Contents
Tory minister banned DWP from using the word ‘safeguarding’, MPs are told 1
Minister suggests cuts are coming to Access to Work scheme 3
Minister hijacks Commons inquiry to defend DWP, as he attacks book that exposed its violence 5
DWP’s chief medical adviser downplays her department’s links to countless deaths… again 7
Labour MP tells of suicide attempts and homelessness as she warns of assisted dying bill dangers 9
Legalising assisted suicide would take us into ‘tiger country’, MP warns 11
DWP research links NHS waiting-lists with rise in number of claimants of disability benefits 13
Other disability-related stories covered by mainstream media this week 17
Tory minister banned DWP from using the word ‘safeguarding’, MPs are told
A Conservative minister banned the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) from using the word “safeguarding”, despite DWP’s connection with countless deaths of disabled benefit claimants since 2010, MPs have been told.
Labour’s new social security and disability minister, Sir Stephen Timms, told the Commons work and pensions committee yesterday (Wednesday) that DWP was reviewing its “whole approach to safeguarding” and hoping to rebuild trust in the department that “has been so badly lost in the past”.
He was giving evidence to the committee in the final session of its inquiry into safeguarding vulnerable claimants.
But he also told the committee: “The department has used the word safeguarding in the past, but a former minister banned the use of the term in the department at all.
“And so, you know, we are going to reintroduce it. We think it’s a good word and a word that we should be clear about what it means in the department and how we seek to deliver it.”
Evidence links DWP and its policy decisions, actions, and mistakes with the deaths of hundreds, and probably thousands, of disabled people over the last 15 years.
It also shows how senior civil servants and ministers spent more than a decade covering up evidence of those links.
Those deaths, and years of other harm caused by the department, which is still ongoing, have left a legacy of distress and distrust among claimants.
Sir Stephen told the committee that he wanted “trust in the department to be rebuilt”.
He said: “I think everybody would acknowledge that trust in the department has been at quite a low level.
“I think things that ought to have been published and made public have been hidden, and that’s contributed to a loss of trust.
“We need to change that, and we do need to, and we do very much want to, and we are going to, take a fresh approach to safeguarding.”
He said DWP needed to “show that it’s learning when things go wrong”.
And he said the department was “reviewing the whole approach to safeguarding” so “everybody can see what the approach we’re taking is and that will set out the support that’s available to people, how to access that support and what they can expect from us when they come to the department”.
He suggested there would be more information about this new approach in next month’s disability benefits green paper, with a “much more substantial update” in a white paper, which is likely to follow by the end of this year.
Sir Stephen said later in the session: “We do need people coming to the department feeling that it’s safe to come and that they are able to tell us what it is that they need and not feel that they are putting themselves in some kind of danger [when they do that].”
He suggested that DWP needed to do more work in the community and not restrict itself to jobcentres, although his suggestion that this should involve a presence in GP surgeries is likely to alarm many disabled activists.
He said: “We need to be in communities, we need to be in libraries, we need to be in community hubs, GP surgeries, in order to be able to do that well, and we need to be trauma aware.
“We need to be properly responsive to people when they raise these concerns.”
He said the department also needed to “publish more information about the support the department can provide”, put in place reasonable adjustments for disabled people, and “strengthen the links that we’ve got in the department with organisations who speak for people who use our services”.
Liz Fairburn, DWP’s customer experience director, even suggested that the department would soon begin publishing anonymised versions of its secret internal process reviews (IPRs) into claimant deaths and serious harm linked to DWP’s actions.
She said: “It’s worth noting as well that on the point of sharing our IPRs, we often get asked through FOIs* to share IPRs, and within the next couple of months, all of our IPRs will be shared, so clearly they’ll be anonymised, but from a transparency point of view, I think that’s a good step forward.”
If that is correct, it would be a huge step towards transparency by DWP, as it would be the first time that IPRs have ever been published.
However, it is likely that Fairburn mis-spoke, and that DWP is instead planning only to publish the anonymised recommendations that have been made by IPRs, instead of releasing them in response to freedom of information requests, as it does – sometimes – at present.
DWP had not responded by noon today (Thursday) to a request for clarification on which Conservative minister banned the use of the word “safeguarding” and whether the department would soon be publishing complete IPRs, or just their recommendations.
