Contents
Government offers three clues that it is set to plough ahead with cuts to disability benefits 1
Insurance industry silent over whether it lobbied DWP to cut disability benefits 8
Disabled students set to protest over cuts in support 18
Other disability-related stories covered by mainstream media this week 21
Government offers three clues that it is set to plough ahead with cuts to disability benefits
Labour appears set to plough ahead with billions of pounds of cuts a year to disability benefits, after this week’s spending review failed to offer any suggestion of a U-turn.
The government had already given two other major signs that it was not intending to reverse the cuts, even before yesterday’s spending review.
In her statement to MPs, chancellor Rachel Reeves confirmed the government’s U-turn on cuts to winter fuel payments for older people, but she made no mention of disability benefits, and did not mention disabled people or disability.
The Treasury’s spending review document – which sets out the budgets for government departments for day‑to‑day spending until 2028‑29, and until 2029‑30 for capital investment – mentions disabled people or disability just six times in about 43,000 words, and only in connection with planned reforms to the special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) system and in confirming increases in employment support for disabled people.
Asked by Disability News Service whether the chancellor’s failure to mention disability benefits meant there would be no U-turn on the cuts, the Treasury had not commented by noon today (Thursday).
Even before Reeves delivered her statement, the prime minister had misled MPs about the planned cuts to personal independence payment (PIP).
He had been asked in prime minister’s questions by Labour MP Richard Burgon why a Labour government was planning to “balance the books on the backs of disabled people”.
Burgon said that “people who need assistance to cut up their food, to wash themselves, to dress themselves and to go to the toilet will lose the personal independence payments that they currently receive”, and he asked Sir Keir Starmer to “drop these disability benefit cuts”.
But instead of responding to the concerns about cuts to PIP, the prime minister said Labour’s cuts and reforms would be based on the principle that “those who can work should work, that those who want to work should be supported so that they can do so, and that we must protect those with the most severe disabilities who will never be able to work”.
PIP is not an out-of-work benefit, and it can be claimed by disabled people who are in or out of work.
Only last month, work and pensions secretary Liz Kendall misled MPs four times in just 23 minutes by suggesting that the cuts to PIP were linked to supporting disabled people into work.
And in a third sign that the government has no intention of making a U-turn on the cuts laid out in the Pathways to Work green paper, Kendall wrote to the work and pensions select committee this week to confirm that she believes she was right to cut billions from disabled people’s support.
In Monday’s letter to the committee’s Labour chair, Debbie Abrahams – which was published on the day of the chancellor’s statement – Kendall defended the cuts to PIP and said again that the increase in the number of claimants was “not sustainable if we want our welfare safety net to exist for those who need it in future”.
She also referred to the “urgently needed changes to the PIP eligibility criteria”.
Kendall also made it clear that her position had not changed on the planned cuts to the universal credit disability payment, because of the “perverse incentives” in the system.
She said at the end of the letter: “We will not avoid or delay the decisive action needed to transform the system, so it helps people in the best way possible and ensures our welfare state is sustainable for the future.”
Meanwhile, the spending review document says the Department for Education will set out the government’s “intended approach to SEND reform” in a schools white paper in the autumn.
It says this will “make the system more inclusive and improve outcomes for all children and young people”.
It is looking increasingly likely that these will be major reforms, with The Law Society Gazette reporting yesterday that SEND tribunal judges “have been told their services will not be needed in future”.
Although not mentioned in the chancellor’s speech, the spending review document also mentions an increase of more than £4 billion a year in funding for adult social care by 2028-29, compared with this year, with further details to be announced “shortly”.
But the Liberal Democrats said the spending review document had revealed “a potential black hole for social care”.
Daisy Cooper, the party’s Treasury spokesperson and deputy leader, said: “This spending review was a missed opportunity to repair the damage done by the Conservatives and finally deliver on the promise of change.
“Behind the smoke and mirrors is a potential black hole for social care as local government budgets remain at breaking point.
“Putting more money into the NHS without fixing social care is like pouring water into a leaky bucket.”
Her party said the spending review document showed that, while local government has a statutory responsibility to provide social care, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government was facing a 1.4 per cent real terms cut over the course of the spending review.
12 June 2025
‘Real danger’ that disabled people will not benefit from £39 billion for social and affordable homes
Fresh concerns have emerged about the government’s commitment to solving the accessible housing crisis after the chancellor announced a £39 billion investment in social and affordable homes, but ignored disabled people’s urgent needs.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves stressed in her spending review that these would be “homes built for working people”, in a statement that failed to mention disabled people.
