Contents
Other disability-related stories covered by mainstream media this week 22
Disabled man dies in poverty and squalor after DWP removes his benefits, just as Labour cuts PIP by £4.5bn
The body of a disabled man was found in his flat in distressing, squalid conditions, just weeks after the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) wrongly removed his disability benefits because he had failed to return a claim form.
His sister, his only surviving close relative, believes he may have been left without enough credit on his phone to call for help, while he had not had enough money to fix his broken mobility scooter.
David*, who was 59, had run out of pads for his incontinence, so his flat in Salisbury was covered in blood and faeces when his body was discovered by the emergency services, after his sister Susan* had grown increasingly concerned at his failure to answer her messages.
Susan believes the wrongful removal of his personal independence payment (PIP) played a significant part in his death.
She told Disability News Service (DNS): “He was already on the breadline, so I think it would have been devastating for him.”
She also believes DWP failed to make the necessary safeguarding checks before removing his PIP.
She has now warned that the death of her much-loved brother must act as a warning of the horrors to come if the government goes ahead with its planned £4.5 billion cuts to PIP.
David, who lived on the ground floor of a two-storey council house, had left a handwritten note describing his deteriorating health and state of desperation, and how he had fallen over eight times since the start of the year.
He is believed to have died on 19 February, after 25 years of ill-health which had grown considerably worse over the last year.
David had ME, fibromyalgia and diverticulitis, which left him with severe fatigue, “mental fog”, reoccurring flu and incontinence, and only able to walk a few steps.
The handwritten note described his continual incontinence and how he was losing a cup of blood a day because of the diverticulitis.
But his PIP had been removed just weeks earlier, on 4 January, after he failed to return the lengthy form that he needed to fill out as part of a review of his claim ordered by DWP.
His sister says he would not have been well enough to walk to the post-box to post it, even if he had been able to fill it in, because he could “barely make it to his gate without falling over”.
Although DWP later wrote to him to say his PIP would be reinstated on 20 February, the notification of this decision did not arrive until two weeks after his death, and his family believe the decision was only made after the department were told of his death on 21 February.
Because he had been recovering from an eye infection, Susan believes he may not have realised his PIP had been removed until shortly before his death, as he had not mentioned it in any of his text messages in January or during their last conversation on 1 February.
She said: “It was an absolutely brutal thing to do to a vulnerable person, and I can only imagine the psychological distress that he must have felt when he actually did read the letter.”
By the time he read it, she believes, he was too ill to act and may not have been able to call for help because his phone had run out of credit.
His death has disturbing echoes of other deaths linked to DWP over the last decade – including those of Philippa Day, Jodey Whiting and Errol Graham** – and offers yet more evidence that the department is not fit for purpose.
It will also add to calls for a public inquiry into the years of deaths and other harm caused by DWP.
DWP has so far refused to comment, or answer questions about his death.
Susan, who lives in another part of the country but kept in regular contact with her brother, said this week that his death was an example of the “immense distress” and deaths that will result from Labour’s plans to cut more than £4.5 billion from PIP, which “verge on the point of barbaric”.
Susan believes David would not have been able to cope with the 24-page form, which she believes arrived without a self-addressed envelope to return the completed form to DWP.
She knew he had been short of money even before his PIP was removed – she and her partner sent him money for a new mattress at Christmas because the old one was filthy, following months of persistent diarrhoea – and Susan believes that losing his PIP plunged him into destitution.
In an email to his sister last summer, he told her: “I get PIP, it is to give disabled people extra money to pay for a cleaner, or the cost of taxis because they are too sick to drive etc.
“I get the lowest amount possible when I am entitled to the full amount possible.
“The bloody gov is being so unfair and cruel to the disabled. I got an application form to fill in to show them the reality of my life.
“Like some bad days when I can’t even get to the kitchen to make a cup of tea.
“I simply now did not have the energy to appeal and go to a tribunal in person where three doctors question you.”
She became increasingly alarmed about her brother during February when he failed to reply to text messages and emails.
She said: “For the last few years, it can be a week, sometimes two weeks, before he replies to me, although I always become very anxious, but he does get back to me eventually.
“But this time he hadn’t got back to me several times and then when I phoned him, his phone was dead – whether that was because the phone was not charged or because he ran out of money to top it up, I don’t know.”
She added: “I believe that the reduction in his PIP directly contributed to his inability to maintain his essential mobility aid and, most tragically, to access essential communication.
“This tragic sequence of events suggests a systemic failure in the support provided to vulnerable individuals.
“My brother’s death is not just a personal tragedy; it raises serious questions about the inadequacy and lack of humanity in the current social security system, as well as within local support systems in Salisbury.”
And she said his death should act as a warning call to the government not to plough ahead with its £4.5 billion in cuts to PIP.
She said: “My concern is how many people will be affected by cuts if people are already on the breadline and already struggling, like my brother, and already feeling suicidal.
“To have what little they have taken from them, I think it would cause widespread deaths.”
Susan originally raised her concerns about her brother with members of the Disability Benefits Consortium, including Caroline Collier, from Inclusion Barnet, who passed the email – with Susan’s permission – to DNS.
Collier, speaking on behalf of Inclusion Barnet’s Campaign for Disability Justice, said: “Susan’s initial email was heartbreaking, and I’m so pleased she felt able to speak to DNS so that David’s story can be told.
