Contents
Protest brings anger at failure to act on ‘homes not hospitals’ plea to government’s front door 4
Cover-up allows DWP and other public bodies to avoid detailed probe into disabled woman’s death 9
Ministers are clueless on impact of PIP cuts on disability poverty, DWP admits 13
Minister dismisses warning of ‘Orwellian’ mass surveillance of claimants, as MPs pass fraud bill 14
Ofcom silent over contrast between ‘parasites’ decision and 2010 rulings on offensive language 17
Reform silence after Farage suggests again that he favours sweeping cuts to disability benefits 19
Other disability-related stories covered by mainstream media this week 20
Petition aims to unite opposition to disability benefits green paper and force MPs to debate all cuts
A new petition backed by disabled people’s organisations (DPOs) aims to unite opposition to the government’s “devastating” disability benefit cuts and reforms by calling for every one of the measures to be abandoned.
While a string of petitions have focused on individual parts of the Pathways to Work green paper since its launch in March, the Greater Manchester Coalition of Disabled People (GMCDP) petition targets the whole government strategy.
As the GMCDP petition has been lodged on the UK parliament website, it should lead to a parliamentary debate if at least 100,000 people sign it.
The petition, launched this week and supported by key parts of the disabled people’s movement, also calls on the government to work with disabled people to draw up a national disability strategy in line with the UK’s international disability rights treaty obligations.
It calls on the government to drop the green paper proposals “and instead begin a process of co-production with disabled people’s representative organisations to create a whole government disability strategy”.
Such a strategy, it says, would ensure the labour market, employment rights and social security reforms necessary for an adequate standard of living for disabled people, in line with the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
It also calls on the government to “protect the income of disabled people from further shocks”.
The petition has been endorsed by DPO Forum England, whose 40-plus members include GMCDP, Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC), Disability Rights UK, Inclusion London and National Survivor User Network.
Linda Burnip, co-founder of DPAC, said it was “the first petition we feel able to support, as it rejects all of the horrific proposals in the green paper”, rather than those that have targeted specific measures in the green paper, an approach which risks dividing disabled people’s opposition to the cuts and reforms.
Last month, the forum wrote to work and pensions secretary Liz Kendall to express “serious concerns” about the human rights implications of her “incredibly dangerous” plans to cut spending on disability benefits, and described her consultation on the Pathways to Work green paper as a “sham”.
Its members argued then that the green paper contained 22 policy proposals but DWP was only consulting on 11 of them, with the most harmful proposals being introduced instead in a new government bill, without any consultation.
Rick Burgess, who posted the petition on behalf of GMCDP, said he believed petitions were only valuable as part of wider campaigns that use tactics such as protests, lobbying and legal action.
Disability News Service reported last month that at least three legal firms were examining ways in which they could support disabled people and their organisations to challenge parts of the green paper in the courts.
In late March, more than 1,000 disabled people and allies protested outside Downing Street over the green paper cuts and reforms.
And the Coalition Against Benefit Cuts, DPAC, Disability Rights UK and Well Adapt are planning a mass lobby of parliament later this month – on 21 May – which will give disabled people and allies the opportunity to try to persuade their MPs to oppose the planned cuts.
Burgess said he believed the most important thing disabled people and allies can do is to secure a face-to-face meeting with their MP to demand they oppose the government’s plans, while also joining virtual and in-person protests, signing and sharing the petition, writing to their MP, and engaging in campaigning on social media and in the local media.
He said: “We need a full spectrum of opposition to this attack on disabled people.”
1 May 2025
Ministers could face legal action over ‘homes not hospitals’ failure after treating activists ‘with utter contempt’
Ministers could face legal action over their “absolutely disgraceful” refusal to meet people with learning difficulties and autistic people to discuss the failure of the mental health bill to protect them from being locked away in psychiatric hospitals.
Disabled protesters outside the Department of Health and Social Care’s offices were shocked on Tuesday when a member of the ministerial team of civil servants refused to accept a letter requesting a meeting.
Members of the Bring People Home from Psychiatric Hospital network, including several autistic people and people with learning difficulties with personal experience of long-term detention under the Mental Health Act, had marched from Parliament Square to the department’s offices in Victoria Street on Tuesday to deliver the letter.
They wanted to arrange a meeting with care minister Stephen Kinnock and mental health minister Baroness [Gillian] Merron to discuss their concerns about the government’s mental health bill, which is awaiting its second reading in the House of Commons.
But after initially agreeing to accept the letter in person, a member of the minister’s team changed her mind and refused to meet with the protesters.
Some of the network members then began blocking the entrance to the building in protest.
Two campaigners with learning difficulties were eventually escorted inside by a pair of police officers so they could hand over the letter to the building manager.