*Freedom of information requests
13 February 2025
Minister suggests cuts are coming to Access to Work scheme
Ministers appear to be set to announce cuts to a flagship disability employment scheme, just as the government is trying to push more disabled people towards the workplace.
Sir Stephen Timms, the social security and disability minister, told MPs yesterday that the Access to Work scheme was “unlikely to be sustainable in the long term” and needed to be “better and more effective”.
He pointed to the “very high level of demand” and said ministers were looking at “whether actually employers could do more” through some “fairly significant reforms to Access to Work”.
His comments to the Commons work and pensions committee yesterday (Wednesday) suggest that ministers will take measures to cut the number of disabled people eligible for the scheme, and increase obligations on employers to make more adjustments themselves in the workplace.
Only last month, the prime minister, Sir Keir Starmer, said the government’s approach to social security would “ensure that work is accessible to as many people as possible”, including disabled people.
Sir Stephen’s comments follow years of rising numbers of recipients of Access to Work support – apart from the first year of the pandemic – and mounting backlogs and delays.
Employment minister Alison McGovern said last year that there were about 55,000 Access to Work applications yet to be dealt with on 7 October, while DWP figures later that month showed that the amount spent on assistance such as equipment, travel and support workers increased from £127 million in 2016-17 to £255 million in 2023-24, once the effects of inflation had been allowed for.
It also increased by 34 per cent in the last year, from £191 million in 2022-23 to £255 million in 2023-24, while the number of disabled people receiving Access to Work support increased from 34,800 in 2022-23 to 49,920 in 2023-24, a rise of 43 per cent.
Sir Stephen had been responding to concerns raised by disabled Liberal Democrat MP Steve Darling.
Darling said he was concerned that the backlogs in the system could be “exacerbating vulnerabilities”, and he pointed to two disabled women who had reported serious delays.
One of them, a constituent, was told she would need to wait six months for Access to Work support, while another disabled woman was facing the possibility of a job offer being withdrawn because “it had gone on for months with Access to Work failing to process the claim”.
He said: “We want to help people back into work and yet the department is part of the problem.”
Darling asked if DWP had set a 28-day target for dealing with new claims and processing payments on existing claims because disabled people can find themselves “thousands of pounds in arrears”, which he said was “impoverishing” many people.
Sir Stephen told him: “The problem is that there has been an enormous surge in applications for Access to Work.
“A number of us will remember that we used to talk about Access to Work as a kind of ‘best kept secret’ because nobody really knew about it and employers didn’t know about it.
“Well, that seems to have changed in the last two years and there’s been an enormous surge in applications for Access to Work and the department has done its level best to keep up.”
He said DWP had allocated more staff to deal with applications, but the system was still “not in good shape at the moment”.
He said: “So I think what we’re going to need to do and we will touch on this in the green paper [due to be published next month] as well, I think we’re going to need to make some fairly significant reforms to Access to Work, look again at the whole approach we’re taking, look at whether actually employers could do more.
“There are legal obligations on employers to make reasonable adjustments. I’m wondering whether there’s more we can do there.”
He pointed to the government’s Keep Britain Working review, which is being led by Sir Charlie Mayfield, former chair of John Lewis Partnership, and will focus on understanding what employers and government can do “to increase the recruitment, retention and return to work of disabled people and people with long-term health conditions”.
Sir Stephen said the review would look “specifically at what employers should be doing and can do to improve opportunities for disabled people, people with health impairments, to get into work and stay in work and do well in work.
“So I think there’s quite a big issue here and I think the current style of Access to Work is unlikely to be sustainable in the long term.
“We’ve got to come up with something better and more effective given the current very high level of demand.”
13 February 2025
Minister hijacks Commons inquiry to defend DWP, as he attacks book that exposed its violence
The minister for social security and disability has publicly attacked a book that exposed decades of “bureaucratic violence” by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).
The Department: How a Violent Government Bureaucracy Killed Hundreds and Hid the Evidence was published last August* and describes how DWP ignored pleas to correct flaws within the social security system and covered up its role in the deaths of hundreds, and probably thousands, of deaths.