“I can hardly begin to imagine the difficulty and desperation of David’s final weeks, and believe that we have a duty to reflect as a society as to why we allow such tragedies to keep happening.
“Firstly, I think it’s important that there is an inquest, so that the role of the DWP and other agencies in this case can be properly scrutinised.
“Secondly, we need to urgently reframe the conversation around the current proposed cuts to recognise that, far from the narratives peddled by certain sections of the press, there are two million disabled people in the UK who are destitute, many of whom will be facing similar challenges to David.
“This has to be addressed: literally the last thing we need is more cuts.
“At the Campaign for Disability Justice, we want the government to commit to working towards a decent life for all, and to ending these appalling outcomes for disabled people.”
DNS asked DWP on Tuesday morning to answer a series of questions about David’s death but it had not responded by noon today (Thursday), other than to finally acknowledge the request last night.
DNS had asked if the department would be apologising to Susan; if it would be investigating the circumstances of David’s death; whether David had been flagged on DWP’s systems as a “vulnerable” claimant; if DWP accepted there had been a critical safeguarding failure when it appeared to have removed David’s PIP without checking he could survive without it; whether DWP only reinstated his PIP after learning of his death; and whether it would now put reforms and cuts to PIP on hold until his death has been investigated.
*Not their real names
**All three feature in 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, which is published by Pluto Press
27 March 2025
Labour’s cuts to PIP will drag a quarter of a million people into absolute poverty, DWP figures show
The government’s decision to tighten eligibility for personal independence payment (PIP) will drag a quarter of a million working-age people into absolute poverty* by 2030, official documents have revealed.
Although the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has for some reason failed to calculate the increase in disability poverty caused by the various cuts and reforms announced in last week’s disability benefits green paper, it has carried out calculations showing how many working-age people will be affected.
They show that 250,000 working-age people will be drawn into absolute poverty due to the PIP cuts, and it is certain that almost all of these will be disabled people.
The figure is just one crucial detail in several documents published yesterday (Wednesday) by DWP, the Treasury, and the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), alongside the spring statement delivered by the chancellor, Rachel Reeves.
An equality analysis by DWP estimates that 3.1 million households with at least one disabled member will lose out through the overall package of cuts and reforms by 2029-30, with an average loss of £1,730 a year.
Another 1.8 million households with at least one disabled member will gain, but only by an average of £560 a year.
Reeves told MPs yesterday that the government will be cutting £4.8 billion a year from spending on social security by 2029-30 – although it is not clear from the Treasury figures how she has calculated that figure.
This is because spending on PIP being cut by more than £4.5 billion, while there will also be £3 billion in cuts to the health element of universal credit**, and the impact of other measures has yet to be calculated.
The impact of the cuts on disabled people were revealed as more than 1,000 disabled people and allies protested outside Downing Street and parliament yesterday as part of a protest organised by Disabled People Against Cuts, Inclusion London and Stop the War Coalition, and supported by many other grassroots groups and unions.
Other protests took place across England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales under the same #WelfareNotWarfare banner.
The actions came as Disability News Service (DNS) reports today how the body of a disabled man was found in his flat last month in distressing, squalid conditions, just weeks after DWP wrongly removed his PIP because he had failed to return a review form he was too ill to complete (see separate story).
His death highlights yet again the major concerns about DWP’s ability to cut safely billions of pounds from disabled people’s support, without risking the lives of countless claimants.
Of the cuts laid out in last week’s Pathways to Work green paper, the new documents published yesterday show the greatest impact will be caused by DWP’s decision that, from next year, PIP claimants must score a minimum of four points in at least one daily living activity to be eligible for the daily living part of the benefit.
This will see, by 2029-30, 370,000 current PIP recipients losing their daily living entitlement when their award is reviewed, and 430,000 future recipients not receiving the PIP they would otherwise have received, at an average loss of £4,500 a year.
Another measure that will have a significant impact on disabled people is the government’s decision to cut the health element of universal credit for new claimants from £97 per week currently to £50 per week in 2026-27, while freezing it for existing claimants until 2029-30.
This could see 2.25 million current recipients of the health element losing an average of £500 per year in 2029-30, and 730,000 future recipients losing an average of £3,000 per year, although they will all benefit from a small increase in the standard universal credit allowance of £5 per week above inflation by 2029-30.
There remain several important unanswered questions about the government’s reforms.
A key issue is whether OBR is correct in its estimate that 800,000 disabled people will lose the daily living element of PIP through the tightened eligibility, as opposed to the 1.5 million suggested by what it calls the “static costing” of the policy.
OBR seems to suggest the lower number is more likely because of the “strong financial incentive” to qualify for PIP, and the increased number of appeals it expects, but fears will remain that the number losing out could be even higher than 800,000.
Another key question is how many disabled people who receive universal credit and have “the most severe, life-long health conditions”, no prospect of an improvement in their health, and who “will never be able to work”, will no longer be reassessed and will receive an additional premium.
Ministers have yet to decide the size of this premium, and which groups of disabled people will be protected in this way.
OBR also says it is too early to calculate the impact of scrapping the work capability assessment and deciding eligibility for the universal credit (UC) health element through the PIP assessment instead.