Simone Aspis, Free Our People Now campaign manager for Inclusion London and one of the two activists who delivered the letter, told protesters outside afterwards: “This is not the last they are going to hear from us.”
She said the government’s failure to engage with disabled people’s organisations – despite meeting with a “whole list of charities” – meant it was breaching its duties under the Equality Act.
She said: “If they don’t listen to us, they might listen to some lawyers.”
She said the government’s attitude towards disabled people was “disgraceful and shameful”.
Aspis told DNS later that there were ongoing discussions about possible legal action, and that this appeared to be “the only language they understand”.
She said: “The contempt they showed for disabled people’s organisations was absolutely disgraceful, it was complete and utter contempt.”
Tracey Lazard, Inclusion London’s chief executive, said there had been a lack of “respect and decency” from civil servants in the minister’s office.
She told DNS: “I am shocked by the level of defensiveness and the lack of respect, that means that nobody from Baroness Merron’s office has even deigned to come down to take a letter from us.
“Now they have called the police. It is total overkill.
“When you have a government effectively dismantling disability benefits and not engaging with us in any meaningful way, you would think they would grasp the opportunity.
“They have obviously no intention of engaging with disabled people, which is making a mockery of Starmer’s commitment before the election to make sure disabled people were at the heart of the issues.”
The Department of Health and Social Care claimed later to DNS that usual procedures had been followed for in-person requests to share letters with ministers, which need to be handed over initially to the building security team.
The department pointed to an NHS England target for 2025-26 that reliance on “mental health inpatient care for people with a learning disability and autistic people” should be cut by at least 10 per cent.
It also pointed to measures in the mental health bill that mean it will no longer be possible to detain someone with a learning disability or an autistic person if they do not also have a mental health condition that meets the act’s detention criteria, although these changes will only be implemented when there are strong community services in place.
A spokesperson for the department said: “The number of autistic people and people with a learning disability in mental health hospitals is unacceptable, and there are still too many people being detained who could be supported in their communities.
“Through our proposed reforms to the Mental Health Act we want to help ensure people get the support they need in the community, improving care and keeping people out of hospitals.
“We are grateful for stakeholders’ contributions on the bill to date, including through the public consultation.
“The mental health bill is now undergoing parliamentary scrutiny and we will further engage with expert stakeholders, including people with lived experience, to inform how the bill will be implemented.”
It is the third time the Bring People Home from Psychiatric Hospital network has attempted to arrange a meeting with ministers to discuss the bill.
The network believes there are important ways the legislation can be improved.
They want the government to use the bill to keep people with learning difficulties and autistic people out of hospital and living in the community; to ensure their right to “decent lives” with support in their communities, rather than being locked up in mental health hospitals; and to take action against those responsible for badly-run hospital services that have led to cruelty, abuse and even deaths.
Although ministers have discussed the bill with many charities that are not run and controlled by disabled people – such as Mind, Mencap and the National Autistic Society – they have refused to meet the network and groups run by autistic people and people with learning difficulties.
1 May 2025
Protest brings anger at failure to act on ‘homes not hospitals’ plea to government’s front door
The Labour government has “betrayed” autistic people and people with learning difficulties who have been abused and abandoned in mental health institutions, activists told a protest in front of the Houses of Parliament this week.
Disabled people with experience of detention spoke of their anger at the government’s failure to listen to their concerns about the new mental health bill.
Members of the Bring People Home from Psychiatric Hospital network – which organised the action – believe there are clear ways the bill can be improved.
They believe the bill will not do enough to keep people with learning difficulties and autistic people out of mental health hospitals, or protect them from badly-run hospital services that have led to cruelty, abuse, and even deaths.
As part of Tuesday’s protest, members of the network marched from Parliament Square to the Department of Health and Social Care’s nearby offices in Victoria Street to deliver a letter calling for a meeting with care minister Stephen Kinnock and mental health minister Baroness [Gillian] Merron (see separate story).
Although ministers have discussed the bill with many charities that are not run and controlled by disabled people – such as Mind, Mencap and the National Autistic Society – they have refused to meet the network and groups run by autistic people and people with learning difficulties.
Disabled people’s organisations including Free Our People Now, My Life My Choice, and All Wales People First spoke at Tuesday’s protest of their anger and frustration at the government’s plans and the refusal of ministers to address their concerns about the bill.
Five disabled people who have been detained in psychiatric hospitals spoke about their own experiences.
Ava, an autism trainer, speaker and activist from Brighton, said she was speaking on behalf of the many autistic people and people with learning difficulties who are being detained and mistreated by the care system in England.
She said her care package was cut from 24 hours-a-day and one-to-one support to just eight hours a day – without her input – after her support package broke down, leaving her in crisis and detained in a mental health hospital for a year.
