DWP ignored coroner’s call to take action to save claimants from suicide
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) rejected a coroner’s call to act to prevent benefit claimants taking their own lives, following the suicide of a young woman who had told her work coach that she intended to kill herself.
Documents released this week under the Freedom of Information Act show that DWP dismissed both the coroner’s plea to take action, and the findings of an inquest jury which had concluded that a jobcentre’s failings had contributed to the death of 31-year-old Faiza Ahmed, from Limehouse, east London.
But the documents have also led to fresh allegations of institutional racism and have again exposed the cruelty and harshness of DWP’s benefit sanctions regime.
They were released as the Green party’s co-leader, Jonathan Bartley, wrote to the chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, asking it to reconsider its decision not to hold its own inquiry this year into the deaths of claimants that have been linked to DWP.
This week, Faiza’s brother, Mohammed, told Disability News Service (DNS) that DWP had shown no remorse after his sister’s death.
He has backed growing calls for a judge-led inquiry into links between DWP and the deaths of claimants.
The eight-day inquest led to a narrative verdict by the jury, which concluded that failures by DWP, London Ambulance Service and the Metropolitan police all contributed to his sister’s death on 7 November 2014.
The coroner, Mary Hassell, produced a prevention of future deaths (PFD) report – a step taken by coroners when they think individuals or organisations can take action to prevent further deaths – and sent it to the police, ambulance service and DWP.
Their responses have only been released for the first time this week following a series of freedom of information requests by DNS.
The Judicial Office said this week that the PFD report into Ahmed’s death was not previously published on the website of the chief coroner due to an “administrative oversight”.
The report was written in January 2016, just a few months after DNS had revealed the existence of another PFD, also written by Mary Hassell, following the suicide of Michael O’Sullivan, from north London.
That PFD, which concluded that O’Sullivan’s death was triggered by the decision to wrongly find him fit for work, had led to the prime minister twice being questioned over DWP’s failings in the House of Commons.
Years of further revelations have followed, linking DWP with further deaths of claimants and exposing its repeated efforts to cover up those links, amid growing calls for an independent inquiry, and even calls for criminal prosecutions of ministers and senior civil servants for misconduct in public office.
Now, with the documents released this week, that pressure on DWP should increase again.
The documents show that, when responding to the PFD report written by Mary Hassell at the end of Faiza Ahmed’s inquest, DWP dismissed both the jury’s findings and the coroner’s call for action.
The inquest in January 2016 had lasted eight days.
It heard that Faiza had a history of mental distress and became suicidal during two days in November 2014, after reporting an attempted rape in her home.
The inquest heard of failings by the police officers who visited her after she reported the attempted rape early on 6 November, and further failings of the force and the ambulance service after she called for an ambulance the next afternoon and said she wanted to kill herself.
She took her own life shortly after the emergency services left her flat that afternoon.
But earlier that day – as described by the Guardian’s Simon Hattenstone, who covered the inquest in January 2016 – she had visited Poplar jobcentre to explain why she was three days late to sign on for jobseeker’s allowance.
A statement from her brother, read out at the inquest, described how Faiza had previously been sanctioned by the jobcentre for turning up late and missing appointments, and lived with the constant fear of being sanctioned, and the understanding that DWP did not believe her when she said she had depression.
Mohammed told DNS this week that Faiza had been sanctioned at least once and was “regularly threatened” with further sanctions.
He said this had a “horrible” impact on her. “Whenever we saw her, she was absolutely broken from it,” he said. “She was scared, worried and upset.
“She was a strong, independent person but she knew that if she was sanctioned, she would have nothing.
“As much as we were there to help her, both financially and emotionally, she wanted to do things for herself, so she was too proud to ask for anything.”
He said DWP’s sanctions regime was “horrific” and was based on “threats and intimidation”.
When Faiza arrived at the jobcentre on 7 November, she was given a form by the work coach to explain her failure to sign on for jobseeker’s allowance (JSA) on time.
She wrote on the form that, between 4 and 7 November, she had been “busy trying to kill myself, drinking non-stop”. She left the moment she handed over the form.
After she had gone, the work coach discussed what she had written with a manager, but they decided not to contact the emergency services.
DWP’s “six-point plan” says its staff should summon emergency help if a claimant declares an attempt to kill themselves and is “distressed, at serious risk or in immediate danger”.
But that action was not taken. Instead, the inquest heard, someone at the jobcentre made an urgent referral to the community mental health team, but not until five days later. By that time, Faiza had been dead for nearly five days.
In its response to the PFD, DWP said: “In this case, based on the information he had, the Work Coach made a judgement that there was no immediate risk to her safety.”
DWP said this information was the form she had completed and her attendance at the jobcentre so she could continue receiving her JSA.
DWP claimed that its processes “were followed both diligently and correctly”, and that its staff “took the necessary steps to invoke the agreed processes that would manage the risk appropriately”, which was “based on the evidence that staff were presented with”.
It added: “It is not our view that any opportunity to engage with any other organisations was missed.”
It said its approach was “under continual review and development”, and the only action it would take would be to issue a reminder to all DWP staff about its existing guidance on suicidal ideation, the same guidance which had failed to save Faiza Ahmed from taking her own life.
It is not known whether, or in what form, this reminder was issued.