Other question-marks remain over the impact of the government’s decision to review the PIP assessment, and to increase the number of face-to-face PIP assessments.
OBR also confirms in its report that the various government cuts amount to the “largest package of welfare savings since the July 2015 Budget”.
And it confirms that – before the cuts – total social security spending was stable as a proportion of GDP, as reported by DNS earlier this month, and that it is now on a “slightly downward trajectory”.
The documents also fail to assess the financial impact of preventing young disabled people claiming the health element of universal credit until they are 22, from 2027 onwards, and of plans to raise the age at which young people transition from disability living allowance to PIP from 16 to 18, a move which will also cut spending.
Meanwhile, the Equality and Human Rights Commission has confirmed to DNS that it is considering whether the measures in last week’s green paper have breached DWP’s public sector equality duty to have “due regard” to how its policies and decisions affect disabled people and other groups protected under the Equality Act.
*The number of people earning below 60 per cent of the average (median) income in 2010-11, adjusted for inflation
**It is also unclear what the final impact of changes to universal credit will be, as the standard allowance will be increased slightly in real terms and some changes to the health element are yet to be finalised
27 March 2025
DPAC says ‘this is just the start’, after protest over ‘vile and cruel’ benefit cuts outside Downing Street
Disabled people have spoken of their anger, frustration and fear – and sense of betrayal by the Labour government – over plans to cut billions of pounds from disability benefits, as they protested outside Downing Street yesterday (Wednesday).
Estimates suggest more than 1,000 disabled people and allies chanted outside the Downing Street gates or listened to speeches across the road, on the other side of Whitehall.
They later marched down Whitehall and past the Houses of Parliament, just as chancellor Rachel Reeves was delivering a spring statement that confirmed more than £4.5 billion in cuts to personal independence payment (PIP) and £3 billion in cuts to the health element of universal credit (see separate story).
The protest was organised by Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC), Inclusion London and Stop the War Coalition, and supported by many other grassroots groups and unions, while other protests took place across England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, with reports of 100 protesters in Newcastle, a similar number in Cardiff, and more than 100 in Norfolk.
DPAC said it may have been its largest and most successful protest ever.
But it was, DPAC said last night, “just the start of our fightback” against the “deadly and disgusting cuts”.
Among those protesting, Clare Williams, a lecturer at Kent Law School, told Disability News Service (DNS) that she felt “anger and frustration that we are seeing this under a Labour government”, and she called on ministers to work with disabled people’s organisations, “think again”, and halt the cuts.
She said: “Tens of thousands of people are scared about how they are going to survive.”
Abi Palmer, from south London, said she was “terrified” about the cuts.
She said: “I rely on PIP to survive. PIP is the only thing that allows me to stay in work.
“When Labour came in, it was not a Labour government I would have voted for, but I thought, ‘Thank god I will not be a target anymore, there will not be this vitriol and hatred against people like me,’ but lo and behold it is worse than ever.”
She said PIP was “the bare fucking minimum” disabled people need to cope with the barriers they face.
She said she was surprised at how many disabled people had attended the protest.
“I know how much it is costing people’s bodies to be here. I have talked to people who will be knocked out for a week or a month, but this is important.”
Alimamy Bangura, a disabled refugee and a member of the Manchester-based human rights organisation RAPAR, said he was “so worried” about the planned cuts.
He told DNS: “I want to work, but I am not able to work because of my health restrictions.
“We should not be treated like this.”
He was one of the disabled activists who travelled to Geneva last March to hold the last Conservative government to account over its failure to make progress after being found guilty of “grave and systematic violations” of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in 2016, mostly around its own cuts and reforms to disability benefits.
Bangura said: “There was nothing about benefits in the Labour manifesto.
“I campaigned for Labour, but I will never vote for them again.”
Joel, another PIP recipient, said the government would create more barriers to work – not less – by cutting disability benefits.
He said: “I am worried about how it might affect my ability to get into work.
“They are treating disabled people as if they are lazy. It’s a bizarre accusation but that is what is implied by the words of the government.”
Susie Bannister, a wheelchair-user from Surrey, said her concern about the cuts to disability benefits “keeps me up at night”.
She said: “It’s not just the person being impacted, wider society will be impacted.
“Some of us can’t physically work but are able to volunteer. There are a lot of disabled people who volunteer.”
Chris, a wheelchair-user, said he had looked at the government’s planned reforms and believed he would lose the daily living part of his PIP when the cuts come in and his PIP is reviewed, although he said “it will hurt a lot of people worse than it will me”.
Zeek, who receives PIP, and is a member of London Renters Union, told DNS: “I don’t know what I would do if I didn’t have PIP.”
He added: “The cuts will make things worse for disabled households. It will push people into homelessness.
“It’s going to kill people.”
Zeek is on an NHS waiting-list, and he said he cannot even consider working until he receives the treatment he needs.
John McDonnell, the former Labour shadow chancellor, who has supported DPAC for nearly 15 years and is currently sitting as a suspended Labour MP, told protesters: “It’s not austerity for the rich, it’s austerity for people living in poverty, for disabled people.”
He said the battle over PIP would “be won on the streets, like this”.
Disabled actor Cherylee Houston told DNS she was “angry and really upset and hurt” by the government’s cuts, which she said would lead to disabled people being left “prisoners in their own homes”.
