The Commons women and equalities committee said in December that the strategy was merely “a list consisting mainly of pre-existing departmental actions with minimal strategic thinking behind how those actions interact”.
Its cross-party members made a series of recommendations, including a call for the government to collaborate with disabled people on developing a 10-year strategy.
But the government rejected this recommendation, and said it was “fully committed” to the “long-term vision” in its existing National Disability Strategy.
Analysis by Disability News Service suggests the government rejected four of the committee’s recommendations, and accepted just two, while partially accepting two others.
The committee published the government’s response yesterday (6 March), a month after it was received, because it wanted to wait until the document was available in multiple formats, including EasyRead.
The committee had said in its report that the government’s efforts to engage with disabled people were seen as being “superficial” and that disabled people and their organisations “continue to feel excluded from having meaningful input into policies directly affecting them”.
It called on ministers to set up a new national advisory group of the DPO Forum England (whose members are all leading DPOs) and the chairs of the government’s own regional stakeholder networks to “review disability policy proposals, advise ministers on key issues, and develop, implement and monitor the NDS”.
But the government rejected this idea, saying such a move would replicate its existing arrangements, which it said had been designed to ensure that the voices of “disabled people and their communities and organisations, charities, business leaders” are “meaningfully considered”.
It said the DPO Forum England already met officials of the Disability Unit (DU) monthly and the minister for disabled people four times a year, while DU civil servants and the minister for disabled people also met regularly with the regional stakeholder network’s chairs, their own disability and access ambassadors, and the Disability Charities Consortium.
The committee had also called for the Disability Unit to have the final say on all disability policy “to ensure that the whole of government works towards the same long-term strategic objectives”, with the power to challenge ministers in other departments.
But the government said it would “not be appropriate for the DU to have the final say on all disability policy sitting in or originating from other government departments”.
The high court ruled the National Disability Strategy was unlawful in January 2022 because the government’s consultation process was unlawful, with the government then pausing 14 policies it said were directly connected to the strategy, while continuing progress on another 100.
The Court of Appeal eventually overturned the high court’s judgment last year.
The committee had called on the government to “immediately” provide an update with “specific timescales for delivery on all outstanding actions in the National Disability Strategy”.
But the government said it had already provided a “full update” to parliament last September, and it promised only to “publish further updates on progress”.
December’s report by the committee had also criticised the government’s failure to send a representative to the UN in Geneva last August for a public examination of its progress since being found guilty of grave and systematic violations of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD).
It will now appear before the UN’s committee on the rights of persons with disabilities later this month.
The UN committee found in November 2016 that the UK government had discriminated against disabled people on the right to an adequate standard of living and social protection, work and employment, and independent living.
The women and equalities committee’s report said in December that the government had made “little to no progress” against the UN recommendations and that its refusal to attend the meeting in Geneva was “disrespectful to both the UN committee and disabled people”, and it asked for an explanation.
In one of only two recommendations to be accepted, the government agreed to explain its absence, saying: “Due to competing pressures and commitments, by the time we received the date of the dialogue we would have been unable to adequately prepare.”
It said it recognised that “more needs to be done” to “tackle the barriers faced by disabled people” and so it had “published the Disability Action Plan, setting out the immediate action the Government will take in 2024 to improve disabled people’s lives, laying the foundations for longer term change, and complementing the long-term vision set out in the Strategy”.
The action plan was dismissed last month by DPOs as a series of “empty promises” that fail to address the “dire situation” disabled people are facing.
The government said it would outline its “further progress” to the UN committee in Geneva.
Conservative MP Caroline Nokes, chair of the women and equalities committee, declined to comment on the government accepting only two of the recommendations in full.
The committee plans to publish two further reports on its inquiry into the National Disability Strategy.
7 March 2024
Foxcroft statement suggests she failed to read coroners’ reports into claimant suicides
Labour’s shadow disability minister has been asked why she apparently failed to read two reports by coroners that raised serious safeguarding concerns about the impact of universal credit on disabled people.
Vicky Foxcroft had been asked about Labour’s failure to address concerns about the universal credit system after the suicides of two disabled people that were each linked by coroners to harm caused by the working-age benefits system.
But she ignored universal credit in her statement and spoke instead about the disability benefits assessment system, which was not mentioned by either coroner.
The questions were put to her by Disability News Service (DNS) after Foxcroft’s boss, shadow work and pensions secretary Liz Kendall, pledged to be tougher on benefits than the government, while ignoring concerns about the safety of universal credit and the risk of further deaths of disabled claimants through cuts and reforms.