Faiza’s brother, Mohammed, an officer with London Fire Brigade, told DNS this week that he had been very close to his sister, and remembering how she was treated still makes him angry, nearly six years after she died.
He said: “There isn’t a day goes by when I don’t think of my sister.”
It was only through the family’s efforts, and the support of campaigners and lawyers, that they secured a longer inquest to examine in front of a jury whether any public body had contributed to Faiza’s death.
Otherwise, there would have been a shorter inquest and the failings of DWP would probably never have been exposed.
Mohammed said he remembered DWP’s attitude as “blasé” and that its refusal to accept the criticism and the call for action from the coroner’s PFD and the jury “was no surprise” as the department had been “very defensive, very guarded, not looking to help” and had shown “no remorse”.
He is certain that racism lay at the heart of the way his sister was treated by DWP, even if it was “indirect” and not immediately obvious.
This was because the harshness of austerity and DWP’s welfare reforms had a disproportionate impact on people of colour, he said.
He said: “You can’t separate it. It definitely, definitely had an impact; 100 per cent it was there.”
He believes the jobcentre would have called the emergency services if his sister had been a white woman.
He added: “The class thing doubles it up. Would it have happened to a young white woman in Hampstead Heath? No, not in my opinion.”
To this day, he cannot understand how the jobcentre could have failed to act after seeing the state his sister was in and what she had written on the form. Instead, he said, they just “waved it off”.
Now he believes DWP has “got away with it”.
He has backed growing calls for an independent inquiry into links between DWP and the deaths of benefit claimants.
He said: “A judge-led inquiry on its own would be some justice. It would at least have some weight and would get justice for those families.”
Even better, he says, would be for former work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith, who was in charge of DWP when his sister died, to be brought to justice.
DNS has previously laid out a case for Duncan Smith and other senior DWP figures to face criminal charges of misconduct in public office.
Mohammed said: “For a lot of people who have lost their loved ones and certainly for me, Iain Duncan Smith being brought to bear in some way would be one of the most wonderful days ever in history.
“But an inquiry which highlighted what they did was wrong and should never have happened would go a long way for me towards some kind of closure for me for my sister, 100 per cent.”
Following his sister’s death and through the inquest, their family were supported by the grassroots women’s group Women Against Rape.
Lisa Longstaff, from Women Against Rape, said: “Faiza’s tragic suicide exposed the racism and uncaring cruelty of the DWP’s sanction regime.
“We’ve worked with many women up against similar brutality when trying to get basic benefits or compensation to recover after rape.
“Often it’s been women in the movement who’ve challenged these appalling injustices and campaigned for everyone’s rights, but that work goes mostly unacknowledged.”
A spokesperson for the Judicial Office said the PFD report had not been published until this week because of an “administrative oversight” by the chief coroner’s office.
A DWP spokesperson said its position was laid out in the response to the coroner’s PFD, and declined to comment further.
The department refused to say how it justified its failure to take any action in response to the PFD report, other than reminding staff of existing guidance.
It also refused to say when its response was sent to the coroner, and whether it had asked the chief coroner not to publish the PFD.
It refused to say whether its actions demonstrated a continuing culture that was putting the safety and lives of benefit claimants at risk, and which the department was refusing to address.
And it refused to say why it had made a referral to Faiza Ahmed’s community mental health team five days after she had killed herself.
16 July 2020
Coronavirus: ‘Scandalous’ silence of government’s Disability Unit as thousands die
The government has been accused of a “totally reprehensible failure” after its new Disability Unit failed to make a single announcement in more than three months, while more than 20,000 disabled people were dying from COVID-19.
The unit was set up last year to “break down the barriers faced by disabled people” but its failure to make any policy announcements since the early days of the coronavirus pandemic has come as evidence grows of the disproportionate impact of the COVID-19 crisis on disabled people.
Last week, Disability News Service reported on two new studies that showed how disabled people had been affected by the crisis – by Greater Manchester Disabled People’s Panel and academics from Oxford University – with cuts to support, and problems accessing food, medicine and information, and significant ongoing impact on their mental health.
There were calls for an inquiry last month from leading disabled figures when Office for National Statistics (ONS) figures revealed that younger disabled women were as much as 11 times more likely to die from coronavirus than non-disabled women in the same age group.
The ONS figures showed that 22,500 disabled people of all ages had died due to COVID-19 between 2 March and 15 May, compared with about 15,500 non-disabled people.
Despite this mounting evidence of the disproportionate impact of the pandemic on disabled people, the Disability Unit’s web page has remained silent since 2 April, with the minister for disabled people, Justin Tomlinson, failing to use the page to speak out, report on progress or announce any policy developments to deal with the crisis.
The Disability Unit is supposed to support Tomlinson, and one of its responsibilities is to help government departments “develop and monitor policies that remove barriers faced by disabled people”.
But since four announcements between 31 March and 2 April – the first it had issued since its formation in November 2019 – there has been no further communication through its web page.
The Disability Unit brings together the former Office for Disability Issues and other experts from across government, and has offices in London, Sheffield and Leeds.
There has been anger and concern at the Disability Unit’s failure from disabled activists and disabled people’s organisations.
Bob Ellard, a member of the national steering group of Disabled People Against Cuts, said: “This is a totally reprehensible failure while so many disabled people are dying and going through severe hardship. This government shows it just doesn’t care about us.”