She said: “During my time in hospital I was pinned down by mental health staff and injected with lorazepam and I also got sexually assaulted and I was also abused in many other ways.”
Because of the trauma she experienced, she now needs two-to-one support.
She told fellow protesters: “All of these restrictive practices, you wouldn’t treat a criminal like that, so why are the most vulnerable people being treated like that?”
She said: “Our Labour government had said they would support the vulnerable.
“They have betrayed us people… they have gone against everything they said they would.
“If our government are focusing on stopping people from going into hospitals, where are they going to put these people?
“There is no investment in community care or any pathways to support with living in a place they call home.”
She said her own experience showed that cutting people’s support could be “deeply damaging”.
Ady Chappell, from the Oxfordshire self-advocacy organisation My Life My Choice, described how he was sectioned in a mental health institution after a breakdown when he was 12 years old.
He said: “Putting an autistic person in a loud ward, with lots of lights, is sensory hell.”
He was mistreated by staff, who lied to his parents about the care he received, and none of his needs or rights were met.
He said: “Even now I never take for granted basic things like being able to walk out of my door at home or being allowed to make a phone call.
“Now I have my own flat… I can get up when I want. I no longer have the fear that someone is going to stick a needle in me if I do something they don’t like.”
He added: “The government need to get off their backside and do something.
“This has to stop. We can’t lock people away just for being disabled or behaving in a different way.”
Another autistic campaigner, Alexis Quinn, who has previously given evidence about mental health law reform in the House of Commons, described how she was detained as an inpatient in hospital for four years and felt “very, very alone”.
She said: “I was locked in solitary confinement for many days, weeks, and months, I was sat next to my excrement, I was fed on the floor, I was eating with my hands; this is not OK for anybody.”
She said she did not believe the government’s mental health bill would bring the change that was needed, but that “nobody is listening”.
She said: “I hear the government say they are going to improve services, mental health services, services for autistic people, services for learning disabilities, and I would ask: what services?
“What services are there, because I haven’t seen any?”
Sophie Hinksman, co-chair of All Wales People First, who was twice detained in a mental health hospital, said: “If the right support for my learning disability had been there from the start, I would not have been put into hospital, and I certainly wouldn’t have needed a second hospital stay.
“The problems started from a lack of understanding about learning disability.
“Nobody should have to call those places home.
“People with learning disability need the right support, close to their family and friends. We need homes not hospitals.”
Leslie Hunt, from My Life My Choice, described how he had been locked away in a long-stay mental health hospital for 21 years.
He said he was hit, abused and restrained by staff, and locked up as a punishment, and did not trust any of the nurses.
He said: “I hated the system all the way through.
“Life locked away in a mental health unit is hard, but this does not need to happen.”
He is now living in the community, and he told the protest: “I can get up when I want to get up. I have good staff to support me.
“I can make my own decisions. I can be my own person.”
He told the protest: “I want the government to make sure people are no longer punished like this, and locked away.
“They must stop these places from treating people in horrible ways.
“The government needs to hear us rather than telling us to be quiet.
“We need to shout for our rights, until they listen.”
Simone Aspis, Free Our People Now campaign manager for Inclusion London, told fellow protesters on Tuesday: “The mental health bill will do nothing to move us out of hospital and into our own homes.
“Government ministers refuse to meet us and hear our voice.”
She said the government had showed “complete contempt” for organisations led by people with learning difficulties and autistic people, including those with lived experience of hospital detention.
Joe Powell, chief executive of All Wales People First, said that “people with a learning disability should not have to be incarcerated like prisoners because the services they are entitled to cannot be provided”.
He said the people who were being “incarcerated” in long-stay institutions were “really suffering and the places they are being put into are not just inappropriate, they are also very harmful for their wellbeing; the appropriate support they need is not being provided and many are suffering from great anxiety and distress”.
Samantha Johnson, from People First (Self-Advocacy), said: “It’s not fair that people like us are being locked up in hospitals for a long time.
“Many of us are kept in these places even when we don’t need to be there.
“That means we are taken away from our homes and loved ones, not allowed to live in our community, kept far from our families and friends.
“Being locked away like this takes away our freedom and rights.
“We are people, we matter, and we deserve to be treated like everyone else. It’s time to change the system.
“We want to be respected and treated like people. We want to be supported to live in homes and not locked up like animals.”
The user-led, rights-based organisation Liberation, which is run by people with mental health diagnoses, offered its full support for the campaign.
Dorothy Gould, Liberation’s founder, told the protest: “The government’s continuing support for involuntary detention in psychiatric hospitals and forced treatment is a complete disgrace. It’s disability discrimination.
“No one else is subjected to this sort of coercion.