Sir Stephen Timms, the minister for social security and disability, delayed the end of a hearing yesterday (Wednesday) – in which he and senior DWP civil servants had given evidence to the Commons work and pensions committee – so he could make a public statement about the book.
It is believed to be the first time DWP has commented publicly on The Department.
Sir Stephen had been taking part as a witness in the final evidence session of an inquiry into safeguarding vulnerable claimants, which he had launched himself in the last parliament when he was chairing the committee.
The committee’s new chair, Labour’s Debbie Abrahams, was about to end yesterday’s meeting when Sir Stephen asked her: “Can I make one further point?”
He began by praising the work of the book’s author, John Pring, editor of Disability News Service (DNS).
He said he had read the book and that Pring was “entitled to a good deal of credit for drawing attention to these things over a long period through his work on the Disability News Service”.
Sir Stephen pointed out that all 650 MPs had been sent a copy of the book, thanks to a crowdfunding action last autumn by disabled activists.
He said he found the book “interesting” and praised its “meticulous accounts of 13 deaths”, adding: “There’s absolutely no doubt that the book highlights serious mistakes made in the department.”
He also said that it provided “a very important contribution to this whole debate”.
But he then claimed that The Department “doesn’t produce any evidence of the conspiracy which is implied by the ‘violent government bureaucracy’ point”.
Sir Stephen pointed out that he was a minister in the Department of Social Security (DSS) – DWP’s predecessor – 27 years ago and that this was now his fifth ministerial “stint” in the department.
He said: “I was a shadow for five years, I’ve chaired this committee for four years, and I’ve never seen anything that makes me think there’s a conspiracy going on in the department.”
He said there were “certainly” mistakes made by DWP and – when it comes to hiding evidence – there was “a very strong case for us being much more open in a lot of these areas than has been the case in the past”.
But he argued that any such cover-ups were due to the actions of ministers, and not DWP civil servants.
He said that “it wasn’t the department that hid it, ministers chose that things ought not to be open”.
He added: “The trouble is, if you think it’s a conspiracy, that sort of means you don’t have to bother with the hard graft of working out how to solve these problems, in the way the committee now is and the department is as well.
“We do need that hard work. The committee, the department, we need between us to work out how to stop the mistakes that John Pring is absolutely right to draw attention to.
“But I kind of want to say that I think his work has been important and valuable, but I just don’t think it’s right or helpful to give the impression that there’s some huge conspiracy going on here, because there just isn’t.”
Next week, DNS will publish a detailed rebuttal of Sir Stephen’s claims.
Pring said: “This will show clearly, with irrefutable evidence, how the countless deaths of disabled claimants, particularly over the last 15 years, were not solely due to the actions of DSS and DWP ministers in successive governments, but were largely the result of the ‘slow bureaucratic violence’ that has developed within this toxic government department over the last 30 years.
“I should also point out that the word ‘conspiracy’ is not used in my book, apart from a fleeting reference to the conspiracy theories of David Icke.
“The case laid out in The Department is about how a toxic culture within a government bureaucracy can slowly build over many years and eventually have significant, shocking, and violent consequences.
“DNS will point to some of the evidence for that case next week and show exactly why Sir Stephen is wrong.”
*The Department: How a Violent Government Bureaucracy Killed Hundreds and Hid the Evidence, John Pring’s book on the years of deaths linked to DWP, is published by Pluto Press
13 February 2025
DWP’s chief medical adviser downplays her department’s links to countless deaths… again
The chief medical adviser for the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has sparked fresh anger after again publicly downplaying links between the deaths of disabled benefit claimants and her own department’s actions.
Dr Gail Allsopp, who was appointed to the role 17 months ago, caused concern last month when she dismissed the importance of hundreds of secret internal process reviews (IPRs) carried out by her own department into the deaths of claimants.
Now she has again publicly downplayed evidence that closely links countless deaths to her department, and she has even suggested that MPs should remember how many claimants die when DWP is not responsible for their deaths.
She also told MPs that it was inevitable that many claimants would die every year because of the number of people her department deals with.
She told the Commons work and pensions committee yesterday (Wednesday): “The sheer number of people that our department touches and the lives that they touch, there are, of course, going to be lots of people that die in the process, every single year, who are in touch with our department.