Ian Jones, from WOWcampaign, said: “Two weeks ago we were left in no doubt that disabled people do not matter to the Equality and Human Rights Commission.
“This week we are being left in no doubt that disabled people do not matter to this Tory government.”
Tracey Lazard, chief executive of Inclusion London, said: “From the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, disabled people have experienced discrimination, disadvantage and disproportionately high death rates, as starkly detailed in our recently published report Abandoned, Forgotten and Isolated.
“Central government, despite these dreadful inequalities, has mostly failed to involve, engage with and listen to disabled people and Deaf and disabled people’s organisations in planning the response to the pandemic.
“The Disability Unit’s website is an example of the government’s failure.
“Despite a commitment ‘to break down the barriers faced by disabled people in the UK’, there is little or no practical guidance and support on the website for Deaf and disabled people who face multiple problems, including accessing food and medicine, social isolation, inaccessible information and advice, increasing levels of psychological distress and shortages of personal protective equipment.
“Likewise, we see no evidence that the government is working with disabled people’s organisations on COVID issues or to develop the National Disability Strategy due to be completed in 2020.
“We know the Disability Unit has met with the big disability charities, but despite writing twice to the minister for disabled people requesting a meeting, representatives from Reclaiming Our Futures Alliance (ROFA) have yet to meet with any government officials or ministers.
“This disregard and lack of engagement with disabled people and our organisations is unfortunately nothing new but for this hostile behaviour from the government to continue at the same time as the pandemic has so disproportionately harmed disabled people is nothing short of a scandal.
“Like BAME [black, Asian and minority ethnic] communities, disabled people have died as a direct result of structural inequality.
“This has to stop, and the only way to do that is for the government to start working with, and investing in, our communities.”
Mark Harrison, a member of the ROFA steering group, said: “Disabled people have been disproportionately affected by COVID-19 and there have been a disproportionate number of deaths of disabled people.
“The silence is telling. It feels like the Disability Unit is not a functioning policy unit, other than to create top-down policy based on the government’s view of disability, rather than meeting its commitments under international treaties.”
Laura Welti, manager of Bristol Disability Equality Forum, said: “It’s no wonder so many disabled people are saying the government considers their lives utterly expendable when even the one part of the government that is meant to ‘look out’ for them has remained silent since the second week of lockdown.
“At a time when it was needed most, it remained silent.
“It didn’t speak out about government guidance to the NHS that they should discharge patients to care homes (guidance which caused thousands of deaths), it didn’t raise concerns as to why the death toll reached more than 50 per cent disabled people, or when the government decided shielding was magically no longer necessary.
“Nor was it busy doing anything else, like producing disabled people-specific information and/or central government information for the public, in accessible formats.
“It would be a lot more honest to replace their Disability Confident ‘badge’ with one saying Disability Indifferent: it describes them most accurately.”
The grassroots disabled people’s organisation Bristol Reclaiming Independent Living (BRIL) said it was “deeply disappointed, but not surprised” by the unit’s silence during the pandemic.
A BRIL spokesperson said: “The only message about ‘supporting disabled people‘ from the unit was in fact to announce [on 31 March] government plans to remove legal duties to support disabled people, under so called ‘emergency legislation’.
“Over three months ago the government talked about ‘National Strategy for Disabled People to remove barriers and increase participation’, yet there has been nothing from the unit or the ‘Regional Stakeholder Network’.
“The minister for disabled people, Justin Tomlinson, did not appear at the daily briefings, or engage with disabled people’s organisations.”
BRIL was another organisation to point to the ONS statistics which showed that more than half of those dying from COVID-19 have been disabled people.
The BRIL spokesperson said: “Inequality and poverty have increased, while the government continues to ignore their duties under the Equality Act and the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD).
“Without exception, disabled people and people with chronic illness in our network feel forgotten about.
“Trust in the government is at an all time low.”
Both the Department for Work and Pensions and the Cabinet Office had failed to comment by noon today (Thursday).
*For sources of information and support during the coronavirus crisis, visit the DNS advice and information page
16 July 2020
Twitter allows ‘absolutely vile’ hate posts to stay on site for more than a fortnight
The social media platform Twitter has refused to explain why it left horrific examples of disability hate on its website for more than two weeks.
Messages calling for disabled children to be murdered, “putting the weak to sleep” and stating that disabled people should be put to death, were allowed to remain on Twitter for more than a fortnight after they were reported by Disability News Service (DNS).
Other messages made it clear that the owner of the Twitter account believed that disabled people have no value, should not be allowed to live, and “need to be put to sleep forever” and put “out of their misery”.
One tweet encouraged a disabled person who had posted on Twitter to take his own life, while another tweet encouraged followers to take part in a survey that asked whether they preferred “deformed boy” or “healthy boy”.
They were reported through the Twitter platform by DNS on 30 June after the owner of the account had posted a message in response to a DNS news story.
But although two or three of the most offensive messages appear to have been removed within a few days, most of them were still on the platform more than two weeks later.
They were eventually removed on Tuesday (14 July), and the account was “permanently suspended”, but only after Twitter was asked by DNS why the messages had not yet been taken down.
DNS has chosen not to include the address of the Twitter account, or to quote the exact content of the tweets, some of which are too distressing to be published.