She had said earlier: “PIP is used by many of us to stay in work and cover the extra costs that disability causes.
“My community is terrified that the government is taking away the most basic support that those most in need rely on.
“It makes no sense to take away the basic supports that enable disabled people to contribute to society.
“These cuts will trap more people in poverty.
“I am already hearing from friends that they fear they will no longer be able to work if these cuts go ahead.”
Natasha Hirst, president of the National Union of Journalists, and herself a disabled activist, told the protest: “These cuts will kill.”
She said: “These proposals will take away vital financial support from disabled people, without addressing the discrimination, abuse and exclusion that we experience in our daily lives.
“These cuts are a political choice, not a necessity. We expected this treatment under a Conservative government, but not from Labour.
“This is a vile and cruel attack on disabled people that will ultimately bring harm to everyone.”
Linda Burnip, co-founder of DPAC, said before the protest: “Labour should be ashamed of their proposed cuts which will push disabled people into even greater poverty and destitution and cause many more to kill themselves.
“Disabled people will not allow themselves to be made scapegoats for Robber Reeves’ cuts while millionaires remain untouched by cuts.”
27 March 2025
Forgotten and abandoned, young disabled people are fighting back against cuts through a new collective
Hundreds of “forgotten” and “abandoned” young disabled people across the country have taken part in peaceful protests against government cuts to disability benefits, as part of a new movement of activists powered by social media.
The Crips Against Cuts (CAC) collective has grown in just a few weeks from a single disabled campaigner who felt abandoned by charities and politicians, to organising actions in more than 20 towns and cities across Britain last Saturday.
Actions were organised across England, Scotland and Wales, including Bristol, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Newcastle, Hull, Darlington, Leeds, Sheffield, London, Brighton, Portsmouth, Truro, Exeter, Bournemouth, Coventry, Cambridge, Thanet, Nottingham, Birmingham, Liverpool and Manchester.
CAC believes there were about 500 disabled people and allies at Saturday’s action in central London, on the South Bank, near London Eye and County Hall, and about 200 in most of the actions in the larger cities.
The new collective is being driven by users of the social media platform Instagram – with younger disabled people making up the bulk of its membership – and to a lesser extent other social media platforms like Bluesky and Threads.
Linsey McFadden, one of the first disabled campaigners to join CAC, told Disability News Service: “I think our success in that sort of mass mobilization really comes down to the fact that we’re tapping into that younger Instagram audience.
“I think millennials and younger generally have less [money] because of the way the prolonged austerity has hit us.”
She added: “There’s a very human health toll to the more than decade of austerity that we’ve had.
“There’s a very human health toll to all the money that’s been taken out of the NHS, the rate of disability from long Covid, and the impact of rising cost-of-living amid stagnating wages.
“If you consider the impact that even one of those things has on mental health, it is no shock at all that we have rising mental health problems.”
McFadden said the loss of PIP would be “life-destroying”.
She said: “My best friend lives in the negative; her bank balance is always minus several hundred even when PIP hits… and she works, but it’s just not enough.
“They keep saying that those of us with ‘severe disabilities’ will still keep our benefits and I’m not happy with that.”
She said she wanted all disabled people to be able to access PIP, a sentiment that “has been very well echoed across the community”.
At the London action, she said, “a lot of the speeches were very raw and emotional because it comes from such a deep place.
“We were already the poorest demographic in the UK before the cost-of-living crisis hit.
“We’re just kind of sat here, forgotten and suffering, and most of us aren’t receiving the treatment we need, or we don’t have our pain managed, or the barriers to accessing specialists are impossible to navigate.
“It’s a very difficult feeling to describe, but I would also say that in all of that and the rawness of the emotion, there was tremendous support for each other.
“All of us have been talking about how wonderful it’s been for us to connect with each other, because as disabled people, we are often so alone and isolated.
“All of a sudden I’ve got all of these disabled friends, and we all want to listen to each other and we all want to amplify each other.”
The origins of the new movement are in the West Country.
CAC began with Mac, a disabled campaigner from Bristol, who relies on PIP and was frustrated at the lack of response to her concerns about the government’s proposed cuts from her MP and traditional charities.
McFadden said: “After reaching out to lots of spaces that claim they support disabled people, she just felt really abandoned and so figured that lots of us were probably feeling the same… and she was very right.”
CAC was contacted soon after it launched by Paula Peters, from Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC), which McFadden said had “welcomed us into the crip liberation movement” and had been “very supportive”.
Both grassroots groups are now supporting each other’s actions.
McFadden said: “I think for disabled liberation, it’s really important for there to be multiple groups who are all serving different demographics to some extent, and then collaborating together to ensure that everyone’s needs are being met.”
CAC is now discussing how to move forward, developing resources, deciding what contributions members can make, with plans to allow the community to vote on what its next actions should be, and a determination to remain a non-hierarchical organisation.
They also want to work with groups from other marginalised communities, as they hope to address the intersectional nature of the oppression many disabled people face.
And although the focus of their anger is the planned cuts to PIP, they will not ignore the other cuts the government is planning, such as those to the health element of universal credit (see separate story).
McFadden said: “This is very much not going to be a sprint.
“Today we’re talking about PIP, but PIP is not the be-all, end-all of cuts against disabled people.”