“Sometimes there will be a trigger within the department that makes something worse, but actually there will be lots of people that die where there is no trigger within the department.”
Allsopp was giving evidence to the committee in its final session of an inquiry into safeguarding vulnerable claimants.
She had been responding to a question by disabled Liberal Democrat MP Steve Darling, who had asked how the department could improve the data it collects on serious harm and deaths of working-age benefit claimants.
Darling also asked whether coroners should be asked to record whether a claimant was a working-age benefit claimant on death certificates to “help us understand where there are challenges with systems impacting on people’s well-being”.
But Allsopp told the committee it was “really important” to say that the cause of a suicide “was never one thing” and that “some of the risk factors for suicide, particularly for working-age people and particularly for men, are loss of work and loss of income” so “of course people who are on benefits will be at risk”.
She said that that “doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the department that is the only trigger for that suicide”, and that her team takes a “holistic approach to what is going on”.
She said that the few prevention of future deaths (PFD) reports sent to DWP by coroners since starting in her role 17 months ago were “really important because that also gives us an idea of the different number of services that people are interacting with”.
She again downplayed DWP’s role in those deaths, telling the committee that “we are never the sole agency that is working with people… people that often have chaotic and very difficult lives, and I think that’s really important to take into account when we’re thinking about this”.
Two of the PFD reports sent to DWP since Allsopp’s appointment related to the deaths of Kevin Gale, and Nazerine Anderson,.
Both of their deaths were closely linked by coroners to flaws within the universal credit system, and in both cases the reports were only sent to DWP, and no other public bodies.
On 4 March 2022, Gale took his own life after becoming overwhelmed by the universal credit application process.
In June 2023, the death of Nazerine Anderson followed six missed opportunities by DWP to record her vulnerability.
Her case had been randomly selected for a “performance measurement review” of her universal credit claim, and she was told she owed nearly £13,000 in back-payments following her husband’s death.
Debbie Abrahams, the Labour chair of the committee, told Allsopp yesterday that there was a need to discover the “true scale of deaths of claimants”.
She said: “Although we know that you have investigated, I think, about 80, 90 over the past year [through IPRs], we don’t know whether that is a true reflection of the number of claimant deaths.”
And she reminded Allsopp that not all such deaths were suicides.
She told Allsopp: “Errol Graham didn’t die of suicide. He died of starvation.”
Alison Burton, daughter-in-law of Errol Graham – who starved to death after DWP wrongly removed his out-of-work disability benefits – told Disability News Service yesterday that she was appalled by Allsopp’s comments.
She said: “What she’s saying to the public is ‘no matter what we do, people are going to die anyway and you can’t hold the government responsible’.
“She’s downplaying the severity of these deaths and the role the department is playing in them.
“She doesn’t believe that the department has done anything wrong.”
Burton, who had watched the evidence session, said: “It’s attitudes like that that [explain] why things aren’t getting done and people aren’t getting safeguarding when they should be safeguarding them.”
Sir Stephen Timms, the social security and disability minister, had said earlier in the session that he wanted to rebuild trust and confidence in the department (see separate story), but Burton said: “You aren’t building confidence when you have [other members of the team] who aren’t on the same page.
“‘People are going to die, get over it.’ That’s the attitude. I find that very insulting.”
Last month, Allsopp told the committee (PDF) that she only viewed the five deaths in the previous 16 months that had led to a coroner sending the department a PFD report as the only deaths “that are associated from a DWP perspective”.
In fact, DWP has carried out hundreds of IPRs of deaths of claimants linked to its actions over the last decade, each one examining how the department has handled the case, and they have led to countless recommendations for local and national improvements.
But Allsopp downplayed those reviews, and instead said she believed the “key bit” was the PFD reports.
13 February 2025
Labour MP tells of suicide attempts and homelessness as she warns of assisted dying bill dangers
A Labour MP has spoken of her own experience of suicide attempts and homelessness – and her mother’s imprisonment for killing an abusive partner – to warn of the risks the assisted suicide bill would pose to prisoners and homeless people.
Naz Shah was speaking on Tuesday to the committee examining the terminally ill adults (end of life) bill, in support of amendments which would have ensured that the option of seeking an assisted suicide would not be available to those who are prisoners or are homeless.
