Contents
Years of evidence exposes minister’s claims in parliament that DWP is not to blame for deaths 7
Campaigners call for action to address shortage of wheelchair-accessible taxis 13
Government must set up independent panel to probe DWP deaths, says disabled researcher 16
Other disability-related stories covered by mainstream media this week 17
Anger after government appears to drop Tory plans to put accessibility at heart of new national rail body
Labour appears to have dropped the Conservative government’s pledge to place accessibility right at the heart of the new national body that will run the railways.
Concerns were raised by The Association of British Commuters (ABC) when this week’s consultation on the government’s plans for rail reform failed to include any mention of a statutory accessibility duty.
Last February, in The Plan for Rail (PDF), the Conservative government confirmed earlier pledges that it would introduce a legal duty on the new Great British Railways (GBR) that would “underpin cultural change” and ensure GBR put accessibility “at the core of its strategic decisions”.
But this week’s consultation on Labour’s plans for GBR – which will eventually run both Britain’s rail infrastructure and passenger services – includes no mention of the accessibility duty.
And when challenged on its absence from the consultation by Disability News Service (DNS), the Department for Transport (DfT) said only that the government welcomed views on whether there should be such a duty, and declined to produce a statement on why it was not mentioned in the document.
Other GBR statutory duties – on promoting rail freight and collaborating with devolved leaders – were included in the consultation.
There are just a handful of sentences in the document that relate to disabled passengers and the accessibility of the network.
It says that GBR will “take over responsibility from [train] operators and Network Rail to ensure its trains and stations are accessible” and “will also be responsible for providing information and assistance to passengers, as well as staffing at stations and on trains”.
A “powerful” new watchdog will “act as an independent voice and champion for passengers” and will have an “explicit role on accessibility by monitoring how services are delivered to disabled passengers and advocating improvements where issues arise”.
It could also take on some of the regulatory functions currently carried out by the Office of Rail and Road, including producing guidance on accessible travel policies.
But Emily Sullivan (née Yates), a disabled researcher in equality and human rights, and ABC’s co-founder, who first spotted that the accessibility duty had been omitted from the consultation document, said: “This is a huge step back from the long-standing commitment that GBR would have statutory duties on accessibility and the environment.
“Both have been dropped, despite being well-acknowledged as the most urgent social justice issues in transport.
“Even more worrying, the duties have been dropped in the context of extremely vague and confused proposals for regulation.
“The idea that [the existing passenger watchdog] Transport Focus might produce and monitor the accessible travel policies, for example, is astounding.
“What’s actually needed is much stronger regulation of accessibility – closer to the level of importance that safety is given by the railway, not absorbed into consumer rights and ‘passenger experience’ monitoring.
“There is now a real danger that GBR could end up without either a statutory accessibility duty or adequate regulation – this can’t be allowed to happen.”
Sullivan said the government “must answer urgently” why it had dropped the duties at such “an historic time for public ownership” because “public ownership is the biggest opportunity we’ve ever had to establish an equality and human rights framework for the railway”.
She said: “Why would they waste this and drop GBR’s main equality commitments when there is finally the chance to regulate in the public, not private, interest?
“Moving away from equality and climate policies like this should be considered a matter of shame for a Labour government.”
She said she had studied every policy paper on GBR since the process started in 2018, and this week’s consultation was “the most incoherent plan for accessibility yet”.
She said that “rail access has been badly betrayed by this process and plans for accessibility and ticket retail are even more fragmented and regressive than the Tories’ version of GBR”.
Labour’s commitment to accessible transport has also come under attack after DfT said it would allow only eight weeks for responses to the consultation.
So far, five organisations have called for DfT to think again and extend the consultation to 12 weeks.
Sullivan described the process as “the most important rail consultation since 1994, and the most important for access ever”.
Speaking before concerns about the statutory accessibility duty emerged, disabled activists expressed their frustration and concerns at the government’s decision to restrict the consultation to less than two months.
It came just weeks after the high court ruled that an eight-week consultation on Department for Work and Pensions plans on cuts to disability benefits, under the Conservative government, had been unlawfully “rushed”.
Sullivan said there needed to be “an urgent extension to 12 weeks” for the DfT consultation.
Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) also called for a 12-week deadline.
Paula Peters, a member of DPAC’s national steering group, said the shorter consultation timeframe would breach the Equality Act.