CAC’s actions are likely to remain peaceful, but she said: “I really feel like [the government] thought that we would be an easy target, but millennials and younger are very much in the mindset of ‘we’re not going to be quiet’.
“We would really encourage both the government and British society as a whole to consider why they have so quickly jumped to using the most vulnerable population in the country as the scapegoat for our money problems, rather than looking at the very real problems that have led us here.”
The scapegoating and hate crime that disabled people are increasingly reporting was illustrated when last weekend’s action in Exeter was marred by a member of the public who threw a chair at some of the activists.
McFadden said the incident was “quickly diffused”, but she added: “I understand that quite a lot of people in the UK are angry for quite a lot of reasons.
“Everyone is struggling to some extent unless you are wealthy, but really, why are we your scapegoat?”
27 March 2025
Disabled people ‘plead for our lives’ in front of MPs and peers, as assisted suicide bill ends key stage
Disabled people with progressive and terminal conditions have come to parliament to “plead for our lives” in front of MPs and peers, as a bill to legalise assisted suicide in England and Wales finishes a key stage in the Commons.
They told parliamentarians that disabled people were still “missing from the conversation” on assisted suicide, as the terminally ill adults (end of life) bill ended its committee stage.
Monday’s meeting was organised by the disabled people’s organisation Not Dead Yet UK (NDY UK), and it saw a string of disabled people attend a meeting in the House of Lords to tell their stories of how legalisation would put their lives and those of other disabled people at risk.
The disabled crossbench peer Baroness [Jane] Campbell said NDY UK believed disabled people were “a cohort of people who are missing from the conversations” on the bill.
She said: “Most of the people in the room today will be affected by the bill.
“We feel that our lived experience of living with progressive and terminal conditions should be heard but not only heard but we should be at the centre of this conversation.”
But she said it was “very difficult” for disabled people opposed to the bill to get their voices heard by MPs and peers.
She said they “do not hear our voices because they meet far more people just like them.
“The predominant voice… is that people like us should have a right to die.
“They do not consider even for a minute that we are struggling even to have the right to live every day of our lives.
“We do not enjoy coming here today to plead for our lives. It takes away our humanity and it gives us no sense of self-dignity.
“For us, this is almost like the last straw. Now is about our right to breathe and survive and live and have value.”
Among the MPs who attended were Labour’s Neil Coyle, a director of policy and campaigns for Disability Rights UK before he became an MP, and senior Labour MP Dame Meg Hillier, as well as crossbench peer Baroness [Ilora] Finlay and Labour’s Baroness [Kay] Andrews.
Coyle said he would be voting against the bill and that he “shared many of the concerns” that had been outlined in the meeting.
The meeting heard from disabled actor and activist Liz Carr, whose award-winning documentary* about assisted suicide, Better off Dead? – broadcast by BBC1 last May and still available to watch – explained the dangers of legalisation to a mainstream audience.
She said disabled people were often told that the bill “will not touch us, it is not about us, and we are shut up because of that”.
But she said: “Even if the definition stays incredibly tight on this bill at the beginning, we are pretty sure, using the experience of other places, that it will extend, but even as it is now, terminally-ill people are disabled.”
She said: “Even if this bill remains as terminally-ill, our voices can show you and teach you… that there are real concerns about handing this over at this time to an NHS and social care system… that is struggling.”
Nicki Myers, who receives palliative care through NHS continuing healthcare funding, and support from her local hospice, spoke to the meeting through a video recording.
She said: “What I worry about most with this bill is that it will change my relationship with doctors and the medical profession as a whole.
“I would be constantly questioning whether these people really wanted to treat me or not.”
Mike Smith, former disability commissioner of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, who has a progressive neuromuscular condition, said: “In a perfect world, I would actually like the choice if I have just got told, ‘you have six months to live’, but it’s not a perfect world and I really don’t think that my so-called right [to an assisted suicide] is more important than other people’s right to be protected from coercion.
“I don’t see how we can make a decision [on legalising assisted suicide] at this moment in time with the state of palliative care, the NHS… and social care.
“Knowing the challenges that the majority of disabled people face, I would be really scared if they passed this legislation, and knowing that if they do so, state-sponsored death is going to be the solution to those problems.”
Chelsea Roff, a researcher and founder of the US-based charity Eat Breathe Thrive, who had a stroke due to severe anorexia as a teenager, gave evidence to the Commons committee currently debating the bill.
She co-wrote a research paper that found that at least 60 women with eating disorders, many in their teens and twenties, had died by assisted suicide in Belgium, the Netherlands, and the United States.
This included Oregon, the US state where assisted suicide is restricted to those who are terminally-ill, just as with the bill MPs are examining.
She told Monday’s meeting: “I think eating disorders have in some ways been the canary in the coalmine to go, ‘Everything disabled people have been saying about this is true: the definition of terminal illness is very loose in practice.’”
Despite this and other evidence shown to the committee, every amendment put forward by eating disorder charities to try to ensure people with those conditions do not qualify for an assisted suicide under the bill was rejected by the committee, she said.
Roff said: “They chose not to do that, having looked at the evidence.”
She said the committee – which has a strong majority in favour of legalisation – chose to believe instead that no-one with anorexia would ever be called untreatable, even though Roff herself was pronounced untreatable as a young person and “was so close to death I could taste it”.