Her efforts to increase its safeguards came as pressure mounted on the Labour MP behind the private members’ bill, Kim Leadbeater, over her decision to replace a system in which the high court would approve every application for an assisted suicide with a panel of “experts”.
Reports suggest the move could see support for the bill among MPs drop off ahead of its next parliamentary stage, with Conservative MP Danny Kruger warning on Tuesday that more than 60 MPs had voted for the bill at its second reading in November “because of that safeguard”.
The bill passed in November with a majority of just 55, so it could take less than 30 MPs to change their minds for it to be defeated.
Shah told fellow MPs on the committee on Tuesday how her mother had been imprisoned as a survivor of domestic violence, and how she herself was then left homeless.
She told the committee: “I also have experience of whilst I was homeless attempting suicide on two occasions… so I speak from a reasonable amount of experience.
“From a domestic violence point of view, which is why my mother killed an abusive partner, and having been a victim of domestic abuse, I also understand the vulnerabilities, of women in particular.
“The majority of women that end up in prison… are victims of domestic abuse, some kind of abuse, whether it’s sexual abuse, domestic abuse.
“Yes… in an ideal world they should absolutely have equal access to healthcare, but the problem is we are not in an ideal world.”
She said the prison system was not fit for purpose, while people from a minority ethnic background have less trust in healthcare services, and do not have “equity” in accessing those services.
Shah told the committee she was trying to imagine the significant vulnerability of prisoners, particularly women prisoners.
She said: “That vulnerability for me speaks to the issue of capacity, it speaks to the issue of coercion.
“I am supporting this amendment because it protects those that are vulnerable.
“I would be really, really uncomfortable seeing anybody in prison being given that option [of assisted suicide].
“I cannot imagine being in the position of, say, my mum… the idea of being taken away from your family, being incarcerated, rightfully or wrongfully, guilty or not guilty, and you’re in a place, and you’re in a system, and you’re in an institution.
“Faced with all of that, finding out that you’ve got six months to live.”
But Conservative MP Kit Malthouse, who strongly supports the bill, said: “Their access to the service or not should be based on assessment of them as themselves, their mental capacity, their particular characteristics, their settled will, just like everybody else will be in the bill.
“The fact that they are at that point a prisoner does indeed impact on the context in which their capacity is assessed, and that has to be the critical factor.
“Having a blanket ban on all prisoners… seems to me cruel.”
Shah has written previously, when first campaigning for election in 2015, of how her mother was imprisoned for 14 years for killing her violent drug-dealing partner, before her daughter’s campaigning helped reduce her sentence.
The Conservative MP Danny Kruger, who proposed the amendments and opposes the bill, said he had run a charity working in London prisons for 20 years, 10 of them as chief executive, and recognised both the dignity and the vulnerability of prisoners.
He said: “It is no surprise that, with their lives in tatters, feeling completely unable to change anything for the better, that so many prisoners self-harm or attempt suicide.”
He said there were more than 40,000 incidents of self-harm in prisons in a single year.
He said: “Given their vulnerabilities, and their dependence on the state, offering assisted dying to prisoners would be fraught with hazard.”
And he added: “For someone who is homeless, or indeed a prisoner, it is surely doubtful that the choice of going for assisted dying can ever be a fully free one.”
He pointed to the comments made in oral evidence to the committee last month by Fazilet Hadi, from Disability Rights UK, who told MPs: “This isn’t an abstract exercise, this bill, it will land in a society that is rife with inequality.
“I can’t suggest any way in which this bill could be strengthened, and that’s because it’s the society it will land in is the thing that needs to change, not the bill, and at the moment there’s very little likelihood of that society becoming more equal, having better public services, having less health inequality, in the next few years.”
But Malthouse said there was a “distinct moral issue about the denial of services to particular groups of individuals, based on their circumstances, particularly medical services.
“We don’t deny medical services to prisoners because they are prisoners… the same is true of those homeless groups.”
The health minister, Stephen Kinnock, who is a member of the committee, said the government’s position was that the amendments could potentially breach the European Convention on Human Rights.
Kruger withdrew the amendments without asking the committee – which is heavily weighted in favour of supporters of the bill – to vote on them.