She said: “We back the call from The Association of British Commuters for the government to extend the consultation time to 12 weeks and demand the Department for Transport carry out more outreach so that the consultation reaches all disabled people across Britain who will be impacted by the reforms to the rail network.
“It’s the biggest reform to the rail network for decades and disabled people need to know how this will impact on them.
“It is important to stress that we continue to demand that all rail ticket offices remain open, rail stations are fully staffed and the right to turn up and go remains firmly in place for disabled rail passengers.”
DPAC also raised concerns that some accessible formats of the consultation were not yet directly available on the DfT website, other than through a link to request the document in an accessible format.
The National Federation of the Blind of the UK (NFBUK), which played a key role in 2023 in defeating planned closures of nearly 1,000 ticket offices across the country, also called for a 12-week consultation.
Andrew Hodgson, an NFBUK executive council member, said: “NFBUK believe eight weeks to be an unrealistic timescale for this consultation and we would favour 12 weeks as an alternative.”
An NFBUK spokesperson added: “The short timescale and the lack of accessible formats on the website, is a sure sign the Department for Transport is failing to communicate with disabled people on the reform creating Great British Railways from the start.”
She said DfT should “swiftly organise outreach face-to-face seminars in towns and cities across the country”, and other measures including a helpline, and making watchdogs London Travel Watch and Transport Focus “an integral part of the consultation process”.
Another accessible transport campaigner, Sarah Leadbetter, said that eight weeks was “not long enough for anybody to fill in an important consultation like this”, particularly because of the extra time that many disabled people will need to secure and complete the document in alternative formats, with many needing assistance to fill in the forms.
Tony Jennings, co-chair of a rail accessibility panel and co-founder of the Campaign for Level Boarding, also backed the call for the consultation to be extended to 12 weeks.
He said: “This is a vital consultation, and disabled people need enough time to respond to it properly. Eight weeks will not be long enough.”
He added: “It is time for action and accessibility to be a central pillar of our railways, and this document does not suggest that this is going to happen.
“It is time for action to deliver primary legislation, with deadlines for action, and the investment needed to deliver step-free stations and level boarding, because at the current rate of progress, this will take 100 years.
“A legislative deadline of 25 years is required to deliver level boarding and step-free stations or else it won’t happen.
“I also want to see a commitment to increased compensation for passenger assistance failures, in line with the campaigning efforts of Doug Paulley and Sam Jennings.”
He said there needed to be “cultural and attitudinal change from the top, rather than the watered-down change suggested in this consultation”, and that disabled people were “bored of strategies and ‘warm words’”.
The disabled-led campaigning organisation Transport for All (TfA) supported the call from other organisations for a 12-week deadline.
Emma Vogelmann, TfA’s head of policy, public affairs and campaigns, added: “Transport for All will be examining all of the proposals in depth to understand the impacts they could have on disabled passengers – both positive and negative.”
DfT declined to make a statement but claimed the consultation was clear that accessibility would be central to GBR, while the public sector equality duty would apply to the new organisation.
It told DNS that work on GBR’s functions and duties was ongoing, and would be informed by responses to the consultation, which was particularly seeking views on what mechanisms could be used to hold GBR to account.
DfT also said that its advisory body, the Disabled Persons Transport Advisory Committee – which only yesterday (Wednesday) announced the appointment of 13 new members – had been made aware of the consultation deadline ahead of its publication.
20 February 2025
Prime minister ‘should be ashamed’ after he fails to provide evidence for latest ‘fit for work’ attack
The prime minister has failed to produce any evidence to back up “baseless” and “poisonous” claims in a newspaper article that large numbers of young disabled people are pretending they are not fit enough to work.
Sir Keir Starmer made the comments in an article for The Times, and it follows multiple similar attacks on young disabled people by other politicians and media commentators from both the right and the left.
He suggested in his article that disability benefit fraud was widespread, and he attacked what he described as “worklessness as a lifestyle choice” and said Labour would “never tolerate voluntary worklessness”.
His focus was on so-called Gen Z – those currently aged between about 15 and 30 – who he said were facing a Britain where there was “less breathing space for the joy and self-discovery of youth”.
But he then wrote: “Of course, none of this means Gen Z can opt out of the rights and responsibilities we owe to each other, including the scandal of claiming benefits designed to support people with genuine illness or disability.