The spending review document says the new funding will provide “the biggest boost to social and affordable housing investment in a generation”, with £39 billion for a successor to the Affordable Homes Programme over the 10 years from 2026-27 to 2035-36.
It also says: “A major shortage of housing is one of the country’s biggest blockers to growth, limiting people’s ability to access well-paid jobs and constraining the growth of the country’s most productive towns and cities.”
But there is no mention of what measures the government will take to ensure these homes will be accessible to disabled people, and whether a significant proportion will be built to be suitable for wheelchair-users.
Last July, in one of the Labour government’s first major announcements, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government failed to mention the accessible housing crisis in its consultation on reforms to England’s National Policy Planning Framework.
And Labour ministers – including housing secretary and deputy prime minister Angela Rayner – failed to make any commitment to toughening accessibility standards on new-build homes, despite announcing a string of new housing measures, at their annual party conference last September.
Labour promised Disability News Service at the conference that it would set out its policies on accessible housing “shortly”, but nearly nine months later it has failed to do so.
It is now nearly three years since a pledge by the last Conservative government – which was never fulfilled – to take action to address the shortage of accessible homes.
It had promised to consult on new rules that would have forced all new homes to be built to the M4(2)* standard of accessibility, except for cases where this was “impractical and unachievable”.
Mikey Erhardt, campaigns and policy officer for Disability Rights UK (DR UK), said: “The promise of a huge injection of cash is welcome, but without the government committing to improving the accessibility standards of new-build homes, there’s a real danger that disabled people won’t benefit.
“The promise to build new homes is not enough; it fails to tackle the here and now of cold, inaccessible and expensive homes.
“The spending review also made clear that the government will continue to force thousands of disabled people into the most dangerous of choices: heating or eating, paying rent with their social security payments and risking going without to keep a roof over their heads.”
Erhardt said the government had “no serious plans” to bring down the cost of “ever-spiralling rents”.
He said: “How much will local authorities have to fork out to private landlords to pay to house people in temporary accommodation, as a consequence of the government’s failure to build accessible homes?”
And he said DR UK continued to be shocked that, while “talking up its investment in housing”, the government was moving forward with cuts to the financial support that disabled people rely on.
These include government plans to cut the disability element of universal credit by almost £50 a week for new claimants and freeze it for current recipients, and increase thresholds for PIP eligibility, which he said will “undoubtedly drive disabled people into even deeper poverty and put us at risk of homelessness”.
Inclusion London welcomed the increased funding for the Affordable Homes Programme (AHP) but said it remained “deeply concerned that the programme does not go far enough to address the acute shortage of accessible, social rent housing in London and across the country”.
An Inclusion London spokesperson said: “The AHP does not only provide grant funding to support housing providers to build social rent homes but also other so-called ‘affordable’ tenures such as shared ownership housing which is not affordable for the majority of disabled Londoners.
“The government must significantly invest in building the social rent homes that Deaf and disabled people need.
“We are also concerned that the government has agreed to allow social housing rents to raise annually by one per cent above [inflation] for the next 10 years, doubling the amount announced last year.
“Disabled people are reliant on social rent due to the security and affordability this tenure provides.
“Increasing social rent in the same year the government is proposing devastating disability benefit cuts, will disproportionately impact disabled people and push many of us even further into poverty.”
She added: “Currently, one in five disabled people in social housing and one in three in private rented housing are living in inaccessible homes.
“The announcement today fails to address this.
“We once again call on the government to take national action and ensure that all new-build homes have to meet the M4(2) adaptable and accessible homes baseline standard, and that at least 10 per cent of all new-build homes have to meet the wheelchair-user standard M4(3).
“Without doing so, any large-scale house building programme will fail to meet current and future housing requirements and will build inaccessibility into England’s housing stock.”
The Treasury had failed to comment by noon today (Thursday) on why there was no mention of the accessible housing crisis in the spending review statement and document.
*Homes built to the M4(2) standard have 16 accessible or adaptable features, similar to the Lifetime Homes standard developed in the early 1990s to make homes more easily adaptable for lifetime use, while M4(3) homes are those that are supposed to be fully wheelchair-accessible
12 June 2025
Self-driving taxis that are not accessible will be allowed pilot scheme licenses, government suggests
Companies will be allowed to launch self-driving taxis and minibuses in pilot schemes in England as early as next spring even if the vehicles are not accessible to disabled people, the government has suggested.
A disabled peer who raised concerns about the issue in the Lords last year, Baroness [Sal] Brinton, said yesterday (Wednesday) that she was “very, very concerned” and planned to question the government about its position.