13 February 2025
Legalising assisted suicide would take us into ‘tiger country’, MP warns
A Liberal Democrat MP has warned that a bill that aims to legalise assisted suicide would take England and Wales into “tiger country” and let “tigers out into the wild”.
Sarah Olney was speaking as she attempted to persuade members of the committee examining the terminally ill adults (end of life) bill that they needed to toughen its safeguards.
It came as pressure mounts on the Labour MP behind the private members’ bill, Kim Leadbeater, over her decision to replace a system in which the high court would have to approve applications for assisted suicide with a panel of “experts”.
Reports suggest the move could see support for the bill among MPs drop off ahead of its report stage, with Conservative MP Danny Kruger warning on Tuesday that more than 60 MPs had voted for the bill on second reading in November “because of that safeguard”.
The bill passed in November with a majority of just 55, so it could take less than 30 MPs to change their minds for it to be defeated.
Olney’s amendments would particularly have strengthened the safeguards around how the capacity of someone to choose an assisted suicide would be decided.
She suggested that, rather than using the Mental Capacity Act 2005 to decide if someone had the capacity to make a decision to end their own life, they should be assessed on whether they were “fully able to understand, fully able to weigh and use the relevant information” to make a decision to ask for an assisted suicide.
This would mean a terminally-ill patient with a co-occurring mental health impairment which affected their judgement “would not be eligible for assisted dying”.
The “tiger country” phrase had been used earlier in the day by Dr Neil Shastri-Hurst – a Conservative MP and supporter of the bill – when he warned against abandoning the bill’s reliance on the Mental Capacity Act 2005.
But Olney, who does not support the bill, said: “It’s the bill itself that takes us into tiger country. This is unprecedented. This is very much new territory for legislation in this country.
“That’s the tiger country right there.
“And if we are going to let these tigers out into the wild, we need to make sure that the British public, and particularly the most vulnerable members of it, have the right protections.”
She said there had not been agreement among the experts who gave oral evidence to the committee last month on whether the use of the Mental Capacity Act in the bill was “a sufficient safeguard”.
Danny Kruger, another opponent of the bill, said the Voluntary Euthanasia Society, which later changed its name to Dignity in Dying and which has led the campaign to legalise assisted suicide, had lobbied behind the scenes for the Mental Capacity Act to be framed in the way that it had.
He said it had done that “because they were very conscious that when the time came to pass the law for assisted suicide, it would be very helpful to have a capacity act on statute that had this very low bar, so they were delighted when the act was passed in the way it was, and they boasted at the time of the influence they had had on the act”.
Opposing the amendment, the disabled Labour MP Dr Marie Tidball, a supporter of the bill, said the term “ability” was “not an existing concept in law” and replacing it “would create more problems than it seeks to solve”.
She said that to “unleash the tiger of an unknown and untested concept of ability into a bill that would benefit better from the well-understood, measured and principled approach of the Mental Capacity Act 2005” would not “best serve the patients” they were discussing.
She said: “The presumption of capacity in the Mental Capacity Act exists because it is considered a fundamental principle of respecting individual autonomy, meaning that every adult is assumed to have the ability to make their own decisions unless there is clear evidence proving otherwise.”
Olney’s proposed amendment was defeated by 15 votes to eight. The committee is heavily weighted in favour of supporters of the bill.
After the debate, the coalition of disabled people’s organisations that monitors implementation of the UN disability convention in the UK said: “The UK coalition supports Sarah Olney’s amendment and thanks her for putting it in.
“The amendment is aimed at providing a much tighter safeguard than the bill’s proposed use of the Mental Capacity Act as a tool for assessing whether a person is making a clear, settled and informed decision to end their life.
“Our concern is that terminally-ill people with depression will easily pass the capacity assessment but will nevertheless be making their decision to end their lives based on depressed thinking, and internalised assumptions about the hopelessness of their situation.
“Psychological and, crucially, peer support could change their thinking and enable them to enjoy more special moments of life.”
13 February 2025
DWP research links NHS waiting-lists with rise in number of claimants of disability benefits
A government report has provided crucial new evidence that links longer NHS waiting-lists with increases in the number of disabled people on benefits.