“The government’s mental health bill was a golden opportunity to bring these forms of coercion to an end once and for all. But does it do that? No.
“Those of us given mental health diagnoses are told that the coercion has to continue to prevent us being a risk to ourselves and others.
“But there is no adequate research evidence that locking us up in hospital and forcibly treating us is even effective in preventing risk.
“The World Health Organisation itself has clearly stated that.”
She said that detention and forced treatment leaves many people with mental health diagnoses “intensely traumatised” and many lose their lives as a result, something which “so nearly” happened to her.
And she questioned why the mental health bill did not put “a complete end to detention and forced treatment” for those with mental health diagnoses, people with learning difficulties and autistic people.
She said: “Why is the government not putting its focus instead on the many community-based alternatives that are genuinely healing and genuinely effective?”
Other disabled people’s organisations, including The Alliance for Inclusive Education and WinVisible, were also at this week’s action to offer their support to the campaign.
The government said this week that the number of inpatients with a learning disability or who were autistic and were subject to the Mental Health Act had fallen from 2,500 in March 2015 to 1,875 in February 2025.
The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) pointed to an NHS England target for 2025-26 that reliance on “mental health inpatient care for people with a learning disability and autistic people” should be cut by at least 10 per cent.
It also pointed to measures in the mental health bill that mean it will no longer be possible to detain someone with a learning disability or an autistic person if they do not also have a mental health condition that meets the act’s detention criteria, although these changes will only be implemented when there are strong community services in place.
A DHSC spokesperson said: “The number of autistic people and people with a learning disability in mental health hospitals is unacceptable, and there are still too many people being detained who could be supported in their communities.
“Through our proposed reforms to the Mental Health Act we want to help ensure people get the support they need in the community, improving care and keeping people out of hospitals.
“We are grateful for stakeholders’ contributions on the bill to date, including through the public consultation.
“The mental health bill is now undergoing parliamentary scrutiny and we will further engage with expert stakeholders, including people with lived experience, to inform how the bill will be implemented.”
1 May 2025
Cover-up allows DWP and other public bodies to avoid detailed probe into disabled woman’s death
A local council, police and NHS have helped cover up the failures that led to a disabled woman’s body being found in her flat months after her benefits had been removed, Disability News Service (DNS) has discovered.
Havering council told DNS three years ago that the death of Sophia Yuferev, a talented artist who lived with significant mental distress and a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia, had been referred to the local safeguarding board for a possible safeguarding adult review (SAR).
The Care Act 2014 states that there should be an SAR if there is concern over the way local agencies worked together to safeguard an adult who died due to abuse or neglect.
Sophia had been living on a sandwich a day for the last few months of her life, and may essentially have starved to death after both her employment and support allowance (ESA) and her personal independence payment (PIP) were stopped.
Her body was discovered by police in her flat in Hornchurch, Essex, in November 2011, weeks after she had died.
Her electricity had been cut off months earlier for non-payment of bills.
Two months before she died, Havering council sent her a summons for non-payment of council tax, and the previous year she had faced eviction by her housing association for non-payment of rent.
The council was not aware of her “vulnerability”, it later confirmed to DNS.
Although her family alerted her mental health team to the financial problems caused by DWP cutting off her benefits, they say nothing was done to help her.
But despite all these multi-agency failures, Havering council confirmed to DNS this week that its local safeguarding board – whose members include representatives of the council, local NHS, and the Metropolitan police – had decided not to carry out a review.
But it also confirmed that it had failed to inform Sophia’s family of this decision.
Sophia’s mother, Maria Stockdale, who is also disabled, said the failure to carry out a safeguarding review showed that public bodies “just cover up for each other”.
She said: “The law has to protect people like us, but it looks as though it works against people like us.”
She said DWP and the other public bodies “are not just destroying my daughter, they are destroying the whole family”.
And she said it seemed as though the family would never have answers to what happened to Sophia.
She said: “That is the worst situation, because I have no answer, I have no justice, I have no satisfaction.
“I don’t even know the date that she died, we don’t know why she died.
“They just cover up for each other; there is nothing for people like me at all.”
An inquest in July 2022 concluded that Sophia’s death was due to ketoacidosis of “unknown” cause, although DWP was not asked to give evidence to the inquest.
The inquest had heard that one of the causes of ketoacidosis is starvation, and Sophia had told her mother that she had been living throughout the last summer of her life on one sandwich a day from a local café.
After her death, her family discovered documents that showed how DWP had hounded Sophia over her benefit claims for several years, with the first documented removal of her ESA dating back to 2014, and evidence of a PIP removal in July 2017, with documents showing both her PIP and ESA being repeatedly removed and then eventually reinstated.
DWP should have been aware of Sophia’s history of suicide attempts and detentions under the Mental Health Act.