In the profile of the man who posted the messages, who had only a handful of followers, he states that “life would be meaningless if I was disabled”.
Anne Novis, chair of Inclusion London and one of the country’s leading experts on disability hate crime, said Twitter’s failure to take the posts down within hours was “just disgusting” and that it should be fined “at the very least” for such failings.
She said: “It should be immediately removed as soon as somebody reports it.
“Hate crime is about how something is perceived, and our community would see this as absolutely vile and disgusting and as hostility.”
She said people who witness such posts online should “report, report, report”.
She added: “It’s only because there are not enough people reporting it that there is not a groundswell against Twitter.”
A Twitter spokesperson refused to explain why it took more than two weeks for the messages to be removed and the account to be suspended, and why it only acted after being asked to comment on its failure to do so by DNS.
Instead, it produced a statement which claimed that Twitter does “not tolerate the abuse or harassment of people on the basis of disability, race and other protected categories” and that keeping people safe on Twitter was its “top priority”.
DNS has reported the posts to the police, through the True Vision website, on Novis’s advice.
16 July 2020
Errol Graham: Family win right to court challenge of DWP safeguarding
The family of a man who starved to death after his out-of-work disability benefits were wrongly removed have won the right to have the safeguarding policies of the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) examined by the high court.
The family of Errol Graham, who died in June 2018, have secured a judicial review of DWP’s failure – dating back more than a decade – to ensure the safety of disabled people claiming employment and support allowance (ESA).
The announcement came days after the Green party’s co-leader, Jonathan Bartley, wrote to the chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, asking it to reconsider its decision not to hold an inquiry this year into the deaths of benefit claimants that have been linked to DWP.
Graham’s family, led by Alison Turner, the disabled partner of his son Lee, believe DWP’s safeguarding policy is unlawful and puts the lives of other ESA claimants at serious risk, and has caused the deaths of countless others.
They want the court to order DWP to make changes to its safeguarding procedures and to make a declaration that DWP violated Errol Graham’s right to life under the Human Rights Act.
They also want it to declare that DWP unlawfully violated the family’s “legitimate expectation” by failing to carry out a review of its policies and revise them, as it promised to do at Errol Graham’s inquest.
And they want the court to declare that DWP’s failure to contact individuals such as relatives, social workers and GPs – to establish if it is safe to stop benefit payments to any claimant in a vulnerable situation – is unlawful.
Mr Justice Morris has now ruled that a two-day hearing can go ahead for the claim by Turner against work and pensions secretary Therese Coffey.
The case is built upon hours of research by Turner in the months leading up to an inquest last June into Graham’s death.
It also relies heavily on evidence collected by Disability News Service (DNS) over the last six years while researching other deaths linked to the actions of former DWP ministers and senior civil servants.
Turner told DNS: “It is important because so many have been let down and families have been torn apart.
“There has been no accountability. It has gone on for years. They have foreseen all of this and refused to do anything about it as the evidence has stacked up.”
She said the court’s decision to allow the judicial review had been a huge relief.
She said: “It felt like a weight had been pulled off my shoulders. Two years of hell had been lifted and it felt like I was finally going to get justice, not just for Errol but also for the people who are suffering and the families who have suffered.
“What I want more than anything is to make an example of DWP, to show that this behaviour will not be tolerated, that this irresponsible behaviour is not acceptable, because it is irresponsible what they are doing.
“It is not something they are not aware of. They have deliberately been irresponsible.
“There has to be accountability.”
The family hope the hearing could be as early as October, because of the urgency of the issues they are raising.
Before that, they are appealing the court’s refusal to allow them to seek changes at the judicial review that would force DWP to publish the results of a safeguarding review that DWP told the coroner at the inquest was taking place last year, and release details of its new serious case panel, and the panel’s terms of reference.
Last week, DNS reported how DWP was refusing to release key details of the panel, which was set up last year to examine deaths linked to the actions of the department.
DWP told the coroner – and a coroner in another inquest last year – that the review would produce a report in the autumn, but it later claimed the review was just “ongoing work” that would not produce a report.
Errol Graham weighed just four-and-a-half stone when his body was found by bailiffs who had knocked down his front door to evict him. He had just a couple of out-of-date tins of tuna left in his flat.
DWP had stopped his ESA months earlier after making two unsuccessful visits to his home to ask why he had not attended a face-to-face work capability assessment.
Civil servants had failed to seek further medical evidence from his GP, just as in many other cases that have sparked repeated calls for an independent inquiry into links between DWP and the deaths of claimants.
The inquest heard last June that it was standard DWP procedure to go ahead with stopping the benefits of a claimant marked on the system as “vulnerable” after two failed safeguarding visits.
Tessa Gregory, from Leigh Day, the solicitors acting for Errol Graham’s family, said: “We are delighted that the court has given permission for this case to proceed to a full hearing.
“Our client believes that the DWP’s current safeguarding policies are not fit for purpose as they expose vulnerable individuals to a significant risk of harm, as was so tragically illustrated by Errol’s death.
“The DWP committed at Errol’s inquest to reviewing the applicable policies but two years after his death and one year after the inquest, nothing has changed.
“Our client therefore feels she has been left with no option but to bring these proceedings to try and force the secretary of state to take steps to ensure that no other families have to suffer in the terrible way her family has.”