The research shows that more than two-fifths (41 per cent) of disability benefit claimants are on a waiting-list for treatment for a health condition, with half (50 per cent) of those out of work believing their ability to get a job depends on receiving treatment.
The report, commissioned by the Department for Work and Pensions from social research agency NatCen, says the findings “indicate a link between take up of health and disability benefits and challenges in the healthcare system”.
Politicians, journalists and thinktanks have spent months demanding a tougher approach from the new government because of apparent increases in the number of claimants of disability benefits.
But the new report provides important evidence for disabled campaigners to fight any proposals in the government’s disability benefits green paper, which is set to be published next month, that tighten eligibility, cut benefits, or increase conditions and sanctions.
The report is based on a survey of 3,401 claimants of disability benefits, including those receiving personal independence payment (PIP), employment and support allowance (ESA), and universal credit.
Of those surveyed, half (49 per cent) said they believed they would never be able to work (or work again); a quarter (27 per cent) said they might be able to work in the future if their health improved; and a fifth (19 per cent) already had jobs.
Just five per cent were not in work but felt they could work “right away” if the right job or support was available.
The report says: “The main barriers to work faced by most customers were related to their health.
“Most had left work due to their worsening health, and three-quarters (76 per cent) were worried that working could make their health worse.”
Of those who had previously worked and left their job because of their health condition, nearly all said this was because their health condition had worsened (94 per cent), but other reasons included unsupportive employers (26 per cent), a lack of flexibility (17 per cent), or following advice from healthcare professionals (27 per cent).
The report also demonstrated that many disabled people on out-of-work benefits would like to be able to work if they could.
It says: “Customers overwhelmingly saw work as a key part of their identity and a route to higher self-esteem, happiness and security.
“For many, it was something they deeply missed, while those who had never been employed saw work as central to feeling valued and connected to society.”
Many of those surveyed expressed concern about the attitude of DWP to their situation.
They said they wanted to “feel supported rather than coerced, monitored or blamed”, while those with less visible impairments “wanted more understanding and sensitivity from staff”.
Of those claimants not in work who did not rule out work permanently, three-fifths (60 per cent) were worried that DWP would make them look for work that was not suitable for them, and half (50 per cent) were worried they would not regain their benefits if they tried a paid job and it did not work out.
Only one-third (33 per cent) of claimants surveyed said they trusted JobcentrePlus or DWP to have their health and wellbeing at heart if they engaged with them.
Some reported “negative interactions” with jobcentre staff “where they were made to feel judged, disbelieved or as though they were exaggerating their conditions”, while some said the financial support “did not outweigh the stress of claiming benefits, while others felt pressured to take on more work, even when they did not feel able”.
One female claimant, who was receiving universal credit and awaiting a work capability assessment, said: “It’s left me feeling very degraded and very defeated, and even now, working part-time and being a carer and managing the house, I’m still feeling like I’m not doing enough.”
The report also undermines widespread claims that disabled people on out-of-work benefits are refusing to work because they are so well-off on benefits.
Of those on ESA or universal credit with no work-related activity requirements – those facing the highest barriers to employment – 39 per cent had a post-tax monthly household income that was less than £1,080.
Despite the report’s findings, work and pensions secretary Liz Kendall claimed the research showed the “broken benefits system is letting down people with mental health conditions who want to work”.
She said the report found “44 per cent of people with a mental health condition expect to be able to work in future if their health improves”.
In fact, the report said that 44 per cent of this group felt they “might” be able to work again if their health improved.
Only last month, a House of Lords committee, chaired by a Conservative banker, called on ministers to impose stricter conditions, more assessments, and a more “rigorous” work capability assessment on claimants of out-of-work disability benefits, despite taking no written evidence in its inquiry into “the spiralling costs of the health benefit trap”.
That report dismissed reports that increasing claimant numbers were at least partly due to rising levels of ill-health and NHS waiting-lists since the start of the pandemic.
Now there are hopes that DWP’s NatCen report might provide ammunition for disabled activists desperate to fight back against that report and many other calls from thinktanks, politicians and right-wing media for a harsher benefits system.
13 February 2025
DWP ministers fail to sign up to their own disability employment scheme, seven months after election
Work and pensions secretary Liz Kendall – along with three of her ministerial team – failed to sign up to her own department’s disability employment scheme, a government report has revealed.