She had been sectioned on numerous occasions, including on 27 November 2019, just 10 days after DWP wrote to tell her that her PIP was ending because she had failed to return a review form on time.
Three months later, Swan Housing Association threatened her with eviction because of non-payment of rent.
It is believed this was because her ESA had again been stopped by DWP.
Documents suggest that her PIP was eventually reinstated in January 2020, and her ESA later that year, but her PIP was then removed again in February 2021 and her ESA removed again in April 2021.
Days after she is believed to have died, in October 2021, DWP wrote to her to say that it was reinstating her PIP.
Sophia, who was 37 when she died, had a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia, and during her frequent periods of psychosis she would turn on her mother, who lived nearby, accusing her of collaborating with the police.
On several occasions she had run away – to local woodland, where she had lived for several months, to Siberia, in the middle of winter, and to Israel – to escape those she believed were conspiring against her.
During 2019, Sophia had accused her mother and female neighbours of being witches, and she once accused a woman walking her dog of sending messages to the police.
But despite her enduring and significant mental distress, and inability to cope with day-to-day life, her benefits were still repeatedly stopped and then reinstated by DWP.
DWP told DNS three years ago that it carried out its own secret internal process review (IPR) into the circumstances surrounding Sophia’s death and her benefit claims, although – as with all IPRs – this was kept secret and was not shared with her family.
Because of the decision not to carry out a safeguarding review, the information from the IPR has not been assessed by an independent safeguarding expert.
After living with her mother and step-father for many years, Sophia had moved into nearby sheltered accommodation for two years, but was moved to a filthy and “uninhabitable” housing association flat yards from the A127 dual carriageway without – her family say – any assessment of her needs being carried out by the local mental health trust, North East London Foundation NHS Trust (NELFT)*.
Her family believe the rapid fluctuations in her blood sugar levels caused by periods of near-starvation were linked to her death.
She was being given injections of flupenthixol – a powerful anti-psychotic, which is linked to an increased risk of diabetes – every two weeks, but the family say the trust had failed for two years to ensure she received the three-monthly blood tests she needed.
They believe that the rapid fluctuations in her blood sugar levels, caused by not having enough money for a proper diet after her benefits were cut, led to the ketoacidosis and caused her death.
In late September 2021, Sophia had another psychotic episode and again cut off contact with her mother.
After 3 October, when Maria told Sophia that her grandmother had died, there was no reply to further messages, but NELFT refused to respond to Maria’s repeated calls raising concerns about her daughter.
The inquest heard that the trust had been significantly under-staffed, and the family believe that, because of staff sickness, Sophia did not have anyone acting as her care coordinator for months, with the trust relying on temporary staff who did not know the details of her case.
None of this will now be examined in detail by a safeguarding review.
The council confirmed this week that a safeguarding review should take place following the death of an adult with care or support needs, whose death may have resulted from abuse or neglect, and there was reasonable cause for concern about how local agencies worked together to safeguard that person.
All of those elements appear to have been satisfied.
But the council confirmed that no safeguarding review had been ordered and the family had not been informed.
A council spokesperson said: “The Safeguarding Adult Board considered the safeguarding adult review (SAR) referral in 2022.
“It concluded that this case, whilst very tragic, did not pass the statutory threshold for an SAR.
“We apologise to the family that they were not contacted but families would usually only be told about an SAR once it has been agreed to proceed.
“An independent reviewer is then appointed and it is only then that the family would be contacted and invited to participate.
“Therefore, in this case the council did not have any contact with the family in relation to a SAR or prior to Sophia’s death.”
*NELFT’s actions are currently being examined as part of The Lampard Inquiry into more than 2,000 deaths of mental health inpatients in Essex between 2000 and 2023
1 May 2025
Ministers are clueless on impact of PIP cuts on disability poverty, DWP admits
Ministers have no idea how much impact their cuts to disabled people’s benefits will have on levels of disability poverty, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has admitted.
DWP published figures in March that showed that the government’s decision to tighten eligibility for personal independence payment (PIP) will drag a quarter of a million working-age adults into both relative and absolute poverty* by 2030.
Another measure, 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, is estimated to drag another 50,000 working-age adults into relative poverty by 2030.
But even though the measures are aimed squarely at disabled people, nowhere in the publication did DWP state how disability poverty would be affected by the two measures.
Because of this omission, Disability News Service (DNS) asked DWP in a freedom of information request for the impact of each of the measures in the Pathways to Work green paper solely on disabled people.
But DWP admitted this week that it had not been able to calculate their impact on disability poverty.
It claimed that it “does not hold information on the specific poverty impacts of the changes on disabled people, disaggregated from everyone else”.