She spoke out after the Department for Transport (DfT) announced that it had brought forward the launch of pilot projects of self-driving vehicles to next spring, subject to a consultation on regulations later this summer.
But the press release announcing the move said the “key priorities” of the pilots would be “cutting-edge innovation, regulation and road safety”.
It made no mention of accessibility, including access for wheelchair-users, the need for on-board audio-visual announcements, the accessibility of apps used to book journeys, and physical infrastructure such as kerbs and drop-off points.
DfT said firms would be able to pilot small-scale “taxi- and bus-like” services without being monitored or controlled by a human for the first time, before a potential wider rollout when the Conservative government’s Automated Vehicles Act is implemented in the second half of 2027.
The act, which became law last year, provides a legal and safety framework for the introduction of automated vehicles.
The government believes self-driving vehicles could help reduce deaths and injuries on the roads, add new public transport options in rural areas, and have the potential to improve mobility, accessibility and independence for those who cannot drive, including many disabled and older people.
But there were only two fleeting mentions of accessibility in this week’s DfT announcement.
Last year, two disabled peers – Liberal Democrat Baroness Brinton and Conservative Lord [Chris] Holmes – warned that the act must not be allowed to create new access barriers for disabled people.
When asked this week by Disability News Service (DNS) why the key priorities of the pilot schemes did not include accessibility, and what measures ministers were taking to ensure that the pilots would be accessible to all disabled people, DfT initially declined to produce a statement.
DfT did say that operators had taken a range of different approaches to ensure accessibility in trials with a safety driver, but it did not say what those approaches were.
The government also said that conditions – which can include references to accessibility – can be attached to the permits that will be needed to operate automated passenger services.
And once the permit has been granted, the transport operator will have to publish reports showing the steps taken to meet the needs of older or disabled passengers.
But these reports will only be published after the permit has been granted.
The department claimed it was working with a range of stakeholders and experts, including the Disabled Persons Transport Advisory Committee, and would carry out further engagement with disabled people and representative groups through a consultation this summer.
After DNS asked why there was no obligation for the pilots to be accessible and why reports on accessibility will only be completed after a permit is granted, DfT produced a statement.
A spokesperson said: “Before pilots deploy a passenger carrying service, the secretary of state must consider, in deciding whether to grant a permit, how the service will help lead to improving understanding of how these services should best be designed and operated for older and disabled people.
“Improving transport for disabled and older people is one of our key priorities, and self-driving vehicles will help boost mobility, accessibility and independence for those unable to drive.
“We will learn from these pilots to better understand what good accessibility looks like for these services.”
DfT also said that more details on guidance for the pilots – including accessibility expectations – would be published in due course.
Baroness Brinton said she and Lord Holmes had failed in their efforts to persuade the Conservative government to amend the automated vehicles bill before it became law to ensure that accessibility was built in from the beginning of any schemes.
Baroness Brinton told DNS, before DfT issued its statement: “I am very, very concerned because the whole point of our amendments was to make sure that accessibility was built in from the start.”
She said the government’s admissions suggested this was now not going to happen.
And she said Labour had followed the last government in appearing to say that they “cannot stop the tech companies” because they are so important to growth.
She will now try to put an emergency question to ministers in the Lords about the government’s announcement.
She said: “I am extremely frustrated because our argument was that now, before they do anything, is the best time to describe what these vehicles must have, because if it’s built in from the start, like with black cabs, then everybody just knows that it has to be accessible.”
Transport for All (TfA), the disabled-led campaigning organisation, said it was concerned by the government’s apparent failure to put accessibility right at the heart of these new pilots.
Emma Vogelmann, TfA’s head of policy, public affairs and campaigns, said: “Department for Transport statistics show only 61 per cent of disabled people hold a full driving licence.
“Our own research found that a lack of a driver is a key barrier to many of us travelling by car.
“Autonomous vehicles are an incredible opportunity to create a transport system that includes disabled people from the start and is accessible to everyone.
“The last government excluded disabled people from the development of self-driving vehicles.
“We refuse to be shut out of yet another transport system.
“It’s imperative that the trials being planned include disabled people, to ensure we can all travel easily and confidently now and in the future.”
12 June 2025
Insurance industry silent over whether it lobbied DWP to cut disability benefits
Major insurance companies – including one that spent years lobbying the government to tighten eligibility for out-of-work disability benefits – have refused to say if they pushed the government to introduce controversial cuts to one of those benefits.
Not one of the seven companies approached by Disability News Service (DNS) agreed to answer questions over the last month on whether they welcomed planned reforms to contributory benefits, including to new-style employment and support allowance (NS ESA).