She said: “If this had been available to me when I was ill, I would 100 per cent have taken it.
“I begged the doctors to let me die, I did not want to live, I thought I didn’t have a life worth living for anymore.
“So I am very worried about this bill. I have huge doubts about the safeguards.
“I am worried that those pushing it through have not looked closely at the evidence and not looked closely at the wording of the bill.”
The meeting also heard about the experiences of Rosy Bremer, from Portsmouth, who has motor neurone disease, and whose story was told by her friend, Rev Wendy May Jacobs.
She had been forced to rely on friends and family on a care rota after her local council only agreed to provide her with 12 hours of support a day, even though she could not move from her chair or eat without assistance.
They later crowdfunded more than £23,000 to pay for £8,000 of extra care a month when the rota could not be sustained.
The “shock and humiliation of being denied what she needed” left her “intensely anxious about the future” and “traumatised and deeply depressed”, and eventually she was forced to move into a care home when her condition worsened.
Rev Jacobs told the meeting: “This betrayal of Rosy by our health and our care system has taken a terrible toll.”
She said her “resilient, hilarious, gracious friend” had been left “really broken by the cruel inadequacy of our healthcare system.
“For me it is horrifying hearing about the proposed assisted dying legislation when so many are not even given sufficient assistance to live in dignity and safety with all the challenges you face.”
Sophia Kleanthous, an Inclusion London trustee and a disabled campaigner who ended up in supported accommodation when she was homeless and suicidal, said she had experienced mental and verbal abuse and had seen how other disabled people had been treated within a service that is “already at breaking point”.
She said: “That’s a fear that I fundamentally have – if I had been offered [assisted suicide] when I was in that state, I don’t know if I would have said no.”
Kevin Caulfield, former chair of Hammersmith and Fulham Coalition Against Cuts, which played a key role in campaigning for an end to care charges in the borough, told the meeting that there was “systemic and societal coercion in every aspect of our lives”, while social care provision is “threadbare”, and many health services are “on their knees”.
He said access to quality end-of-life support was “extremely limited” and “for many of us that results in a feeling that we can’t afford to go on living”.
He said the bill’s safeguards were “mostly an illusion” because “in reality, society is unable to regulate against the impact of societal coercion and abuse”.
Caulfield said he had been diagnosed with a terminal condition in 1997 before his condition started to stabilise.
But he said: “If assisted dying had been on the menu and my doctor had put it on the table for discussion, I might well have gone for it.”
Dr Miro Griffiths, who is co-director of the Centre for Disability Studies at the University of Leeds and has a progressive condition, told the meeting via a recorded video message: “The danger is that if you are trying to access support or trying to access medical practitioners to support you then having a permanent question about whether you should have your death facilitated by the state or have your death accelerated by the state means that you are in a very vulnerable and dangerous position.
“While there are arguments for having freedom of choice and personal autonomy to make decisions over your life, we must remember that the role of the state and the role of legislation is to protect the majority of people, and individuals do not have complete control to do what they want, when they want, because there is a need to provide safety and security for the collective.”
He said that by defeating the legislation “we can focus our attention on making sure that individuals receive sufficient support to live the best quality of life that they can as their needs progress over time”.
He added: “There is the opportunity to defeat this, and it’s important that we recognize there is an alternative world which we can build, which is more inclusive, more accessible, more participatory, and more safe for disabled people.”
The meeting came as the Guardian reported how a group of Labour MPs opposed to legalisation had called the bill “irredeemably flawed and not fit to become law” in a letter to their parliamentary colleagues, saying “significant new risks” had emerged during the committee process.
Meanwhile, the Isle of Man parliament has passed a law that will give terminally-ill adults the right to choose to end their own lives, the first British parliament to do so. The bill will now be sent for royal assent.
Under the Isle of Man bill, adults with 12 months or less to live will be given the right to choose to die, if they are over 18, and have lived on the island for five years.
*This week, she won presenter of the year award for the documentary at the Royal Television Society Programme Awards
27 March 2025
Online provider charges disabled students thousands more for same qualification in ‘blatant discrimination’
An online education provider has been accused of “blatant discrimination” after charging disabled students thousands of pounds more a year than non-disabled students for the same qualifications.
The Cambridge-based Online College of Art and Design (OCAD) describes itself as the UK’s “most established online art college”, but it has been accused of “systemic and structural ableism” over the extra fees it charges disabled students.
Its website shows it is charging disabled students thousands of pounds more to sign up for courses such as a foundation diploma in textile design, a foundation diploma in architectural design, and a certificate in art and design.
Under the Equality Act, an education provider is legally required to make reasonable adjustments for disabled students but cannot charge for those adjustments.
But prices quoted on the site show it appears to be doing exactly that.
It charges £3,999 for its level three online foundation diploma in textile design – designed for “serious career-oriented students who wish to be artists or designers” – but charges £9,000 for students with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) studying for the same qualification.
Those enrolling on the SEND version of the course benefit from “a SENDCO, more tutor time, additional bespoke learning materials, progress reports and attendance to online meetings with local authorities”, all of which are likely to be considered reasonable adjustments under the Equality Act.
Prices are similarly inflated for SEND students on the level three foundation diploma in architectural design, as they are asked to pay £9,000, compared with £3,999 for non-SEND students.