It said this was because it had produced the poverty figures in March using its own policy simulation model (PSM) and its definitions of disability in this model were different from those used in its households below average income (HBAI) poverty statistics.
It added: “It has therefore not been possible to estimate the impact of the package on the level of poverty amongst individuals living in families with a disabled person, as this requires an estimate to be made using the HBAI definition.”
The failure to calculate the impact of its cuts on levels of disability poverty adds to mounting concerns about the way ministers – particularly work and pensions secretary Liz Kendall and social security and disability minister Sir Stephen Timms – have failed to be transparent about the impact on disabled people of the whole package of cuts.
It is still unclear how much in total will be cut from spending on disability benefits once all the government’s Pathways to Work measures are implemented, including those on personal independence payment, universal credit and employment and support allowance.
In answer to questions from MPs on the overall impact of the Pathways to Work cuts and reforms, Sir Stephen has repeatedly said that information “will be published in due course”, while a “further programme of analysis to support development of the proposals in the Green Paper will be developed and undertaken in the coming months”.
This week, employment minister Alison McGovern provided a similar answer to an MP to the one her department had provided to DNS.
She told Liberal Democrat Martin Wrigley in the written answer that it had “not been possible to estimate the impact of the [overall] package on the level of poverty amongst individuals living in families with a disabled person, as this requires an estimate to be made using the HBAI definition.
“However, given the balance of the package we would expect much of the increase in poverty to be focused amongst individuals in this family type.”
McGovern also told the independent – former Labour – MP Apsana Begum that the government had not calculated how many PIP recipients who live with a child and are already in poverty will lose their PIP daily living component as a result of the government’s changes.
But she said DWP had calculated that 50,000 families with children who were already estimated to be in relative poverty (after housing costs) will lose income as a result of the PIP cuts in 2029-30.
And McGovern told Begum, in response to another question, that DWP had also failed to calculate how many disabled people who receive PIP and are already living in poverty will no longer be eligible for the PIP daily living component after the cuts.
But she said that 250,000 families already in relative poverty (after housing costs) will lose income as a result of the PIP cuts in 2029-30.
*Households in absolute poverty are those earning below 60 per cent of the average (median) income in 2010-11, adjusted for inflation; those in relative poverty are those earning less than 60 per cent of the current median household income
1 May 2025
Minister dismisses warning of ‘Orwellian’ mass surveillance of claimants, as MPs pass fraud bill
A Labour minister has dismissed a disabled MP’s warning that new anti-fraud legislation will open the door to “Orwellian levels of mass surveillance” of millions of people on means-tested benefits.
Liberal Democrat Steve Darling, his party’s work and pensions spokesperson, told MPs on Tuesday that the public authorities (fraud, error and recovery) bill risked amplifying the challenges faced by disabled people who rely on social security.
He called instead for a DWP “culture change” which would involve “working with people who are benefits claimants and people with disabilities to make sure that the system is a better fit and more fit for purpose”.
Darling was among several opposition and Labour MPs who highlighted concerns about the bill’s impact on those in poverty.
The bill’s most controversial measure will force banks to examine the accounts of claimants of means-tested benefits for potential breaches of benefit eligibility rules and then pass that information to the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).
The government currently plans to use the new powers to focus on claimants of universal credit, pension credit, and employment and support allowance.
Labour’s Neil Duncan-Jordan – who has been prominent among the party’s MPs in raising concerns about the government’s proposed disability benefit cuts – told the Commons it was the “very poorest”, including many disabled people, who would “effectively have fewer rights to privacy than everyone else” under the government’s plans.
He proposed an amendment to the bill, which would have restricted the new powers to cases where a benefit recipient was suspected of wrongdoing, but it was defeated by 238 to 85 votes.
Among the 11 Labour MPs who voted for his amendment were Dianne Abbott, Richard Burgon and Mary Kelly Foy, as well as the suspended Labour MP John McDonnell, Conservative David Davis and 45 Liberal Democrats, including Darling.
Burgon had told MPs: “Along with the proposed tightening of eligibility for personal independence payment, it moves us towards a hostile environment for benefit claimants, particularly disabled benefit claimants.
“We will end up treating them as suspects automatically.”
Duncan-Jordan said the government risked an “Horizon-style scandal on a massive scale, given the sheer volume of accounts that will be scanned”, with the new powers stripping benefit recipients of “the presumption of innocence”.
He added: “The last government stripped our welfare state to the bone during 14 years of deep cuts.
“Disabled people are already far more likely to be in destitution and to rely on food banks, but spying on millions of people or piling cuts on to a failed system will not repair our welfare model.
“The government must pause for thought, meet representatives of disability organisations, and build a fairer system with their consent and confidence.”