A DWP spokesperson said: “Given legal proceedings are ongoing, it would be inappropriate for us to comment further at this time.”
16 July 2020
MPs and peers hear of ‘heart-breaking’ discrimination facing disabled students
MPs and peers have been told of the “heart-breaking” discrimination faced by disabled students in universities across the country, and how this has grown even worse during the pandemic.
Disabled students lined up to deliver testimony about their experiences of discrimination, and those of their peers, both before and during the COPVID-19 pandemic.
They were speaking at an online meeting of the all-party parliamentary group for disability on access to higher education for disabled people.
One disabled student described his ordeal at Glasgow University, which has seen him repeatedly denied access to reasonable adjustments during his five years of study.
Law student Gary Copland, who is blind and autistic, was provided with just one of 600 texts he needed to read in his first year in an accessible digitised format, and in the second year just four texts out of 500.
He told the meeting: “It has been a really, really difficult experience and I cannot express how awful it has been.”
His uncle, Simon Harding, a professor in criminology at the University of West London, said: “Just about everything bad you can imagine has occurred to this particular student.
“His experience at the University of Glasgow has been beyond anything that I thought was even possible in the UK in the 21st century.”
Some of the most troubling evidence of discrimination was presented to the meeting by Disabled Students UK (DSUK), a network of disabled students from more than 30 UK universities.
Phen Woolley-Gale, a member of the senior leadership team at DSUK, said the pandemic had “caused an already bad situation to become acute”.
The process of securing reasonable adjustments had already been one of the “biggest barriers” facing disabled students, she said, with the process usually involving “severe delays with an arduous administrative burden imposed on the student”.
She said: “Naturally such obstacles have even more severe effects in a crisis.
“Universities transitioned to distance learning several months ago yet many of our members still have no new reasonable adjustments in place to make this new way of learning accessible.”
She also said that the complaints process was usually inaccessible to disabled students.
Professor Harding told the meeting that his nephew’s requests for reasonable adjustments were “either not provided, poorly provided, or given to him off the peg and were not suitable or were simply taken away”.
When he was invited to a law fair, Copland collected leaflets from law firms that were there to recruit students, but the university then refused to digitise them, so he was unable to apply for any jobs.
His family even had to resort to using the Data Protection Act to retrieve the leaflets.
They also used the act to find out what staff thought of Copland, and discovered that university staff had “criticised him for being disabled [and] criticised him for refusing or being unable to walk down stairs”.
The family have so far raised 31 complaints, of which 21 are being dealt with by an ombudsman.
Harding said: “We have had bullying, we have had victimisation, direct, indirect discrimination, all of this due to a lack of care, a lack of interest, a lack of training among the staff.
“Micro-bullying and a level of impact which has just been absolutely overwhelming.
“The entire family are under medical supervision as a result of this ongoing for five years.”
Copland added: “My university experience has just been absolutely awful right from the get-go.
“I have just had problem after problem, from getting access to reading materials to allow me to study the course, to the exams not going properly, IT problems, and just the overwhelming volume of communication.”
He has had to deal with more than 9,000 emails and letters from the university as he has tried to secure the adjustments he needs, the meeting heard.
Concerns in the meeting were also raised about the delays experienced by disabled students seeking support through disabled students’ allowance (DSA) – non-means-tested grants that help with a student’s extra disability-related costs – which has been subject to years of government cuts and reforms.
Rhys Jupiter Brown, disabled students’ officer at Birkbeck, University of London, said he and many of his fellow disabled students applied for DSA in July and did not receive their assistive technology equipment until mid-October.
He said: “In light of the importance of technology with the COVID crisis coming up, it is going to be incredibly important that disabled students have access to the necessary technology to be actually able to complete their degree, and if we don’t have that sorted out we may see a massive spike in drop-outs of disabled students.”
Individual universities also faced criticism during the meeting.
Jess O’Brien, who was Cambridge University Students’ Union’s disabled students’ officer until March, said she was “appalled” that it was one of the richest universities in the world and yet had shown “complete unwillingness to invest in accessibility for students”.
Another disabled student said she and her peers had “campaigned really hard” for their university to make its communications more accessible, so that visually-impaired students could access content posted online.
But the university refused to make the changes, saying that such access improvements were not “on brand”.
Paddy Crosby, from DSUK, said his university had refused to motorise the doors of its main building.
He said: “They have known for years of this problem and their answer has explicitly been to our disabled students’ officer: ‘We haven’t got the money.’”
Crosby added: “I don’t buy the case that universities will come round and do what they can and do the right thing because Gary’s case has demonstrated that universities will fight tooth and nail to not do things.”
His comments were supported by Dr Nasser Siabi, chief executive of the assistive technology company Microlink.
He had earlier told the meeting: “Universities manage several hundreds of millions of pounds of budget.
“The cost of looking after disabled students probably doesn’t come to a couple of million pounds.”
Dr Siabi said it made economic sense for universities to spend a small amount of money to retain disabled students – rather than allowing them to drop out – and ensure they were employable, which would make their university attractive to other students.
He said: “The economic argument to the vice-chancellors is to get their priorities right.
“They are actually talking about pennies that they don’t have and yet they are wasting pounds by not doing the right thing.”
Over the last year, Disability News Service (DNS) has reported allegations of discrimination made by disabled students at a string of universities.