“Make no mistake – worklessness as a lifestyle choice goes against the fundamental ethos of the Labour Party as a vehicle for the aspirations of working people.
“Our reforms to employment rights are a landmark shift in restoring dignity and security at work. We will make work pay. But we will never tolerate voluntary worklessness.”
But after Disability News Service contacted 10 Downing Street to ask for the evidence behind his claims of a “scandal”, a government spokesperson was unable to provide any.
Mark Harrison, a member of the Reclaiming Our Futures Alliance (ROFA) steering group, said the prime minister “should be ashamed of himself”.
He said: “Rather than pushing unevidenced accusations he should be working out how to properly fund benefits and public services for disabled people.”
He said that disability benefits have “the lowest rate of fraud”, with DWP’s own figures showing that fraud by claimants of personal independence payment fell from 0.2 per cent in 2022-23 to 0.0 per cent in 2023-24, while fraud by disability living allowance claimants was estimated to be just 0.1 per cent.
Harrison said: “None of this war on disabled people is necessary if Labour went after the real cheats – the tax avoiders and evaders and the billionaires just getting richer by the day just for being rich while disabled people are labelled and scapegoated for a crisis not of our making.
“They should be paying their fair share and Labour should end their phoney war on disabled people.”
Dr Jay Watts, a disabled activist and consultant clinical psychologist, who has played a key role in highlighting the impact of DWP’s actions over the last decade, said the prime minister’s claim that young disabled people were part of a “scandal” of benefit fraud “isn’t just baseless – it’s a calculated ploy to shift blame onto those already failed by austerity and crumbling public services”.
She said: “The real scandal isn’t people needing support; it’s a political class refusing to admit that low pay, insecure work, soaring living costs, NHS collapse, and gutted social care have driven more young people into illness.”
She said this illness had happened “not by choice, but because chronic stress and strain wear down the body over time, making disadvantage physically embedded, and when they seek help, NHS waiting lists leave them stranded, turning preventable conditions into chronic ones”.
She added: “Disability benefit fraud is statistically negligible, yet rather than address the systemic failures locking young people out of work, Labour peddles the lie that they are choosing not to contribute.
“This isn’t about ‘voluntary worklessness’, it’s about a government abandoning its duty to ensure young people can live with dignity.
“Illness thrives in neglect, in shredded safety nets, in a society that punishes vulnerability instead of protecting it.
“If Labour cared about fairness, it wouldn’t scapegoat a generation without evidence – it would ask why so many are struggling and act to change it.”
The government declined to provide any evidence for Sir Keir’s claims.
Instead, a government spokesperson said: “We have been clear that the current welfare system needs reform, so it is fairer on the taxpayer and people can get the support they need to move into work.
“Building on our Get Britain Working white paper, we will bring forward proposals for reforming the health and disability benefits system within weeks, and are working closely with disabled people, disability organisations, and people with health conditions so their views and voices are at the heart of our plans.”
Meanwhile, RoFA and other disabled people’s groups and allies have called on disabled people to record video messages explaining how Labour’s “poisonous rhetoric” has impacted them.
They highlighted the efforts of the prime minister, chancellor Rachel Reeves and work and pensions secretary Liz Kendall to use the media to “spin the lies about disabled people being benefit scroungers and frauds”.
They said: “This poisonous rhetoric is being used, like the Tories did over the last 14 years, to justify attacking our rights and cutting our benefits.
“Tell us what the impact has been on you and your family and loved ones.”
As well as RoFA, the campaign is led by groups including Disabled People Against Cuts, the UK-wide coalition of disabled people’s organisations monitoring the implementation of the UN disability convention, and the Campaign to Save Mental Health Services in Norfolk and Suffolk.
Harrison said: “This campaign has been initiated because of the trauma caused by the constant pernicious rhetoric from Labour framing disabled people as benefit scroungers and cheats.
“This is creating mental distress on a massive scale.
“Labour were elected because people had had enough of austerity and failing public services and demanded change.
“After 14 years of a Tory war on us, Labour have come to power but have carried on where the Tories left off by adopting their policies and austerity budgets.
“This would be bad enough, but they have also stepped up the attacks.
“They refuse to invest in social care, and children’s and mental health services.