One of the companies, Unum, spent years pushing reforms that would later be closely linked to the deaths of many ESA claimants and to harming the health of countless others.
Disabled researchers and activists showed in the early 2010s how Unum spent years undermining the social security system to try to boost the market for its own income protection insurance policies.
The government’s Pathways to Work green paper proposes replacing new-style jobseeker’s allowance (NS JSA) and NS ESA – benefits that are only open to those with a certain period of national insurance credits – with a new unemployment insurance, paid at the current ESA rate.
But unemployment insurance will be time-limited, which will mean that disabled people who would currently receive contributory ESA indefinitely – if assessed as having limited capability for work and work-related activity – will only be able to receive the new benefit for a limited period.
After that period has ended – the green paper suggests this could be after six months – they will have to claim universal credit, which is itself being reformed to make the disability-related top-up less generous (although details have yet to be confirmed), and where nearly all disabled recipients are set to face conditions and potential sanctions.
The government says these reforms will make the contributory system “simpler and significantly more pro-work” by removing the difference in treatment between jobseekers and those considered unable to work for health or disability reasons, but also removing the “financial incentive to be considered unable to work”.
It will also mean that “almost all disabled people and people with long-term health conditions” who receive the new unemployment insurance would have to take part in “tailored employment support”, although it claims there will be “appropriate exemptions”.
But the introduction of these reforms, and the greater pressure on newly-disabled people to engage with the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), are likely to increase demand for disability insurance (otherwise known as income protection) policies sold by some of the country’s biggest insurance companies.
These policies provide a regular income if someone is unable to work due to disability, illness or injury.
It is likely that at least some insurance companies will have pushed Labour and previous governments to introduce these reforms, something DWP failed to deny this week.
But when DNS approached seven prominent insurance companies selling these policies in the UK, none of them would discuss the government’s reforms or say whether they had lobbied DWP ministers or civil servants to introduce such policies.
Unum said that it “won’t be able to provide commentary for your article” as its communications team was “pretty swamped at the moment”.
Aviva said it was “not something that we would comment on”.
Royal London said it had “not been able to find someone to cover these questions for you”.
A Zurich spokesperson said: “As far as I’m aware we haven’t engaged with any lobbying.”
When asked to check this with senior people in the organisation, and to comment on the reforms, she did not respond further.
Legal & General did not respond to repeated requests to comment.
Vitality said that it would “not be able to share any comments this time”.
And LV= Life and Pensions did not respond to repeated requests to comment.
This week, DWP refused to say if it was lobbied by the insurance industry to introduce the changes, or if it believed the industry would benefit from its cuts and reforms to contributory benefits.
But the department did insist that it had not been influenced by insurance companies.
It is also unclear what will happen to existing claimants of NS ESA and NS JSA.
Asked in a written question by SDLP MP Claire Hanna how many current recipients of contributory ESA ministers expected to transfer to the new unemployment insurance, Sir Stephen Timms, the minister for social security and disability, said this week: “No decisions have yet been made about transitioning existing claimants of NS ESA and NS JSA to the proposed Unemployment Insurance and therefore an estimate cannot be provided at this stage.”
Edward, a wheelchair-user who took part in Fight4Life’s anti-cuts “die-in” protest outside Tate Modern in London this week (see separate story), and who relies on NS ESA, said the idea that it was going to be replaced was “really scary” and would be “toxic and painful” for a lot of disabled people.
He said it made “perfect sense” that the insurance industry would have been pushing for such changes to contributory ESA.
Disabled researcher Mo Stewart, who did most to raise concerns about Unum’s influence on welfare reform in the early 2010s, said the green paper would “cause a great deal of preventable harm for the chronically ill and disabled community who are unable to work”.
Stewart, who has continued her work through her Preventable Harm Project, following the publication of her book Cash Not Care in 2016, said she believed the consequences of the green paper would be “an increase in the purchase of private income replacement health insurance policies now that the past psychological security of the welfare state has been demolished by successive UK governments”.
She said: “Given that Unum insurance was instrumental in guiding previous social policy reforms… it can’t be much of a surprise to learn that Unum and other corporate health insurance giants refuse to comment on the DWP green paper which guarantees an increase in their profit margins.
“I suspect they will never admit to lobbying for government reforms to line their pockets, but it’s hard to imagine that they would resist the opportunity to influence more social policy reforms which are guaranteed to continue the government-induced public health crisis negatively impacting on those in greatest need.”
Stewart is now working on a new book, Social Policy Abused: The Creation of Preventable Harm, a collection of articles, research papers and reports she says will demonstrate “the government-induced public health crisis generated to move the UK to welfare funded by insurance”.