In an interview with the right-wing Telegraph, Kendall said the government’s “talk about being tough on benefits” had failed, and she urged the paper’s Conservative voters to “take a look at Labour, we have changed”.
Her comments echoed Labour’s change in tone on social security in the mid-1990s, when it began to follow the Conservatives in describing benefit claimants as undeserving in a bid to mark out how “New” Labour had changed.
This paved the way for Labour’s own social security cuts and an approach to reform that mirrored Conservative policies when it won power in 1997.
Labour, and Foxcroft, have repeatedly ignored evidence of serious safeguarding issues within the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), particularly with universal credit, including the two prevention of future deaths (PFD) reports by coroners linking universal credit with suicides.
Foxcroft has also ignored analysis shared with her by DNS that appears to show – despite ministers repeatedly suggesting otherwise – that the proportion of disabled people on out-of-work disability benefits has remained roughly stable over the last 15 years.
The first PFD report was written by a coroner who warned work and pensions secretary Mel Stride in November that he needed to act to prevent flaws in universal credit leading to further deaths, following the suicide of Kevin Gale, from Penrith, Cumbria, who had become overwhelmed by the application process.
Last month, another coroner linked DWP and universal credit with a suicide, this time following the death of Nazerine Anderson, from Melton Mowbray, with the PFD highlighting how DWP missed six opportunities to record her “vulnerability” 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.
Foxcroft and Labour have also failed to raise concerns about a Prime Minister’s Implementation Unit (PMIU) report that ministers kept hidden for four years, which revealed significant flaws at the heart of universal credit and how DWP supports “vulnerable” claimants.
But after being asked about these safety issues with universal credit, Foxcroft’s office emailed a statement that repeatedly talked about the “assessment process” and Labour’s plans to reform it.
There is no mention of assessments in either PFD report.
Foxcroft’s statement also says Labour is committed to publishing PFD reports, when such documents are already published online.
She appears to be confusing PFD reports with DWP’s internal process reviews, which DWP refuses to publish other than in anonymised, severely-redacted versions.
Despite DNS requesting a comment about Labour’s failure to express concern about the safety of universal credit, the two recent universal credit PFD reports, and the PMIU report, Foxcroft did not mention universal credit in her statement.
Questioned by DNS, she declined to clarify her comments or explain her apparent errors.
It is likely that her statement was drafted by Labour’s press office.
But she did say that a Labour government would “ensure the NHS plays an active role in the treatment and prevention of mental illness, recruiting 8,500 more mental healthcare professionals to clear the backlog and reduce waiting lists”.
She said Labour was “committed to delivering for those disabled people who can and want to work” and that it would “provide tailored support to those who need it”, adding: “The Tory DWP is not delivering.
“The culture needs to change and we know this will take time.
“Most importantly, we will work with disabled people and disabled people’s organisations to ensure we get this right.”
Kendall’s comments earlier this week came as disabled activists protested outside DWP’s headquarters and blocked traffic near parliament to protest at government reforms that they believe will lead to more deaths of claimants (see separate story).
Their protest outside Caxton House was accompanied by life-sized photographs of three disabled people – Errol Graham, Jodey Whiting and David Clapson – whose deaths have been closely linked to DWP’s actions and failings.
Kendall’s interview came ahead of a speech in which she attacked the Conservatives for failing to “get to grips with welfare”.
She mirrored decades of DWP rhetoric by both parties by claiming that “good work is good for mental health”, and she repeated her party’s often-repeated – and much-criticised – line that “Labour is the party of work”.
Although she spoke briefly about the need to improve mental health and driving down waiting-lists for NHS treatment, she also mirrored many years of government hostility towards claimants, saying: “Under our changed Labour party, if you can work there will be no option of a life on benefits.”
Her speech and interview came just days after Labour described disabled people who rely on long-term incapacity benefits as being “on the scrapheap” and “languishing” on benefits.
7 March 2024
DNS was not ‘vexatious’ when asking for details of DWP contacts with Telegraph, says watchdog
The information commissioner has ruled that Disability News Service (DNS) was not being “vexatious” when it tried to find out whether the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) tried to encourage a national newspaper to stir up hostility towards disabled people.
In a decision notice, the commissioner has found that DNS was entitled to ask the department what communications it had with the Telegraph in the months before the newspaper ran a “toxic” and “divisive” article about spending on out-of-work disability benefits.