“They have also adopted the Tory target of saving £3 billion from disabled people’s benefits – hence the blaming, scapegoating and gaslighting by Starmer, Reeves and Kendall, reminiscent of Cameron and Osborne 15 years ago.
“It also coincides with millions of disabled people being forced on to universal credit where they will lose thousands of pounds a year in benefits and be subject to conditionality and sanctions, and is on top of the fear being caused by the assisted dying bill passing through parliament.
“Disabled people are angry and we are putting Labour on notice that we are going to fight them all the way.
“We will challenge them on the streets, on social media, in the courts and at the United Nations.”
20 February 2025
Years of evidence exposes minister’s claims in parliament that DWP is not to blame for deaths
Years of evidence shows clearly how a “violent” culture that developed within the Department for Work and Pensions over three decades was responsible for countless deaths of disabled benefit claimants, despite a minister’s claims last week in parliament.
The evidence has been brought together by Disability News Service (DNS) to respond to claims by Sir Stephen Timms, the minister for social security and disability, that the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) was not responsible for the harm and deaths caused to thousands of disabled people.
Sir Stephen had delayed the end of last week’s Commons work and pensions committee evidence session to deliver a statement about The Department, a book written by DNS editor John Pring which exposes the “violent government bureaucracy” within DWP that has led to hundreds, and probably thousands, of deaths since 2010.
Although Sir Stephen praised Pring’s work in highlighting DWP errors over the last 15 years, and his book’s “meticulous accounts” of some of the disabled people who died, he issued a strong defence of his department.
He argued that it was government ministers who were responsible for decisions made by DWP not to release key evidence linking the department with serious harm and deaths.
Sir Stephen pointed last week to the book’s subtitle: How a Violent Government Bureaucracy Killed Hundreds and Hid the Evidence, and he said this implied there was a DWP conspiracy.
He told the committee that the book “doesn’t produce any evidence of the conspiracy” and that he had spent five stints as a minister in the department, and four years chairing the committee, and had “never seen anything that makes me think there’s a conspiracy going on in the department”.
The Department does not claim there was a conspiracy within the department.
Instead, it provides detailed evidence, much of it from DWP’s own records, that shows how a harmful bureaucracy and culture within the Department of Social Security (DSS) and then DWP – its successor – built slowly over the years until it exploded into violence in the post-2010 austerity years.
Sir Stephen also addressed the “hiding the evidence” claim and said there was “a very strong case” for DWP being “much more open in a lot of these areas than has been the case in the past”.
But he insisted that “it wasn’t the department that hid it, ministers chose that things ought not to be open”.
In response, DNS is listing below just a small proportion of the evidence that demonstrates that Sir Stephen is wrong, and how the DWP bureaucracy and culture – including the actions of some of its civil servants – were responsible for the state violence inflicted on disabled people, the majority of it in the last 15 years.
Most of this evidence – although not all – is taken from The Department.
In June 1992, a Dr T P Scott tells fellow DSS civil servant Dr Mansel Aylward, who is leading work to develop a new assessment process for out-of-work disability benefits, of the need for a harsher approach, to “remove the GP from the equation”, and how doing so would remove the need for GPs to have “further arguments with ‘malingerers’”.
In August 1992, a DSS memo reports on a “brainstorming session” among civil servants, led by Aylward, which includes the suggestion that when a claimant fails to attend an assessment without “good cause”, their benefits should be stopped “immediately”, while GPs who allow too many incapacity claims should be identified and even face “sanctions”.
After David Holmes, from Cwmtillery, south Wales, dies from a massive heart attack in November 1996, less than a month after being found ineligible for the new incapacity benefit, Dr Moira Henderson, medical quality coordinator for the Benefits Agency Medical Service, assures colleagues that he had received “an appropriate assessment” from a “totally objective” doctor.
Years earlier, David Holmes had been told by his consultant that he should never work again because if he had “another coronary like the last one, you will never survive it”.
When the National Association of Citizens Advice Bureaux publishes a detailed, evidenced report in March 1997 that suggests many disabled people in poor health “are being caused anxiety, distress and pain” by the new assessment – the forerunner of the work capability assessment – a senior civil servant dismisses the report and tells ministers it is “largely based on anecdotal evidence” and that the issues are “sporadic/isolated”.