McDonnell said the bill was “adding a bit more stigma” to receiving benefits, which would act as a further disincentive to those who should be coming forward to claim them.
He said: “It is that terror of making an error, that fear of risking being penalised for claiming a benefit they may not be entitled to, or of being paid too much.
“Most of the constituents who come to our constituency surgeries have tried everything else by the time they get to us.
“They are the ones with the most chaotic lives, and they are the ones who get sanctioned time and again, not because of any deliberate act, but often because they have mental health issues, or because something in their life prevents them from attending that interview, or from applying for enough jobs in time.
“What will happen to them? They will be dragged into this system again.”
Liberal Democrat John Milne pointed to DWP’s worrying track record.
He said: “The implicit assumption is that we should trust in the DWP as a completely error-free organisation across the entirety of its massive operation.
“But the DWP does make mistakes. It makes mistakes all the time. And even when it knows that it has made a mistake, and it has been told so, it is very capable of making the same mistake all over again.”
He added: “Yes, there are some checks and balances within this legislation, but what is really needed is a profound cultural change within the DWP, and that is much harder to achieve.
“The common experience of people who have to deal with the DWP on a daily basis is that they feel that it is always looking to catch them out.
“Years and years of inflammatory rhetoric under a succession of Conservative governments have convinced people to regard the DWP as their enemy, not their friend.
“If anything, the bill digs that hole a little deeper.”
Andrew Western, the work and pensions minister for transformation, said the bill was “part of the biggest crackdown on fraud against the public purse in a generation” and that ministers were “supporting those who need the social security safety net, not the fraudsters who pick holes in it”.
He said Duncan-Jordan’s amendment would undermine the eligibility verification measure “entirely”.
He said: “The DWP must look into why the account has been flagged by the bank and ascertain whether an incorrect payment has been made.
“That is why, following receipt of the information from banks, the DWP will make further inquiries to determine whether a benefit has been incorrectly paid and whether that is due to fraud or error.
“It would be impossible for the DWP to suspect fraud before it has even established that a benefit has been incorrectly paid.”
And he disputed any similarities with the Post Office Horizon scandal.
Western told MPs: “The Horizon scandal emerged because evidence was taken from a single source. That will not be the case here.
“We will receive flagged information from banks of a potential breach of eligibility criteria.
“However, that will not be a sufficient source of evidence to prove fraud.
“That will trigger a look at the account, and if there is not an obvious reason why somebody is potentially in breach of eligibility criteria, a human investigation will be triggered that looks at a range of sources of evidence to establish the reason.
“Only then would there be any suggestion that fraud or error has occurred.”
Earlier this year, disabled activist Rick Burgess warned MPs that they could set in train the greatest miscarriage of justice in British history, if parliament approved the new surveillance powers.
Burgess, from Greater Manchester Coalition of Disabled People, told the Commons committee examining the bill that the proposed new powers were adding to an “absolutely enormous” level of “anger and distress in the disabled community”.
He said the bill appeared to be motivated by “ableist assumptions about how disabled people run their lives, or whether they’re more or less honest, or whether they’re more or less genuine than people who are not disabled”.
The public authorities (fraud, error and recovery) bill completed its Commons report and third reading stages on Tuesday and now passes to the House of Lords.
1 May 2025
Ofcom silent over contrast between ‘parasites’ decision and 2010 rulings on offensive language
The broadcasting watchdog has refused to explain why it appears to have become so much more reluctant to stand up against disability hate speech in the media over the last 15 years.
Ofcom was accused of failing millions of disabled people when Disability News Service (DNS) revealed last month that it had refused to investigate two television programmes over claims of disability discrimination and causing offence.
Concerns were raised about its treatment of complaints about a Channel 4 Dispatches documentary, Britain’s Benefits Scandal.
But the contrast with Ofcom’s past actions is particularly stark in how it dealt with complaints about comments made by journalist Isabel Oakeshott, who had demanded a “crackdown” on young people who were “supposedly too sick to work and being supported by the state”, in an interview on TalkTV.
Oakeshott, TalkTV’s international editor, said last autumn’s budget had removed resources from those who work “in order to keep on sustaining those who frankly can’t be bothered to get out of bed and get themselves out… to… any kind of job and prefer to just sit on the sofa and order their Deliveroo and drive their Motability free vehicle and take everything that the state can offer”.
The former political editor of The Sunday Times told presenter Kevin O’Sullivan on 31 October last year that “people like you and me and our very many listeners” were “grafting just to try to make ends meet, and basically these people are frankly parasites”.
But despite receiving 24 complaints about her comments, Ofcom decided not to “pursue” the complaints, claiming that although her words “had the potential to cause offence to some viewers”, its rules allowed for “the broadcast of controversial and provocative opinion… which regular viewers would expect from this programme”.