In January, DNS reported how University College London was facing claims of “institutional failings”, after an investigation by its Disabled Students’ Network accused it of repeatedly failing to make reasonable adjustments for its disabled students and overcharging them for their accessible accommodation.
In February, DNS reported how a disabled student at the University of Hull had been left “isolated” and “segregated” by the failure to make her lectures accessible to her.
Last September, an autistic medical student accused her university of discrimination that could end her career before it had started, after she was prevented from starting the fifth and final year of her degree at the University of Leeds.
And last June, DNS reported how disabled students at London South Bank University were taking legal action against their university over claims of disability discrimination, claiming the way they had been treated was “immoral and amoral”.
DSUK said it was speaking to disabled students who experienced similar discrimination to Copland’s every week, and that these cases were “heart-breaking”.
It has produced a report on the impact of the pandemic on disabled students, which concludes: “Disabled students’ need for support has increased during the pandemic while disabled students’ support from DSA and universities has decreased.”
The report says some disabled students are reporting delays in accessing disability support as administrators have been furloughed, redirected to other tasks, or made redundant.
Others say their complaints of being denied reasonable adjustments have been put on hold by their university and regarded as “non-essential”, while many disabled students say staff have been impossible to reach, have failed to send them information about the support available, or have been “unsure of what support is available when asked”.
Despite universities being forced to provide their services to students online during the pandemic crisis, some have failed to make this accessible to many of their disabled students, says the report.
An informal survey by DSUK found most disabled students said their education had become less accessible during the pandemic.
Cat Turhan, from the Russell Group of 24 leading universities, including Oxford, Glasgow and Cambridge, told the meeting: “Our universities have been working really hard to support students through the crisis, by moving provision online, offering one-to-one support, waiving accommodation fees and ramping up the financial support available.”
The disabled peer and former Labour home secretary Lord [David] Blunkett, who is one of three co-chairs of an inquiry into the experiences of disabled students, launched by the independent Higher Education Commission last July, also spoke at the meeting.
He said many disabled students still faced a challenge in accessing the materials they needed for their courses despite the “massive” changes in the use of the internet over the last 20 years.
Speaking before any of the disabled students had given their evidence, Lord Blunkett said there had been “substantial change, there has been a greater degree of awareness, thank goodness, but there is an enormous amount to be done”.
A spokesperson for Cambridge University told DNS after the meeting that it “works continuously to improve access for students, and continues to invest in creating an inclusive environment”.
But he accepted that the process for making reasonable adjustments for disabled students was “inconsistent” and that the university was “working on the development of new online training for teaching staff to ensure they are equipped to support disabled students”.
He said: “The university’s success in attracting applications from disabled students and admitting them in ever larger numbers has placed existing support systems under some strain, however there is much work under way to address these issues.
“In 2008 there were 600 disabled students studying at Cambridge (four per cent of the student population), in 2020 this figure is 3,600 (17 per cent of the student population and above the national average in higher education).”
The university’s Disability Resource Centre offers face-to-face and online training on teaching disabled students.
But he said: “It is important that this activity can be expanded to a wider audience.
“In addition, projects such as lecture capture [so they can be viewed remotely] and online exams are already benefiting students.
“However, we need to ensure that these developments will work effectively when operated at scale, and this consequently will take some time.”
Asked to comment on Copland’s case, a spokesperson for Glasgow University said that it was “committed to promoting and implementing equality of opportunity in the learning, teaching, research and working environment” and that students could “draw on the expertise of our disability advisers and IT professionals, along with a team of dedicated support workers”.
She said: “We are able to and do make bespoke adjustments to both teaching and assessments with the needs of our students in mind.”
She said the university’s Disability Service and disability co-ordinators provide “a dedicated service” for disabled students, “assessing and putting in place appropriate provision to assist with their learning”.
She said: “We have endeavoured to share reading materials with the student in question in an accessible format as soon as is practicable before each class.
“It has not always been possible to achieve this four weeks in advance, but we have done all that we can to be supportive, including using an external transcription service.
“In addition, lecturers have provided guidance on the order in which reading materials should be tackled for each class and for each written assignment.
“The student has had assistance from a team of support workers and we have periodically reviewed his needs and have drawn on professional advice from our own disability staff, from IT experts and from an objective adviser from another Russell Group university.
“We put in place special arrangements to cover examinations and are open, and always have been open, to any other requests or requirements.
“Academic and service staff have gone to considerable lengths to facilitate this student’s learning, as we would for any student who requires additional support.”
16 July 2020
‘Disability Confident’ firm replaces disabled staff with non-disabled agency workers
A company that bragged of being a Disability Confident “Leader” under the government’s discredited employment scheme sacked more than 50 disabled staff when it fell into administration, and then hired mostly non-disabled agency staff to replace them.
The workers were employed by Arlington Automotive, which took on nearly 180 disabled people seven years ago when it bought the final three Remploy sheltered factories.
It now appears to have targeted disabled workers for redundancy, particularly those with learning difficulties.
In May, just two months after the government put the country into lockdown, Arlington entered administration.
Administrators for the company, which supplies companies like Jaguar Land Rover, blamed the move on the pandemic, and announced more than 100 redundancies.
It announced the closure of the Birmingham factory and job losses at the Coventry plant. A third former Remploy factory, in Derby, was closed in July 2019.