Ellen Clifford, a member of the national steering group of Disabled People Against Cuts, and award-winning author of The War on Disabled People, said: “Important research by John Pring, Mo Stewart and others has meant we have clear evidence of the role the insurance industry has played in the welfare reform agenda.
“It seems unthinkable that they would have stopped now given the effort put in over the decades and now that the UK government is taking such dramatic steps to destroy the social security system for out-of-work disability benefits, which can only be to their advantage.
“The lack of transparency is an indictment on our so-called democracy and refusal to comment can only fuel fears that big business is pulling the strings and doing their best to ensure politicians put profit before people.”
Unum’s links with the UK government date back to the 1990s, when Peter Lilley, social security secretary in John Major’s Conservative government, hired senior Unum executive John LoCascio to offer advice on how to cut the number of claimants of long-term sickness benefits*.
A submission to the Commons work and pensions committee in 2002 by a director of Unum – then known as UnumProvident – called on the Labour government to “ensure both that work always pays more than benefits, and more importantly that it is clearly seen to do so”.
In 2011, Unum launched a major UK marketing campaign to promote the need for income protection insurance policies, just as the Conservative-led coalition began its three-year programme to reassess about 1.5 million existing claimants of old-style incapacity benefit through the new work capability assessment (WCA).
Research by public health experts from the Universities of Liverpool and Oxford later linked that reassessment programme with about 600 suicides in just three years.
Unum has previously dismissed claims that it pushed the government to introduce the WCA system.
*The Department: How a Violent Government Bureaucracy Killed Hundreds and Hid the Evidence, DNS editor John Pring’s book on the years of deaths linked to DWP, is published by Pluto Press
12 June 2025
We will keep fighting, disabled activists warn DWP as they protest against benefit cuts outside Tate Modern
Disabled people have warned the Labour government that they will “not go quietly” and plan to keep fighting its plans to cut spending on their benefits by billions of pounds a year, as they staged a dramatic “die-in” outside a London landmark.
The protest outside the Tate Modern art gallery on the south bank of the Thames – led by disabled actors and artists – was held to remember all those who have died because of cuts and all those who might die if the government’s cuts go ahead.
There was also a parallel protest online, with disabled people contributing pictures of their own die-ins with homemade placards.
Disabled writer and actor Polly Wiseman, one of the organisers of the Fight4Life protest, told activists gathered outside Tate Modern on Tuesday that they had all gathered there in “fear and sorrow and solidarity, but mostly in anger”.
She said the lives of disabled people were at risk from the “most heinous disability cuts any of us have ever seen”.
The Fight4Life campaign was set up by disabled people who will be directly affected by the cuts to universal credit and PIP and are determined to fight back.
Tamm Reynolds, who performs as Midgitte Bardot, told protesters that she believed disabled people had so far been “a bit too polite and a bit too understanding” and needed to “start being unreasonable” and “start kicking back”.
Another disabled activist, Priscilla Eyles, said the government had failed to “reckon with how we will fight back” and that Labour had proved to be even worse than the last Conservative government.
She said the cuts were “an intersectional issue”, and that the government’s cuts to Access to Work “shows you all you need to know about how much they care about whether we actually work or not”.
Ian Jones, co-founder of the WOWpetition, spoke of the demands he and others had made of the coalition government in the 2010s to carry out a cumulative assessment of the impact of the austerity cuts on disabled people.
He said Labour had supported those campaigns, and he said it was also important to remember that disability benefit deaths had started under a Labour government, and he pointed to the suicide of Stephen Carré in January 2010.
He said: “The first coroner’s report landed on Yvette Cooper’s* desk.
“Labour started the cull of us, let’s stop them finishing it.”
Another disabled activist, Michael, said he would no longer be entitled to personal independence payment (PIP) if the government cuts become law.
He said the “meagre amount of £290 a month makes my life go from a miserable no-reason-to-exist to being able to do little things that give glimmers of hope”.
Daniel Hooks told the protest that cuts to disability support “cost lives” and that many disabled people have been “marginalised and separated from society, but we won’t go quietly”.
Paul Atherton, who said he had been fighting DWP’s systems for more than 20 years, including a successful two-year judicial review battle to force the department to communicate with him by email, said it had been hugely expensive for the government to fight his case.
He said: “If the government is serious about cutting costs, look after us, don’t fight us.”
Edward, a wheelchair-user, said the cuts were “absolutely disgusting”.
He said: “The government is coming after disabled people in a big way.”