Asked why the Benefits Agency did not send an officer to check on the welfare of Timothy Finn, who had a diagnosis of schizophrenia and later starved to death after his benefits were removed, the agency claims in a memo in November 1998 that “this would be seen by many customers as an intrusion of privacy”.
In November 2001, a “malingering and illness deception” conference is held at Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire, with the organisers later praising the “enthusiastic support” of Mansel Aylward and “funding from the Department for Work and Pensions”.
A book based on presentations made at the conference includes 43 mentions of the word “malinger”, 1,707 of “malingering”, 80 of “malingerer”, and 121 of “malingerers”.
In October 2005, DWP publishes The Scientific and Conceptual Basis of Incapacity Benefits, co-authored by Aylward, which pushes the line that it is not their impairments or the barriers that disabled people face in society that prevent them working, but their own faults, flaws, and unwillingness to work.
The book provides, one researcher will say later, the “intellectual framework” for the government’s welfare reform bill, which is published the following year and introduces the work capability assessment (WCA).
Research by public health experts from the universities of Liverpool and Oxford, will later show that, across England, the reassessment through the WCA of disabled people receiving the old incapacity benefit was associated with an extra 590 suicides between 2010 and 2013.
In November 2012, in evidence for a court case, Dr Bill Gunnyeon, successor to Mansel Aylward as DWP’s chief medical adviser, suggests that asking GPs to provide further medical evidence for all employment and support allowance applicants with mental health conditions would be an “unreasonable… burden”.
DWP documents show how, in 2014, senior civil servants destroy vital documents about the case of Michael O’Sullivan – in breach of the department’s own rules – months after a coroner links his suicide with the WCA.
That decision means DWP is not able to carry out an in-depth investigation – known at the time as a peer review – into the department’s role in his death.
The minister for disabled people in 2014, Mike Penning, later tells DNS that he knew nothing about the decision to destroy the records, and that these decisions were made by DWP civil servants.
Between 2012 and 2014, DWP hides secret peer reviews of deaths linked to the WCA from Professor Malcolm Harrington and Dr Paul Litchfield, the independent experts who between them carry out five reviews of the WCA.
DWP civil servants also fail to show Harrington a coroner’s prevention of future deaths (PFD) report that linked the WCA with the suicide of Stephen Carré in January 2010, and later fail to show Litchfield that report, as well as the PFD that followed Michael O’Sullivan’s inquest.
Errol Graham starves to death in 2018 after his ESA was wrongly stopped in October 2017 because he failed to attend a WCA.
But at the inquest into his death, the documents from his last WCA, in 2014, are left out of the evidence bundle by DWP. They would have shown his “active suicidal thoughts” and how he was “hearing voices in his head all the time”.
The department also fails to share the same documents with a local safeguarding review into his death in Nottingham.
The coroner does not write a PFD report at the end of the inquest because a senior DWP civil servant tells her that a review into its safeguarding procedures will be completed that autumn, with a report to follow.
DWP later admits that no such report was written.
In February 2019, a report by the Independent Case Examiner reveals that DWP failed five times to follow its own safeguarding rules in the weeks leading to the suicide of Jodey Whiting.
Also in 2019, DWP tells the Prime Minister’s Implementation Unit that safeguarding concerns about “vulnerable” claimants of universal credit are only being raised by “stakeholders” and that “the evidence for problems was weak and driven from a campaigning perspective, not an evidence based one”.
In the next two years, the deaths of at least three disabled claimants of universal credit are linked to safeguarding flaws within universal credit.
In January 2021, coroner Gordon Clow highlights 28 separate “problems” with the administration of the personal independence payment system that helped cause the death of 27-year-old Philippa Day.
In April 2022, a disabled woman, Rebecca*, takes her own life after she has been left traumatised by the daily demands of universal credit.
Her mother and brother approach the local jobcentre, 10 months later, to ask for recordings of calls between Rebecca and the jobcentre, but DWP eventually admits that these recordings have been destroyed, in breach of the department’s rules.
In November 2023, whistleblowers from Oxford jobcentre raise serious concerns about DWP safeguarding failures that are putting the lives of benefit claimants at risk.
They also describe how conditions at the jobcentre have become so stressful that 15 of those in one team of 23 work coaches quit within a 12-month period, with at least eight experiencing a significant collapse in their mental health due to a huge, sudden increase in workload in late 2021.