It told staff at its Birmingham and Coventry factories that Arlington would not be able to honour their redundancy agreements, and that they would instead have to claim much lower levels of compensation through the government.
At least 50 of those made redundant – and probably more – were disabled workers.
For former Remploy workers, they could now be receiving tens of thousands of pounds less than they were expecting, with one seeing his expected payment plunge from £75,000 to £16,000.
Despite the redundancies, Arlington is now taking on agency workers at its Coventry plant in addition to the remaining 107 workers, to replace many of the long-serving disabled staff members they have made redundant, most of whom had learning difficulties.
The company said yesterday that it currently had nine agency workers at the Coventry factory, of whom only one was a disabled person.
The GMB union said that all but one of its members who were made redundant from the Coventry factory have learning difficulties (not all the 50 workers made redundant from the Coventry factory were GMB members).
GMB also said that many workers were sacked over the phone.
And in Birmingham, disabled members of staff were escorted to their lockers by bouncers when they arrived to clear out their lockers of personal possessions.
Jonathan Peasley, who had worked for Remploy, and then Arlington, for 31 years, said he was “not very happy” about the way he and other disabled workers had been treated.
The warehouse operative, who worked at the Coventry factory and was a shop steward for GMB, said it was “absolutely terrible” that Arlington had replaced staff with learning difficulties, like himself, with non-disabled workers.
GMB regional organiser Rebecca Mitchell said that, of GMB members with learning difficulties at the two factories, all but one has been made redundant, and most of those who remain at the Coventry factory were not disabled.
She said: “This is some of the lowest behaviour we’ve ever seen from a firm; sacking disabled workers over the phone and then trying to take away their hard-earned redundancy payments.
“Arlington Automotive is pushing disabled workers into the gutter.”
She added: “They are also taking on non-disabled agency workers to replace the disabled workers they have made redundant. They are continuing to trade as normal. This is what we don’t understand.”
Mitchell said it appeared that the company was trying to get rid of all its workers with learning difficulties.
She said she was “even more sickened” by Arlington’s behaviour when she was told by Disability News Service that the company was a Disability Confident Leader.
When the company announced the Disability Confident award last September, it bragged that it “clearly demonstrates Arlington’s commitment to equality and diversity in the workplace”.
An Arlington spokesperson added: “The bottom line is that we ensure disabled people and those with long term health conditions have the opportunities to both fulfil their potential and realise their aspirations.
“It’s something that Arlington has long since focused on, and something that we’ll continue to champion.”
GMB is seeking advice on taking legal action against Arlington for disability discrimination, unfair dismissal and failure to consult with unions.
Asked to confirm whether the union’s claims were accurate, a statement issued through Arlington’s administrators confirmed some of the points but declined to comment on others.
A spokesperson refused to comment on whether Arlington was behaving in an appropriate way for a Disability Confident Leader.
But he said the company’s financial problems had been caused by the COVID-19 crisis.
He said the administrators had “adhered to government advice around social distancing when considering how to communicate with the employees” over the redundancies, and had “recruited a specialist firm… in order to notify them and provide them with support in lodging their claims with the [government’s] Redundancy Payments Service*”.
He said: “The Redundancy Payments Service will meet employee claims subject to the statutory limits in place and any residual balances owed to the employees [through their redundancy agreements] will be claimable in the administration process.
“Given the extensive liabilities of the company and the fact that it is insolvent and has no funds, employees’ contractual claims are unlikely to be settled in full.”
He added: “In common with most manufacturing facilities Arlington has always used temporary staff to deal with small short-term spikes in demand due to the inherent volatility of customer production requirements.
“As part of that process, the agency prioritised those with disabilities.”
16 July 2020
MPs told of financial and psychological costs of ‘demeaning’ care charging system
A disabled campaigner has painted a stark picture of the psychological and financial impact of the system of charging for care and support services, as he gave evidence to a committee of MPs.
Kevin Caulfield told the Commons health and social care committee, during an online evidence session, that disabled people had been raising these issues for at least 20 years.
Caulfield, who is strategic lead for co-production for Hammersmith and Fulham council, but was not speaking on behalf of the council, told MPs on the committee that it “just cannot be right” that disabled people face ever-increasing costs the higher their support needs are.
He highlighted how disabled people who find themselves needing support to live independently instead face the “additional burdens” of having to “navigate the system” and deal with the charging and assessment process.
He said this causes feelings of being “other” and “different” and “a burden” and “expensive”.
Caulfield said: “The financial assessment process is often demeaning, it comes at a point in people’s lives where people need support and peace and tranquillity, and instead what happens is you move further and further away from that.”
He added: “If we are really interested in developing a national care and support service that meets people’s needs, these things really need to be taken into consideration.
“These are all issues that disabled people have been raising for 20 years or more, so they are not new.”
Three years ago, Labour-run Hammersmith and Fulham became the only local authority in England to abolish all charges for disabled people living independently in the community.
This only came about through years of campaigning by disabled people – including Caulfield and Hammersmith and Fulham Coalition Against Cuts, who highlighted, for example, how people were being charged £12.40 for the right to have a shower.
Caulfield said the previous regime of charging in Hammersmith and Fulham and the need for a financial assessment just “based on who you are” caused a “tremendous negative psychological impact” for disabled people who had to undergo the system.