And he said disabled people were struggling to survive even before the cuts, and there was an “enormous gap” between what is provided through PIP and the much higher disability-related costs disabled people face.
He said: “If you take away vital money from people… it will only force more people into poverty.”
Edward said he used his PIP for medication that costs hundreds of pounds a month, which he would not be able to afford if he lost his PIP, and this would leave him unable to consider working.
Arti Dillon, a member of the Unite union and Disabled People Against Cuts, said disabled people had lost so much over the last 15 years and “we have to keep standing up, and it’s so tough”.
She said the knock-on effects of the cuts would worsen the crises in social care and homelessness.
She said: “This is the worst and barbaric side of capitalism.
“They are dividing us racially, disability, trans brothers and sisters and comrades, as much as they can.
“The concentration of wealth is continuing, and they are doing it on the backs of us.”
*Cooper was Labour’s work and pensions secretary from June 2009 until the general election in May 2010
**The Department: How a Violent Government Bureaucracy Killed Hundreds and Hid the Evidence, DNS editor John Pring’s book on the years of deaths linked to DWP, is published by Pluto Press
12 June 2025
Labour government faces questions over why it stuffed access to elected office committee with Tories
The Labour government has refused to explain why more than a third of the members of a new steering group that will target the barriers to elected office faced by disabled people have close links to the Conservative party.
Nearly a year after Labour won a landslide general election, the steering group is one of the first non-employment-related steps the new government has taken to try to improve disabled people’s lives.
The government also announced it will set up a new fund to help with the disability-related costs faced by disabled people who want to achieve elected office, particularly as MPs and councillors.
The cross-party steering group will advise the government on how to boost opportunities for disabled people in seeking to enter elected office and ensure the new fund “is effective in increasing disability representation in future elections”.
But the announcement failed to explain that four of the 13 members of the steering group have played key roles within the Conservative party, while another has a senior role within a thinktank closely linked to the party.
Just two members of the steering group appear to have links to the Labour party and two to the Liberal Democrats, while others have links with smaller parties or no apparent party political links.
One member, Chloe Schendel-Wilson, is a former head of outreach for the Conservative party and co-founder of the party’s Ability2Win campaign, which was designed to help more disabled Conservatives into elected office.
Another, Barry Ginley, is a former Conservative councillor and deputy chair and former chair of the Conservative Disability Group.
Celia Chartres-Aris is former executive of the Conservative Disability Group and former manager of Richmond Park and North Kingston Conservatives.
And the fourth member linked to the party, Dr Mustafa Mohammed, is co-chair of Ability2Win and chair and founder of Genix Healthcare; he donated more than £400,000 to the Conservative party between 2013 and 2019, either personally or through companies he controls.
Schendel-Wilson, Chartres-Aris and Mohammed are all current or former directors of the Disability Policy Centre (DPC) – and were its three founding directors – although the centre has never disclosed its funding sources.
After the thinktank launched, it had to remove the publications page from its website after a disabled campaigner pointed out that the only links on the page were to articles published on the Conservative Home website.
Schendel-Wilson claimed again this week that DPC was a “cross-party, independent think tank, and [is] not affiliated with any political party”.
A fifth member of the government’s new steering group, Dr Mark Carew, is an assistant professor at the International Centre for Evidence in Disability at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, but he is also a non-executive director at the Disability Policy Centre, although Schendel-Wilson stressed that he has no affiliation with the Conservative party.
Asked why a Labour government had appointed so many disabled people with links to the Conservative party to the steering group, a spokesperson for the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) refused to comment and suggested that Disability News Service contact the Labour party.
DWP also refused to say how much money the government expects the fund to receive every year, and when it expects the fund to go live.
And it refused to say if the Disability Policy Centre had disclosed the source of its funding to the government.
Kathy Bole, chair of Disability Labour and another member of the steering group, said she was “dismayed” to hear that there were so many members with Conservative links, which she said “does feel a bit strange”.
She said many disabled people with current or former links to Labour “would not run for office as they don’t trust in the direction which the party is going in” because the party “has strayed from its long-held set of values”.
She said: “If this steering group is incompatible with my ideals on how things have to change, I will step down.
“I am hoping this project has the ability to create positive change, but I will wait to be convinced.”
David Buxton, a Liberal Democrat member of the steering group, said he was “surprised” by the number of Conservatives on the steering group.
He said: “It would be good to see a natural and sensible approach from the Labour government minister, one that ensures fair and equal representation of disabled people from each main political party.”
But he said he was “very pleased” that the government had resurrected the Access to Elected Office Fund.
He assisted a Liberal Democrat minister during the coalition government in setting up the first Access to Elected Office Fund in 2012, following Liberal Democrat pressure on its Conservative coalition partner.