DNS had asked DWP last July for details of all meetings, correspondence and calls between DWP ministers and special advisers and staff of the Telegraph in the previous three months.
But DWP refused to comply with the request because it claimed it was “vexatious”.
DNS had submitted the request following a series of articles which included statements such as: “Use our calculator to reveal how much of your salary bankrolls the welfare state.”
It claimed that millions were claiming benefits “without ever having to look for work”.
This led to Disability Rights UK describing its coverage as “incitement of hatred” towards disabled people and claiming the aim was “to vilify people who are too sick to work by angering those who are paying taxes that go towards Disability benefits”.
More than 300 mental health professionals signed a letter raising concerns about the “benefit calculator” story, calling it “a divisive narrative last seen at the height of austerity politics, which is likely to lead to an increase in hate crimes and have a profound impact on psychological well-being and societal cohesion”.
DNS had explained in lodging its complaint to information commissioner John Edwards that there were concerns that DWP was “engaged in a campaign to stir up hostility towards disabled claimants of benefits” to act as cover for its planned cuts and reforms which had recently been announced, which “could have fatal consequences”.
In response to the complaint, DWP told the Information Commissioner’s Office that there were five ministers and three special advisers in the department, and it would need to examine all their “various communication methods and devices” to produce the information DNS had requested.
It also argued that DNS’s motive was “to try and expose the information without the complainant knowing what was being searched for” and that DNS was simply attempting to “cast a net to try and find something”.
But the commissioner said in his decision notice that there was “a legitimate public interest in understanding the relationship between government ministers and the media”.
And he said he was “not persuaded that eight people checking their records for specified communications within a three month period is particularly onerous”.
DWP must now issue a fresh response to DNS within 35 days.
The Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO) received a “large volume” of complaints about the Telegraph’s “Exactly how much of your salary bankrolls the welfare state” article, but rejected claims that it discriminated against disabled people, because the article “did not relate to any specific individuals”.
It also rejected complaints of harassment and accuracy, and said the Telegraph was “entitled to give their own opinion on a topic and present a one-sided view as long as they take care not to publish inaccurate, misleading, or distorted information, and distinguish between comment, conjecture and fact”.
IPSO has told DNS there were three requests for a review of this decision, but IPSO’s review upheld the decision.
Meanwhile, IPSO has upheld a complaint against the Telegraph over another article in which it whipped up hostility against disabled claimants.
Last July, it published an article about the Motability car scheme* which it headlined “‘Disabled’ drivers claim £40k cars for free”, and then ran the sub-heading: “Fury at ‘exploitation’ of taxpayer-funded scheme to help depression sufferers with issues around mobility”.
It then claimed that “people who say they are immobilised by anxiety or depression can claim £40,000 cars on benefits”.
IPSO has ruled that the article was inaccurate and “misrepresented the basis for eligibility to the Scheme” and that the headlines it had published in print and online were “misleading or distorted”.
It concluded that the newspaper had “significantly misrepresented the conditions of and eligibility for the Motability Scheme”.
The Telegraph did not respond this week to two DNS requests to comment, although DNS did receive two automatic acknowledgements which showed the emails had been received by its press office.
*Motability, the charity which oversees the company that runs the disabled people’s car scheme, is a DNS subscriber
7 March 2024
Other disability-related stories covered by mainstream media this week
Plans for automated surveillance of millions of bank accounts to catch welfare cheats should be scrapped, 42 organisations have said. In a letter to work and pensions secretary Mel Stride, they warned the approach risks a repeat of the Post Office Horizon scandal. The Department for Work and Pensions is seeking new powers to require banks to trawl the accounts of millions of people who receive benefits. The plan is close to being passed into law by parliament and will be “fully automated”, the government said: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/mar/04/ministers-urged-to-scrap-plans-for-surveillance-of-benefit-claimants-bank-accounts
Disabled artists have highlighted how they are being prevented from working in many theatres around the UK because of inadequate access, with warnings that the industry is “robbing them of opportunity, dignity and independence”. The industry has also been accused of building a “barrier for talent progression”, which is resulting in few visibly disabled leaders in the sector. The conversation has been ignited after Rachel Bagshaw, artistic director of London’s Unicorn Theatre, told The Stage she would not be able to work in several other theatres because of their lack of physical access: https://www.thestage.co.uk/news/disabled-creatives-robbed-of-dignity-and-independence-by-lack-of-access
7 March 2024
News provided by John Pring at www.disabilitynewsservice.com