He said the imposition of charging “plays a huge part” in disabled people deciding to stop using council support, particularly those from disadvantaged communities, while others fall into debt.
He told the committee: “It absolutely cannot be acceptable in the 21st century that people are falling into debt paying for the support they need.”
He also quoted the independent living campaigner and disabled crossbench peer Baroness [Jane] Campbell, who chairs the Independent Living Strategy Group.
She said: “The support provided under the Care Act is meant to improve the well-being and independence of disabled people.
“By charging many for that support, the system is making a mockery of the support of that legislation and causing worry, stress and poverty.
“Charging raises a relatively small amount of money, which pushes up costs elsewhere.”
Without the necessary funding for the social care system, she said, the NHS faces extra costs in dealing with the impact of “personal care neglect”, such as pressure sores, kidney infections, falls and stress-related illness.
Caulfield was taking part in the final evidence session of the committee’s inquiry into the social care funding needed over the next five years, shortages in the social care workforce, and the long-term reforms needed to social care funding.
The committee is chaired by Jeremy Hunt, who is blamed by many for failing to address the social care funding crisis when he was health secretary and then health and social care secretary between 2012 and 2018.
16 July 2020
Round-up: Atos, Capita and Maximus, face coverings, care charging… and disability arts
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has extended the contracts of three discredited outsourcing giants blamed for much of the discrimination and failings within the disability benefit assessment system.
DWP had been planning to start a contract procurement exercise for organisations to carry out personal independence payment (PIP) assessments and work capability assessments (WCAs) on behalf of the government.
But Justin Tomlinson, the minister for disabled people, told MPs: “The impact of COVID-19 means it is not possible to launch that procurement at this time.”
PIP assessments are carried out by Atos and Capita, with WCAs performed by Maximus.
All three have been heavily criticised for their performance over the last decade.
The current contracts had been due to end next July, but DWP is now planning to extend them for “up to” two years.
Ken Butler, welfare rights and policy adviser for Disability Rights UK, said: “Disabled people claiming these benefits will react to this announcement with fear and dismay.
“It is difficult to believe that any of these private companies continue to have a contract, let alone have it extended.”
Buckinghamshire Disability Service (BuDS) described the move as an “astonishing U-turn” and suggested that “DWP incompetence” was likely to be the real reason, rather than the pandemic.
It added: “BuDS feels that the contract extension is a real blow for disabled people who have endured the incompetence and brutality of the assessment regime run by these companies for far too long already.”
The government must do more to inform the public that many disabled people are exempt from new rules that will make it compulsory to use face coverings in shops and supermarkets in England, a disabled people’s organisation has told a minister.
The decision was announced this week by health and social care secretary Matt Hancock, and will come into effect on 24 July.
In a letter to the minister for disabled people, Justin Tomlinson, Disability Rights UK (DR UK) says disabled people are not being listened to on the issue.
Fazilet Hadi, DR UK’s head of policy, says in the letter: “Disability Rights UK is horrified at the media coverage on face coverings.
“The message is that face coverings are compulsory with no mention of exemptions for disabled people or children.
“The talk is of police fines and criminalisation for those that don’t comply.”
She adds: “We would ask that government urgently recognises the need for balanced messaging, including that some disabled people cannot wear face coverings and that this should be respected.
“If the messaging doesn’t change, millions of disabled people will not be able to safely leave their homes.
“For those of us that do, we will experience fear, anxiety, possible conflict with public and police and demands to prove our impairment/illness.”
The disability arts organisation Shape Arts is launching its annual exhibition of artwork created by marginalised artists in response to a disability-related theme.
This year’s exhibition, which launches on Monday (20 July) and will be hosted on the Shape website because of the COVID-19 pandemic, features more than 20 artists, nearly all of whom are disabled.
This year’s theme is The Future Is Loading.
A young disabled woman had been granted a judicial review of Norfolk County Council’s social care charging policy.
The woman, SH, who is 24, and her mother are part of a group of disabled people, carers and supporters who are campaigning against the local authority’s decision to cut the minimum income guarantee (MIG) for working-age disabled people who receive council care and support services.
The MIG is the amount they must be left with after paying care charges to ensure they can cover their living costs.
The council has also decided to take account of all the enhanced rate of the daily living component of personal independence payment that SH receives, when calculating the care charges she must pay.
Her mother fears these charges mean SH, who has learning difficulties, will never be able to afford to live independently.
The family’s solicitors, Leigh Day, say the charges discriminate against SH under the Human Rights Act and the Equality Act.
Disabled actor and writer Athena Stevens is one of six international writers and performers – all with experience of inequality – who have created short films looking at how the arts can be made more inclusive following the COVID-19 pandemic.
As well as a short adapted monologue, each of the artists offers “tips for creativity in isolation and beyond, sharing their views on how the arts can adapt, how to digitise but not disenfranchise, and why including all voices in the new normal shouldn’t just be a ‘check box’ exercise”.
The UNMUTE series of films, by Hack Theatre, is supported by Arts Council England’s Emergency Response Fund, with the films based around themes of equality, diversity and inclusion.
All the films are about 30 minutes long and will be captioned and free to view, with one released at 10am every day from 20 to 25 July, with a live question and answer session with the artist on the afternoon of their film’s launch day.
16 July 2020
News provided by John Pring at www.disabilitynewsservice.com