But DNS has now compared this response with Ofcom’s actions 15 years ago.
In 2010, the regulator ruled that broadcaster Jeremy Clarkson had made “discriminatory” comments when he told Top Gear viewers that the Ferrari F430 Especial should instead have been called the “430 Speciale Needs” because its “smiling front end” made it “look like a simpleton”.
Ofcom told the BBC that the comments had “the potential to be very offensive to some viewers, as it could be seen to single out certain sections of society in a derogatory way because of their disability”.
It concluded that Clarkson’s comments “were capable of causing offence” and “could easily be understood as ridiculing people in society with a particular physical disability or learning difficulty”.
Five months earlier, Ofcom had overturned another ruling and condemned the use of similarly offensive, disablist language on Channel 4’s Celebrity Big Brother’s Big Mouth.
Nine people with learning difficulties – and other campaigners – had protested at Ofcom’s original decision not to uphold complaints about actor Vinnie Jones “joking” that presenter Davina McCall walked “like a re**rd”.
DNS asked why describing a car as “speciale needs” and a presenter as walking “like a re**rd” were offensive, but describing young disabled people who were unable to work as “parasites” was not, an Ofcom spokesperson failed to answer the question.
Instead, she said the regulator assesses complaints about offensive content on “whether what has been broadcast raises issues warranting investigation in terms of generally accepted standards”, and that it takes “careful account of the contextual factors in each case”.
She said that Ofcom’s broadcasting code “takes account of the rights of broadcasters and audiences to freedom of expression” and does not prevent “the broadcast of content that may be offensive or controversial”.
She added: “We look at each case on its facts and therefore each decision we make is unique to the content and the particular circumstances.”
Eight of Ofcom’s 11 board members, including its chair, Lord Grade, were appointed by Conservative-led governments between 2016 and February 2024.
1 May 2025
Reform silence after Farage suggests again that he favours sweeping cuts to disability benefits
The right-wing populist party Reform UK has given a rare glimpse of its disability policies, after its leader Nigel Farage suggested he was strongly in favour of cuts to disabled people’s benefits.
The party’s supporters have attempted to make political capital in recent months by feeding off anger aimed at the Labour government’s planned cuts of billions of pounds to disability benefits.
But comments made by Farage at a press conference late last week suggest he is himself strongly in favour of sweeping cuts to disability benefits, and that he has been poorly briefed about how the benefits and special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) systems work.
He described young disabled people who received out-of-work benefits as “victims” and claimed there was “massive” overdiagnosis of mental health conditions and “other general behavioural disabilities”.
Farage said: “I have to say, for my own money, when you get to 18 and you put somebody on a disability register, unemployed, with a high level of benefits, you’re telling people aged 18 that they’re victims.
“And if you are told you are a victim, and you think you’re a victim, you are very likely to stay as a victim.”
He claimed that many eligibility tests for SEND support and disability benefits were carried out by “the family GP” over Zoom, which he said was “a massive mistake” and was “creating a class of victims in Britain who will struggle ever to get out of it and that is not good for them and it’s not good for us”.
Reform UK has said little about its own disability policies since its last general election manifesto suggested it would save £15 billion a year by forcing “1 million plus back to work”, and that it would “ensure those who can work do work”.
It also stated in the manifesto that work was “critical to improving mental health” and that “all job seekers and those fit to work” would have to find employment within four months or accept a job after two offers, or “benefits are withdrawn”.
Farage’s latest comments – despite his errors – suggest those policies have not changed.
Disability News Service contacted both Reform UK’s press office and Farage’s parliamentary office about his comments, but neither responded to the questions.
Reform UK does not appear to have a functioning press office, other than a single email address, or even a publicly-available phone number.
1 May 2025
Other disability-related stories covered by mainstream media this week
Britain’s welfare system is “consciously cruel” and pushing claimants beyond the brink, says a report by Amnesty International: https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/dwp-benefit-claimants-give-verdict-35112047
The government’s multi-billion pound programme of disability benefits cuts will disproportionately hit people living in Wales and northern England “entrenching deprivation”, according to new analysis: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/apr/24/wales-and-north-of-england-face-disability-cuts-double-whammy
Scope expects to cut more than a fifth of its staff this year amid mounting financial pressures, with about a third of those affected to be disabled employees: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/apr/25/disability-charity-scope-job-cuts-disabled-employees-hit-hardest
More than 150 organisations have warned that the supported housing sector is on the precipice of a financial crisis that could plunge tens of thousands of “vulnerable” people into homelessness: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/apr/25/supported-housing-in-england-on-brink-of-financial-crisis-charities-warn
1 May 2025
News provided by John Pring at www.disabilitynewsservice.com