And students studying for the level two certificate in art and design – equivalent to a GCSE – pay £999 for a two-year course, compared with £4,000 a year for SEND students studying for the same qualification.
OCAD says on its website: “For students with learning difficulties, please apply for our SEND courses.
“It is considerably more difficult and time consuming to teach these students.”
Iyiola Olafimihan, campaigns and justice lead for The Alliance for Inclusive Education, said: “This is another blatant discriminatory act on disabled people by businesses within the education industry.
“We already see similar practices within the education system, which monopolises and profits from the lives of disabled people.
“This is a clear example of systemic and structural ableism, enabling businesses to exploit disabled people while reinforcing segregated educational practices.
“Once again, it demonstrates that the Equality Act remains meaningless when it comes to protecting the human rights of disabled people.”
OCAD is part of Cambridge Online Education, which is registered under the government’s UK Register of Learning Providers, and claims it has “built a reputation as a trusted leader in delivering high-quality, personalised online learning experiences”.
Asked about the extra charges for disabled students, Dr Troy Page, OCAD’s director and founder, said: “We have no desire to discriminate which is why we are offering courses for students with SEND.”
He told Disability News Service (DNS) the SEND courses “are not the same course even if the qualification obtained is the same” because they “offer the additional support required”.
He said: “Any student with or without disabilities may apply for any of our courses including the lower priced non-SEND courses and so no discrimination is present.
“All students with or without disabilities can choose which course they wish to purchase.”
He added: “Some students prefer/need a higher number of tutor sessions, more bespoke learning materials, require progress reports, online meetings with local authorities, and the higher price of the SEND courses reflects the additional cost of paying for tutors.
“It is disingenuous to say the courses are the same.”
He said he did not believe that OCAD’s behaviour was unlawful.
He told DNS: “You are conflating standard courses with SEND courses and the course description make it very clear they are different and says how they are different.”
Page said he was not aware of other parts of Cambridge Online Education that offered higher fees for SEND versions of courses.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission had not commented by noon today (Thursday).
The Department for Education also failed to comment by noon today.
27 March 2025
DWP make tens of thousands of life-threatening errors, while planning more interaction with disabled claimants
Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) staff are making tens of thousands of potentially fatal errors every month when dealing with disabled people’s universal credit claims, just as the department prepares to increase its level of interaction with claimants.
Last week’s disability benefits green paper and consultation, Pathways to Work, said DWP would change the current universal credit system from one “based on almost no contact” with disabled people found not fit for work “to one based on keeping in touch and generating opportunities to help people improve their health and employment prospects”.
But three new reports obtained by Disability News Service (DNS), following a freedom of information request, show DWP staff are already failing to keep disabled claimants of universal credit safe, and are making repeated blunders in their day-to-day work, even before the government increases their workload and responsibilities.
The reports analyse whether DWP staff are meeting 17 customer support standards (CSS), which were introduced by the last government to “improve the experience of customers with complex needs and significantly reduce instances of serious cases by providing the right support at the right time”.
The reports admit that the impact of CSS errors “can affect customer life chances” and “can negatively affect departmental reputation”.
DWP has been carrying out these checks for nearly two years, as part of its regular “quality assurance checks” on how staff are dealing with new claims, changes of circumstances and other interactions with claimants.
But the three quarterly reports – from June, September and December 2024 – also show that DWP has now made it impossible to see exactly how often DWP civil servants are making potentially fatal blunders.
Earlier versions of the reports, issued monthly, showed how many cases involving CSS were being checked every month in each category, and therefore what proportion of these checks involved safeguarding errors.
But since welfare rights expert Owen Stevens, from Child Poverty Action Group, first obtained the monthly reports under the Freedom of Information Act, DWP has now replaced the reports with quarterly versions and has stopped showing how many cases they are sampling.
This means – in DWP’s latest attack on transparency – that it is impossible to estimate how often staff are making safeguarding mistakes.
The latest report still shows 284 occasions on which DWP staff failed to record that a universal credit claimant had “complex needs” in the section showing if they need additional support.
And there were 476 failures around additional support and homelessness, while staff failed to record a summary of the claimant’s additional support needs on 143 occasions.
Although the report is not entirely clear, it appears these figures show a running total over two quarters.
The report also shows that staff failed 240 times to record that a disabled claimant had accessibility needs in the “additional support” section.
It is impossible to say from the report how large the sample was, although a previous monthly report checked a sample of 1,653 universal credit (UC) claims for CSS failings.
But it is likely that if scaled up across the country – with tens of thousands of new health and disability UC claimants every month – these blunders are likely to be happening many thousands of times a month.
DWP has previously argued that it is “misleading” to suggest that its staff are making thousands of potentially fatal errors, because in “the unlikely event an error occurs, we have safeguards in place to resolve them swiftly and take action to reduce the likelihood of it re-occurring”.
But the new figures suggest that the errors keep re-occurring, even though it is now impossible to estimate how frequently this is happening across the country.
Recent history shows DWP does not have “safeguards in place” to resolve errors “swiftly”.
The fatal impact of such errors was demonstrated two years ago by the death of Nazerine Anderson, from Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire.
Among the errors made in her case, DWP was repeatedly told of her mental distress and suicidal ideation, but her work coach failed to record her “vulnerability” on her profile, while also failing to record updated information about her repeated visits to hospital on the relevant part of the system.
