Contents
Ministers are secretly considering means-testing PIP, DWP admits, despite pledge in green paper 1
Rebel Labour MPs send final warning to ministers before disability cuts bill is published 16
Other disability-related stories covered by mainstream media this week 19
Ministers are secretly considering means-testing PIP, DWP admits, despite pledge in green paper
Labour ministers are considering whether to start means-testing personal independence payment, which is likely to cut billions of pounds a year more from benefits spending, new information secured from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has revealed.
The highly controversial idea would mean payments contributing to extra disability-related costs in future only going to those with less than a certain level of income, savings and investments.
It comes as the government’s new universal credit and personal independence payment bill, which aims to restrict eligibility to personal independence payment (PIP) and cut the disability element of universal credit, received its first reading in the Commons (see separate story).
That bill does not include any measures to means-test PIP, and the Pathways to Work green paper, published in March, insists that “PIP will remain an important non-means tested benefit for disabled people and people with long-term health conditions”.
But behind that pledge, ministers, special advisers and civil servants have been discussing whether PIP should soon be merged with universal credit.
The new information came in a response to a freedom of information request from welfare rights expert Finn Keaney, who had asked DWP for copies of reports produced since Labour came to power last July that discussed the possibility of making PIP a means-tested benefit.
He had noticed that various members of Labour’s cabinet, including work and pensions secretary Liz Kendall, had repeatedly linked PIP to work, even though it is available to disabled people both in and out of employment.
When DWP responded to his request, it admitted that it “holds information relevant to your request”.
But it refused to release the documents, taking advantage of a Freedom of Information Act exemption that “protects the private space within which Ministers and their policy advisers can develop policies without the risk of premature disclosure”.
It admitted there was “a legitimate public interest in understanding the rationale behind proposed changes to disability benefits, including whether and how the Department has considered the option of means-testing PIP”.
It then added: “The information requested includes early-stage analysis and internal advice that is directly informing live policy development.
“Releasing this material prematurely would risk distorting public understanding of the policy direction, especially where proposals are still evolving and subject to change.
“It could also lead to undue pressure on decision-makers or misinterpretation of ideas that have not been finalised or endorsed.”
It also noted that PIP reform was “highly sensitive and subject to ongoing public and Parliamentary scrutiny” and that it believed, on balance, that “withholding the information at this stage better serves the public interest by ensuring that policy is developed rigorously, responsibly, and with the benefit of full and frank internal deliberation”.
Keaney said: “Over the last year there has been a pattern of cabinet ministers describing cuts to PIP as being part of a strategy to get people back into work.
“It is tempting to think of this as nothing more than individuals being woolly on the details, but when you have the DWP’s own secretary of state making this mistake four times in 23 minutes you have to wonder: what is going on here?
“I am really concerned that between these repeated ‘mistakes’ and the DWP’s recent proposal to merge the PIP and work capability assessments, we are witnessing the government laying the foundations for eventually means-testing PIP by bringing it under the umbrella of universal credit.
“Means-testing PIP would unfairly punish disabled people and would do nothing to help anyone to live independent lives in or out of the workforce.”
There has been mounting evidence over the last four years that DWP civil servants are keen to cut spending on disability benefits by means-testing PIP.
Two years ago, Disability News Service (DNS) was told that participants in focus groups had been asked questions about which people “deserve” various benefits and what they think about the idea of means-testing “extra cost” benefits.
Questions about the “extra cost benefit” ended with participants being asked whether it should be means-tested on the grounds of “affordability”, although it was never clear who had funded the focus groups.
Two years earlier, the Conservative government had published its Shaping Future Support green paper, which suggested that ministers could create a “new single benefit” to simplify the disability benefits application and assessment process, which could “provide support for disabled people and people with health conditions on low income and with extra costs”.
Work and pensions secretary Therese Coffey later told DNS at a fringe meeting at the party’s annual conference in October 2021 that merging PIP with universal credit was “on the table”.
Just a month later, DNS reported how a DWP civil servant had told a disability charity that the government planned to merge PIP with universal credit, although not for at least six years.
This would suggest that such a merger could be introduced from as early as 2027.
The response to Keaney’s freedom of information request shows yet again how the key elements of DWP policy over the last 30 years remain almost unchanged behind the scenes when political power shifts from Conservative to Labour, to Conservative, and back to Labour.
It suggests, as demonstrated in The Department*, by DNS editor John Pring, that the course of policy development within DWP is decided mainly by civil servants, with ministers playing only a minor role.
*The Department: How a Violent Government Bureaucracy Killed Hundreds and Hid the Evidence, John Pring’s book on the years of deaths linked to DWP’s actions and failings, is published by Pluto Press
19 June 2025
‘We will not give a single inch,’ disabled activists vow, as Kendall publishes disability cuts bill
Disabled activists say they “will not give a single inch” in their resistance to billions of pounds of cuts confirmed yesterday by the Labour government in its new universal credit and personal independence payment bill.
Other than minor concessions by work and pensions secretary Liz Kendall, the short “two topic” bill shows ministers are determined to plough ahead with cuts to personal independence payment (PIP) and the disability element of universal credit.
There was little that was new in the bill and the other documents published by the government yesterday (Wednesday), and it is still far from clear exactly how many hundreds of thousands of disabled people will eventually lose out and by how much.
There are also further cuts and reforms to disability benefits that will be introduced by work and pensions ministers in the next year in the wake of a public consultation that ends later this month, and other reviews being carried out by the department.