The fund was scrapped by the Conservatives after the 2015 general election, and was replaced in 2018 with the temporary EnAble fund in response to legal action taken by Buxton and two other disabled politicians who had warned that the failure to reopen it breached the Equality Act.
EnAble eventually covered the 2019 English local elections, the May 2020 local and police and crime commissioner elections, which were postponed to 2021 because of the pandemic, and retrospective funding for applicants who stood in the 2019 elections to the European Parliament.
The last government had been promising to set up a replacement for three years until it lost power at the general election last July.
Buxton said there was now a “genuine opportunity to sit down and have a proper, constructive discussion on establishing the fund as a permanent resource, no longer a pilot or temporary measure”.
When he stood for parliament in East Hampshire in December 2019, he spent more than £5,000 on British Sign Language interpreters, mostly out of his own pocket, with some help from family and friends.
He said: “This is not the kind of financial burden candidates should bear.
“Candidates should be able to spend their funds on campaign resources to reach voters, not on accessibility costs.
“This must stop once and for all.
“I hope the steering group will work together to establish new funding criteria and availability, enabling Deaf and disabled candidates to confidently stand for public office without financial barriers related to their impairments.
“They should be able to compete on equal footing with non-disabled candidates.”
12 June 2025
Disabled students set to protest over cuts in support
Scores of disabled students are to demonstrate next week in protest at their university’s “discriminatory” decision to secretly introduce cuts to their support.
They say the University of Derby has removed the entitlement to support from many of the disabled students who started their studies in autumn 2024, but it has yet to issue a formal policy explaining its new rules.
The university appears to have told many disabled students starting undergraduate or masters degrees this year that they will no longer be entitled to reasonable adjustments such as extra time in exams or extensions to deadlines.
And campaigners say the university has also told students they will not receive support packages if they only have a single specific learning difficulty such as dyslexia, dyspraxia and dyscalculia.
Despite the concerns, there is still no clarity on the university’s policy on support for disabled students, and how it has changed.
The university – which is believed to be £120 million in debt – is using its commitment to Universal Design for Learning principles to justify its cuts to individual support, arguing that because it is committed to an inclusive learning environment there is less need for many individual packages of support.
This is allowing it to cut the number of individual support packages and save money, at a time when it is facing significant financial challenges.
There are also concerns about the university’s decision to introduce charges for its “Unibus” university bus service – which was previously free – which could have a major impact on disabled students, particularly those with mobility impairments.
The bus service connects the university’s halls of residence and teaching sites across Derby.
Disabled students at the university concerned about the changes have started the Independent Disabled Students Network (IDSN).
More than 60 disabled students – including some who have been forced to leave their course because of the lack of support – have raised concerns about the cuts with the network.
They say the university’s new policies are a clear breach of its duties to provide reasonable adjustments under the Equality Act and are damaging disabled students’ wellbeing, health and academic progress.
And they say the university’s response to the concerns has been marked by “delay, dismissal, or silence”.
A petition calling on the university to “reconsider and reverse this new discriminatory policy” has already secured more than 1,400 signatures, mostly from University of Derby students.
IDSN is set to lead a protest outside the main campus next Friday (20 June) during one of the university’s open days.
James Eames, disability officer for the University of Derby Students’ Union and founder of IDSN, told Disability News Service he started receiving emails from disabled students after he was appointed to the post.
Some of them had had their support cut after they had already started their course at Derby, he said.
Eames, a mental health nursing student who is autistic and has ADHD, said the extensions he had been allowed on assignments were the reason he had not had to repeat a year on his course while he was having to cope with repeated shortages of ADHD medication.
He said: “Almost all of the students this is affecting are coming straight out of school.
“What the university is teaching them is that they shouldn’t stand up for themselves, they don’t deserve equal opportunity and equal access, and they won’t be listened to if they raise concerns, and those lessons are going to stay with them.
“Some of the lessons can’t be unlearned when it’s drilled into people that, at any point, whether it’s your education provider, workplace, or Capita, they can just decide you no longer have access to the support, you no longer have access to the service, and no matter what you do that won’t change.”
One disabled student, Ben White, was told before he started his degree that he would be given a week extra to write his essays, due to being autistic and having long-term mental distress.
When he started the course, he was told the support plan might look different, but it took him six months to discover that the extension had been removed before the start of the year.
He said: “So far, the new policy has meant disabled students at the University of Derby face further pressure, not less.
“We’re expected to spend our time arranging and attending extra meetings with staff who don’t know how to support us and have no options of how to even if they did.