In January 2025, DNS reveals that DWP staff are making thousands of potentially fatal errors every month when dealing with the benefit claims of disabled people, by failing to meet 17 new standards designed to “improve the experience of customers with complex needs and significantly reduce instances of serious cases”.
Most recently, DWP’s chief medical adviser, Dr Gail Allsopp – the latest successor to Dr Mansel Aylward – has dismissed the importance of hundreds of secret DWP internal reviews into the deaths of claimants.
Even though these reviews have led to countless recommendations for local and national improvements within DWP since 2012, she tells MPs on the work and pensions select committee that she views the five deaths in the previous 16 months that have led to a coroner sending the department a PFD report as the only ones “that are associated from a DWP perspective”.
Alison Burton, daughter-in-law of Errol Graham, told DNS this week that she did not believe that it was only ministers who were responsible for DWP’s actions.
She said: “It wasn’t a minister who sat in a chair and removed Errol’s benefits, it was the DWP that made that decision.”
And she said it was civil servants who failed to share key documents with the inquest and the safeguarding review into his death, and who misled the coroner about DWP’s safeguarding work.
She said: “Essentially, the evidence doesn’t point directly to ministers, it clearly points to the civil servants.”
A former DWP work coach, Steven Da Costa, told DNS this week that his experience with DWP between 2020 and 2022 showed there was “a toxic culture that breeds bias and errors into very complex and sensitive situations”.
He said that work coaches in his jobcentre were told at one point that they could order “work capable” universal credit claimants into the jobcentre for meetings five days a week, just to improve attendance targets.
In his resignation email – nine months after he was nearly driven to try to take his own life while at work in a jobcentre, because of the bullying and discrimination he had experienced – he wrote: “The DWP certainly does not have the ‘claimant at the heart of everything we do’.
“Speaking as somebody who has previously undertaken safeguarding and [health and safety] in other roles, the way we seem to be expected to operate and treat claimants is, quite frankly, frightening.”
*Not her real name
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
20 February 2025
Combined impact of different aspects of pandemic on disabled people ‘felt relentless’, Covid inquiry hears
The impact of vaccine decisions, “do not attempt resuscitation” notices, school closures, cuts to care, and other aspects of the pandemic, had a combined effect on disabled people that “felt relentless”, three disabled people’s organisations have told the Covid inquiry.
They were making a submission to the preliminary hearing of the tenth and final module of the public inquiry, which will focus on the impact of Covid on key workers, on those considered the “most vulnerable” to the virus, and on people who were left bereaved.
It will also examine the impact on mental health and wellbeing, and of measures put in place to combat Covid.
The national disabled people’s organisations (DPOs) Disability Rights UK, Inclusion Scotland and Disability Action (Northern Ireland) are “core participants” in the module, although the public hearings are not due to take place until early next year.
Barrister Kate Beattie, of Doughty Street Chambers, representing the three DPOs, said the combined impact of the various aspects of the pandemic on disabled people’s mental health and wellbeing “felt relentless”.
She pointed to disproportionate mortality rates; “do not attempt resuscitation” notices; decisions on who was prioritised for vaccines; prolonged shielding by those who could not be vaccinated; the use of the so-called “clinical frailty scale” and “ceilings of care” in hospitals; school closures; and local authorities’ “easements” to their duties under the Care Act and the Children and Families Act.
She said: “For disabled people, these matters did not happen in isolation.
“They were not experienced as separate events but were combined and felt relentless.”
The DPOs also called on the inquiry to examine the experiences of disabled key workers.
Beattie said disabled people with jobs were more likely to be going out to work during the pandemic rather than working from home, compared with non-disabled workers, and they worked in jobs that were more exposed to Covid.
The three DPOs also called on the inquiry to examine which safeguarding measures had been in place to protect people who were “isolated in psychiatric wards” during the pandemic.
NHS statistics suggest that from 2020 to 2021, the use of the Mental Health Act increased by about 4.5 per cent, Beattie told the inquiry.
At the same time, external monitoring of institutional settings was reduced, with the Care Quality Commission suspending onsite visits to carry out Mental Health Act monitoring reviews, which were replaced with video calls.
Visits from family, friends and advocates “were also restricted and for periods ceased totally”.