Last May, DNS reported how a survey by the Commons work and pensions committee found two-thirds of DWP staff did not have enough time to deal with safeguarding concerns “carefully” and “correctly”, despite years of deaths of benefit claimants linked with DWP’s actions and failings.
And in December 2023, a dossier of evidence submitted by the PCS union to DWP showed the department to be a failing organisation in a “state of crisis” and facing a “near collapse” of its benefits systems, with staff accusing DWP of “deliberate neglect” and revealing that claimants in vulnerable situations were “falling through the gaps” in the system.
27 March 2025
DWP cannot say how many disabled people it is sanctioning, despite plans for conditions on many more claimants
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has admitted it has no figures to show how many disabled people who cannot work are having their benefits “sanctioned”, just as the government announced reforms that will expose many more to strict conditions.
Although the department regularly releases data that shows how many universal credit claimants are being sanctioned for failing to follow its rules, these figures do not show how many of those in the limited capability for work (LCW) group are being sanctioned.
The LCW group is for disabled people and others with health conditions who have limited capability for work now but need to prepare for work in the future.
But last week’s disability benefits green paper and consultation, Pathways to Work, said the government planned to “change the current system from one based on almost no contact” for disabled people who have been found not fit for work “to one based on keeping in touch and generating opportunities to help people improve their health and employment prospects”.
This will include those in the LCW group but also most of those in the limited capability for work-related activity group.
DWP says this move towards “active engagement” will have the “ultimate backstop of sanctions to underpin the expectations of engagement”, although it claims this will be used “only as a last resort”.
But despite announcing these sweeping reforms, DWP has now confirmed to Disability News Service (DNS) that it cannot provide figures that show how many disabled people in the LCW group are currently having their benefits sanctioned, and for how long, and that it is too expensive to find out.
DNS had asked through a freedom of information request for versions of the latest universal credit sanctions statistics, released last month, that showed figures only for those in the LCW group.
But DWP said in its response that it would be too expensive to produce those figures.
It said the department “cannot break down any of the Universal Credit (UC) sanctions data by stage of UC health, as the UC Work Capability Assessment information, which is only available from April 2019, is held separately and not included in the sanction dataset.
“To perform the complex and iterative data merging required to be able to provide any sanctions data for those in the limited capability for work group would exceed the cost limit [of the freedom of information request].”
The February figures show that, in the year to October 2024, the department made more than 600,000 decisions to sanction a universal credit claimant’s benefits, with the most common reason being a failure to attend or take part in a mandatory work-related interview.
The most frequent sanctions were those imposed for between four and 13 weeks.
But none of these figures, and others in the statistical release, show how many disabled people in the LCW group have been sanctioned.
Dr David Webster, a sanctions expert and an honorary senior research fellow at the University of Glasgow’s School of Social and Political Sciences, has been publishing regular, influential briefings on DWP sanctions for more than 11 years.
He said: “Almost nine years on from the start of universal credit rollout in May 2016, we still don’t have a suite of official statistics which is comprehensive enough to tell us how the system is working.
“Data on sanctions on disabled people is only one of the obvious gaps. Information on the appeal system is another.
“Given that the government now seems set on keeping universal credit, publishing fuller statistics should be a priority.”
Caroline Selman, senior researcher at Public Law Project, which is running a project on sanctions with Central England Law Centre, said: “Sanctions can push people into extreme financial hardship, poor physical and mental health and harmful spirals of debt, as we know from the work we are undertaking with Central England Law Centre, through which they have received 200 enquiries about sanctions.
“Meanwhile, a DWP internal evaluation has suggested that sanctions also lead to people moving into work less quickly and earning less when they do.
“It is therefore concerning if the government is making decisions about its approach to these harmful measures without understanding, or being transparent about, who is impacted by them and how.
“Last year DWP started to publish data about sanctions and ethnicity for the first time.
“It is important that they also publish the equivalent data that we understand they hold on disabled people who are sanctioned.”
Ministers under the last government were repeatedly told the impact of sanctions on disabled people was “harmful and counter-productive”.
Among the many deaths in which the sanctions regime has played a part was that of David Clapson, who died in July 2013 after being left destitute by having his benefits sanctioned.
Although he was on jobseeker’s allowance (JSA), DWP was aware that he had diabetes, and he died from an acute lack of insulin, three weeks after having his JSA 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.
27 March 2025
Other disability-related stories covered by mainstream media this week
The government expressed concerns about the timeline for implementing assisted suicide, the BBC understands, before measures were tabled to delay when it could be available. Kim Leadbeater, the Labour MP bringing the bill, said she was “disappointed” to be proposing deferring when it must be in force until 2029: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c2er99xmjjwo
The number of people in the Netherlands who died by euthanasia increased by 10 per cent last year, figures have shown, as the official watchdog warned doctors to exercise “great caution” in cases where a person has a psychiatric illness. The Netherlands, which has one of the world’s oldest and broadest euthanasia laws, allows doctors to end a person’s life if they are “suffering unbearably, with no prospect of improvement”. They must be diagnosed with a medical condition, but this can include mental illness or dementia: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/mar/24/euthanasia-death-increase-netherlands
27 March 2025
News provided by John Pring at www.disabilitynewsservice.com