“It’s shameful that a university is happy to put disabled students further behind in life.”
Another disabled student, Logan, who has just finished the first year of his degree, said he had been assured before starting the course by the student support team that the university would fully accommodate his needs as a student with multiple chronic conditions that cause pain, limit his mobility and cause fatigue, and who has experience of mental distress.
But the support he has experienced has been poor quality, and at the start of the academic year he learned the university would only consider allowing him extra time and extended deadlines if he started to struggle with his work.
He said the changes have had “a massive physical and mental effect”, including worsening fatigue, migraines and joint issues, which have led to worsening attendance.
And by April, the lack of support meant he was no longer able to live independently and had to leave student accommodation to live with his partner.
He said the bus changes would “reduce attendance by disabled students and may even contribute to widening the attainment gap between disabled and non-disabled students”, while he was dreading the personal impact as he cannot walk to university and cannot afford to pay for the bus.
In response to the concerns raised by its disabled students, the university said it provided “adjustments in line with our duties under the Equality Act as our learning and teaching is inclusive by design, and the requirements of the Equality Act are built into everything we do”.
It said it “sent information to new and current students between July and September 2024, and we held a Q&A Forum on the changes in February 2025, alongside the union of students, for students to voice concerns and ask questions”.
It insisted that it had not removed any support for its “students with disabilities” and that its students were “at the heart of everything we do”.
But it later said that the “removal of blanket extensions is only applicable to new students”.
And it said that “agreed extended deadlines may be applied for any student if the diagnosis, assistive technology, and disabled students’ allowance will not bridge the gap”.
Although it did not confirm that it was £120 million in debt, it said today that it had “not cut any services, in fact we have invested heavily in our disability services”, and that its debt was “a reflection of the strategic investment in our estate” and was “balanced by cash and investments totalling over £150 million”.
A spokesperson had said earlier: “Historically we applied a blanket approach whereas now we are improving our support and providing a bespoke service which aims to ensure each student has what they need to thrive.
“This ensures our students receive enhanced support, tailored in line with their individual needs.
“The option of providing extensions to deadlines or extra time in exams, remains for those students with a disability for whom this is an appropriate support mechanism.
“All of the changes introduced were co-designed with students and informed by best practice from across the sector.
“It is early days, but current data indicates that the change has been successful in delivering improved outcomes for students with a disability.”
She said the decision to re-introduce charges for the Unibus service was “developed following consultation with our students and… will help towards our environmental sustainability goals”, while the bus costs £2 a journey.
She said: “This change brings us in line with other universities and incentivises walking the short distances between campuses for those who are able.
“Disabled students may be entitled to support with travel via certain government benefits and can contact our disability advisers who can provide advice and guidance on how to access this.
“We are working with the Union of Students to ensure that all those in need of support understand what is available and how to access it.”
12 June 2025
Other disability-related stories covered by mainstream media this week
Tens of thousands more people will be pushed into poverty by the government’s social security cuts than previously feared, a major foodbank charity has warned. Trussell has claimed that 340,000 people in disabled households will be forced into severe hardship by the end of the decade: https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/disability-cut-impact-could-even-35357184
Parents are demanding answers over how a paedophile was able to abuse potentially dozens of disabled children while working as a teaching assistant. Daniel Clarke may have targeted “well over 81” vulnerable young people over a decade, according to detectives overseeing a major West Midlands Police investigation: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c989qrd648go
MSPs have unanimously passed legislation which will allow people in care homes to receive visits from a named loved one, even in restricted measures. The care reform (Scotland) bill will also introduce changes to social care procurement and a new right to breaks for unpaid carers. Plans to introduce a national care service, which were initially part of the bill, were dropped in January after unions withdrew support and a number of health boards and care organisations expressed concerns: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cje78kqnj1jo
Disability benefit cuts planned by the UK government will disproportionately impact people in Wales, campaigners have said. Research has estimated that 190,000 people – six per cent of the population – could have their incomes slashed by up to 60 per cent by the end of this parliament if eligibility for personal independence payment is tightened as proposed: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/jun/08/disability-benefit-cuts-will-affect-wales-disproportionately-campaigners-say
Thousands of people have marched through central London calling for an end to public service and social security cuts. People’s Assembly, which organised the demonstration, called on the government to “tax the rich and their hidden wealth to fund public services”. It brought together trade unionists, health, disability, housing and social security campaigners with community organisations under the slogan: No More Austerity 2.0: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/jun/07/anti-austerity-march-london-labour-starmer-cuts
12 June 2025
News provided by John Pring at www.disabilitynewsservice.com