But the DPOs told the inquiry hearing that some of the “innovations” introduced during the pandemic – including more widespread use of working from home, and the use of masks to reduce the risk of infection for immunocompromised people – had reduced the “adverse impact” on disabled people.
And they called on the inquiry to examine the positive impact of DPOs co-designing policy during the crisis.
They said the inquiry should explore the use of co-design “beyond slogans, so that it can become the ordinary way in which government works and, indeed, a new way of binding state and society together”.
Kate Blackwell KC, lead counsel to the inquiry for module 10, said the pandemic had had “disproportionate effects on different parts of society”, including those who were clinically vulnerable and clinically extremely vulnerable to the virus and were required to “shield for prolonged periods, often in isolation, raising concerns about mental health, loneliness, and access to essential services”.
20 February 2025
Campaigners call for action to address shortage of wheelchair-accessible taxis
A drastic and discriminatory shortage of wheelchair-accessible taxis is causing disabled people to miss medical and dental appointments, education and work commitments, and social opportunities, disabled campaigners have warned.
They believe plans by their local council to address the shortage will fail and need to be much tougher.
They also believe that many other rural parts of the UK face similar problems with drastic shortages of wheelchair-accessible taxis, although some local authorities have taken measures to improve the numbers.
They spoke out this week as North Yorkshire Council launched a consultation on changes to the rules for licensing taxis and private hire vehicles, which closes on 30 April.
In a report published in November, the council said it had about one wheelchair-accessible taxi for every 9,000 people, compared with the best-performing rural areas of the country which have one for every 2,000 to 3,000 people.
It concluded that North Yorkshire – which covers seven borough and district councils – would need at least 200 more wheelchair-accessible taxis to “reach a similar ratio”.
The report accepted that this shortage would likely be fixed by imposing new rules that all new licences should only be granted to wheelchair-accessible vehicles, but it said it wanted to “avoid imposing unnecessary regulatory burdens where the desired outcomes could be achieved by less burdensome means”.
The number of wheelchair-accessible taxis has already fallen in the last year, from 67 on 31 March 2023 to just 64 at the end of 2024, while the number of inaccessible saloon taxis has risen from 561 to 705.
The council had proposed to bring in new rules that all new and replacement taxis should be wheelchair-accessible vehicles or zero-emission saloon-type cars.
But the council has now added the option of hybrid electric taxis, while there will be no similar restrictions for drivers of private hire vehicles.
It has also dropped plans to force drivers of taxis and private hire vehicles to replace their cars once they are 10 years old.
Disabled campaigners in North Yorkshire believe this will mean there will be no significant increase in wheelchair-accessible taxis.
North Yorkshire Disability Forum’s Accessible Transport Group and disability charity Disability Action Yorkshire are urging those taking part in the consultation to call for all new and replacement taxis to be wheelchair-accessible, which is one of the options in the consultation.
They say the shortage of wheelchair-accessible taxis in the area has been a problem for more than 25 years.
The forum believes the council’s current policies discriminate against disabled people who use wheelchairs, with wheelchair-accessible taxis in such short supply that drivers can afford to turn down bookings for short journeys.
Disabled tourists visiting the famed North Yorkshire moors, dales and coast are also affected, while bus services are “infrequent and sometimes unreliable”, with many bus stops lacking shelters to protect passengers from the rain.
Ian Lawson, who chairs the forum’s accessible transport group, recently had to wait for three hours for a wheelchair accessible taxi at a station when two rail replacement buses were not accessible.
This led to him missing his wheelchair services appointment.
Other wheelchair-users have been unable to travel just a few miles to an appointment with a GP or a dentist, or to watch a band in the evening.
Lawson told Disability News Service: “Another contact emailed me recently telling me that she wanted her life back.
“She was a driver but, as her health failed and she now can no longer drive, she is now marooned in North Yorkshire, unable to live her life as she did.
“These people are why I campaign.”
These concerns are backed by Disability Action Yorkshire, which is supporting the call for all new and replacement taxis to be wheelchair-accessible.
The forum believes that nearly 100 local authorities across England currently force all taxis to be wheelchair-accessible, whereas just eight per cent of taxis in North Yorkshire are wheelchair-accessible.
Cllr Greg White, NYC’s executive member for licensing, said: “We need to ensure that everyone has access to taxis across North Yorkshire, as well as striking a balance that supports users and is sustainable for the trade to adopt.