The latest version of a list of employers signed up to Disability Confident shows that neither Kendall nor her employment minister Alison McGovern had signed up to the scheme by 31 January.
Their colleagues Andrew Western and Torsten Bell* had also failed to sign up, although Sir Stephen Timms – the social security and disability minister – was a member of the scheme.
Like all MPs, the ministers employ staff to assist with their parliamentary and constituency duties, which are separate to their ministerial roles.
The much-criticised scheme, launched in 2013, aims to encourage employers to “think differently about disability and take action to improve how they recruit, retain and develop disabled people”.
Sir Stephen praised the scheme during a Commons debate in November, when he described it as a “very important resource” that “provides a strong platform, with more than 19,000 employers participating in it”.
He told MPs in November: “It promotes good, inclusive employment and recruitment practices.
“It supports employers to deliver them and to become able to attract, recruit, retain and develop disabled people.”
But he did say the government would “examine how we can make the Disability Confident scheme more robust and how it can achieve more of its potential”.
Despite his praise for the scheme, four of his ministerial colleagues had failed to sign up by 31 January.
A spokesperson for Kendall thanked Disability News Service this week for “highlighting this gap to us” and added: “We are now signed up.”
A spokesperson for Western said they had “just applied to join the scheme”.
Despite these comments, DWP refused to provide a statement, and even claimed that DWP ministers were signed up to the programme.
It said work was underway to increase the sign-up of other ministers and MPs.
Neither McGovern nor Bell had commented by noon today (Thursday).
Mel Stride, the last government’s final work and pensions secretary, failed to sign up to Disability Confident when a minister, and is still not a member, while the current shadow work and pensions secretary, Helen Whately, has also not signed up. Nor has shadow work and pensions minister Danny Kruger.
Former work and pensions secretary Therese Coffey eventually signed up, after her failure to join the scheme was exposed by Disability News Service in October 2020, more than a year after she had been appointed secretary of state.
She has now apparently left the scheme after losing her seat last July.
One notable former DWP minister who has never signed up to the scheme is Iain Duncan Smith, even though he helped launch it as work and pensions secretary in 2013.
The Conservative party had not responded to requests to comment by noon today (Thursday).
In November 2016, DWP itself was declared a Disability Confident “leader” – the highest of the scheme’s three levels – days before it was found guilty of grave and systematic violations of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
In July 2020, a company that bragged of being a Disability Confident leader sacked more than 50 disabled staff when it fell into administration, and then hired mostly non-disabled agency staff to replace them.
And in October 2018, the government-funded British Council, which is responsible for promoting the UK’s culture and education abroad, asked an employment tribunal to allow it to dodge its Equality Act duty not to discriminate against disabled people, despite being a member of Disability Confident.
In the same year, nearly 7,000 employers that signed up to Disability Confident promised to provide just 4,500 new jobs for disabled people between them, less than one per employer.
*Torsten Bell was only appointed to his ministerial position last month
13 February 2025
Other disability-related stories covered by mainstream media this week
Former patients at Scotland’s biggest children’s psychiatric hospital have spoken out about a culture of cruelty among nursing staff. Patients who were teenagers when they were admitted to Skye House, a specialist NHS unit in Glasgow, told the BBC some nurses called them “pathetic” and “disgusting” – and even mocked their suicide attempts: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2kg2djkk2o
The Department for Work and Pensions has revealed how it is using AI to inform decisions on whether to approve or deny certain benefit applications. The department says it is using an AI tool called “online medical matching” to help agents make decisions on applications for employment and support allowance: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/dwp-benefits-esa-artificial-intelligence-disability-b2697488.html
Successful complaints about councils’ special educational needs and disability (SEND) services in England have quadrupled in four years, in the latest evidence of the crisis facing the system. The local government and social care ombudsman, which handles complaints about English councils, upheld 1,043 cases regarding SEND provision in 2024 – nearly 40 per cent more than in 2023, and four times more than the 258 upheld in 2021: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2025/feb/09/successful-special-educational-needs-complaints-in-england-quadruple-in-four-years
13 February 2025
News provided by John Pring at www.disabilitynewsservice.com