“Although WAVs (wheelchair accessible vehicles) are typically lower in rural authorities than in urban areas, we know that we can do better by providing a mix of vehicles that caters for everyone, as well as having a positive impact on our carbon footprint.
“The options presented in the consultation and draft policy are some proposed possibilities based on striking this balance and also research into other authorities, but they are by no means an extensive list or agreed approach.
“We want to hear everyone’s views and are keen to hear about options to increase WAVs that might not be included in our consultation.”
20 February 2025
Government must set up independent panel to probe DWP deaths, says disabled researcher
Disabled campaigners have called on the government to set up a “genuinely independent” panel that would investigate deaths linked to the actions and failings of the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).
They say that such a panel would expose the “systemic failures” that continue to put disabled people’s lives at risk.
The call for a new independent panel is being led by Mo Stewart, who has spent 16 years researching the consequences of private sector influence on UK social security reform, through her Preventable Harm Project.
Now she has secured the support of Disability Rights UK (DR UK) and the independent MP John McDonnell, who was Labour’s shadow chancellor under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn and has supported the disabled people’s anti-cuts movement since 2010.
Stewart said the panel would “identify the preventable harm endured by those in greatest need”.
She told Disability News Service (DNS): “For too long the chronically ill and disabled community have lived in fear of the DWP, whose culture of intimidation and cruelty knows no limits.
“The DWP would finally be held to account for the public health crisis they have created when adopting social policies based on a fiscal priority and disregarding health and wellbeing.”
Kamran Mallick, DR UK’s chief executive, said he “strongly” supported the call for an “independent, transparent, and robust oversight mechanism”, which was “long overdue” and “a moral imperative”.
He said: “The evidence is overwhelming: Disabled people and those with long-term health conditions have been systematically harmed by a welfare system that prioritises cost-cutting over care, suspicion over support, and bureaucracy over basic human dignity.
“For years, we have seen the devastating consequences of punitive policies, most notably the work capability assessment and the wider benefits system, which have forced people into impossible situations – pushing many into poverty, mental distress, and, tragically, even to their deaths.
“Reports have repeatedly exposed the failures of the Department for Work and Pensions in safeguarding disabled people’s lives, yet accountability remains absent, and lessons are not being learned.
“Instead, we see the same hostile rhetoric and damaging policies being recycled by successive governments, ignoring the real-life consequences for those most in need of support.”
He added: “The DWP cannot be left to mark its own homework, especially when the stakes are so high.
“Disabled people should not have to live in fear of the very system designed to support us.
“We need a panel that will ensure that every preventable death is acknowledged, that those responsible are held accountable, and that concrete actions are taken to prevent further harm.”
McDonnell told MPs earlier this month, during a debate on the government’s proposed public authorities (fraud, error and recovery) bill, that DWP’s existing serious case panel – which is not independent of the department – was “not working”.
He said the new panel suggested by Stewart could mirror the Independent Advisory Panel on Deaths in Custody, which has the “central aim of preventing deaths in custody” and would “reassure people out there that we really are looking after their interests”.
Public calls for an independent watchdog to investigate the deaths of claimants appear to have first come 10 years ago, in a report by the Commons work and pensions committee.
The committee called then for a new organisation, similar to the Independent Police Complaints Commission, that would carry out reviews of deaths linked to DWP’s actions “at the request of relatives, or automatically where no living relative remains”.
DWP had failed to comment by noon today (Thursday).
20 February 2025
Other disability-related stories covered by mainstream media this week
A historic day has been hailed for the Deaf community in Northern Ireland as a sign languages bill moved a step closer to becoming law. The bill recognises and promotes both British Sign Language and Irish Sign Language, and places duties on public bodies to take reasonable steps to ensure that the information and services they provide are fully accessible: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/bill-british-sign-language-northern-ireland-assembly-northern-ireland-british-b2700345.html
A Paralympic fencer said he was not allowed to use a hotel room he had booked and paid for when staff saw he was using a wheelchair. Tokyo gold medallist Piers Gilliver was told he could not stay on the upper floors of the Ibis Rotherham East on Saturday: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cd65ye5gv47o
20 February 2025
News provided by John Pring at www.disabilitynewsservice.com