The contents of the bill – all of which will apply to England, Wales and Northern Ireland, and much of it to Scotland – saw no change to the most controversial aspect of the cuts, which will mean all claimants will have to be awarded at least four points on at least one “activity” to qualify for the PIP daily living component*.
Kendall confirmed yesterday that all those who lose their PIP daily living component after being reassessed in the months and years after November 2026 will continue to receive that support for 13 weeks, which she claimed would give them time to “adapt, access new, tailored employment support, and plan for their future”.
Kendall faced ridicule and anger from disabled activists in response to this and when she said in a press release: “This legislation represents a new social contract and marks the moment we take the road of compassion, opportunity and dignity.”
She also said the bill would put “welfare spending on a more sustainable path”, when she knows that Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) figures show total spending on social security as a proportion of GDP was predicted not to increase at all this year**, and then to stay at the same level for the next four years, even before the cuts announced in March.
Kendall is also now facing at least one allegation of misleading MPs and voters.
Ministers had originally suggested in March’s Pathways to Work green paper that universal credit claimants who are terminally ill with 12 months or less to live, or have “the most severe and lifelong health conditions or disabilities”, would not face future reassessments and would receive an “additional premium”.
But the bill’s explanatory notes include no mention of an “additional premium” and instead state that claimants assessed as being part of this “severe conditions” group will receive the same health element top-up as others found to have limited capability for work and work-related activity (LCWRA).
This means that their health element top-up will be frozen at this year’s rate until at least April 2030, so members of the severe conditions group will not receive any extra “premium” after all.
The only benefit for them being in the severe conditions group will be that they will “not be routinely reassessed”.
It is only new claimants assessed as being terminally-ill or in the severe conditions group who will benefit from the “additional premium”.
They would otherwise have received only the reduced LCWRA rate for new claimants, which is being cut from £97 per week in 2024-25 to £50 per week in 2026-27.
The bill says claimants will qualify for the “severe conditions” group if they are assessed as having LCWRA, and that the limitation “constantly applies”, will last for “the rest of the claimant’s life”, and has been diagnosed by a health care professional through NHS services.
Asked if ministers had misled MPs and disabled people about the “premium”, DWP had not commented by noon today.
Disabled people’s grassroots groups yesterday warned Labour MPs who voted with the government on the bill that they would hold them to account with voters.
Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) urged disabled people and allies to join its #WelfareNotWarfare rally outside parliament – and online – on Monday 30 June.
This is the day the government’s Pathways to Work consultation – which they have called a “consult-a-sham” – comes to an end.
DPAC will also lead a national day of action on 3 July, when the second reading of the bill – and a vote by MPs – is expected to take place.
Paula Peters, a member of DPAC’s national steering group, warned MPs that “we will continue to pile the pressure on them to vote ‘No’ to disability benefit cuts.
“If they vote with the government, we will hold them to account.”
She warned that the cuts would cause many deaths, and said the freezing of the UC health element for four years would cause “increasing hardship as bills rise”, leaving disabled people “robbing Peter to pay Paul or going in debt”, while the PIP cuts were “devastating”.
The Scottish-based group Black Triangle warned that if Labour backbenchers did not rebel and defeat the bill, their fate would be “written in stone” and they would lose their seats at the next general election.
Caroline Collier, from Inclusion Barnet’s Campaign for Disability Justice, said: “This bill contains no real surprises, but we are disappointed that there hasn’t been a radical rethink in the face of the widespread concerns that have been voiced by disabled people’s organisations and others since the green paper was published.
“We share the government’s ambition to see more disabled people having opportunities to work, although we believe this should be led by when people feel able to do so, but we are in total opposition to the PIP and universal credit cuts.
“We fear the consequences could be far more serious than anticipated, with a raft of bad outcomes for disabled people, and we sincerely hope that future debates and votes will force a rethink.”
Rick Burgess, a spokesperson for Greater Manchester Coalition of Disabled People, said: “The architects of these policies have two disablist beliefs, that the state should spend less on disabled people and that any benefit for people unable to work incentivises people to claim it, so that must be eliminated.
“These are nothing but cuts that will lead to more deaths and the gaslighting by ministers is continuing the long history of abusers who tell disabled people that they know best what is good for us.
“But these sadistic cuts are not a done deal; right now, everyone must talk to their MP and tell them they must vote against this bill.
“We will not give a single inch in our resistance to this assault on our community.”
Svetlana Kotova, director of campaigns and justice at Inclusion London, said: “Pushing people who are ill into poverty and destitution does not bring them closer to work.
“If the government were willing to improve disabled people’s lives, it would invest in removing the barriers we face in the workplace and society.
“Instead, they choose to cut essential benefits and support.
“This is not the time to be passing legislation.
“The consultation on the green paper is still open, the government has not published a full impact assessment, and no details are yet available about the employment support that is supposed to mitigate the horrendous impacts of the cuts.
“MPs cannot make an informed decision on this basis.
“We are calling on MPs to look at the evidence, listen to their disabled constituents, and vote against this bill.
“We are also calling on our community and everyone else who cares about equity and justice to stand together and oppose the bill.”
Mark Harrison, a member of the Reclaiming Our Futures Alliance steering group, suggested that disabled people should make the cuts “Starmer’s Poll Tax”.
He said: “After 14 years of Tory austerity, Labour is now carrying on where they left off and stepping it up to a new level.
“The only concrete commitment in their manifesto was to consult and coproduce disability policy with disabled people’s organisations.
“It took them less than a year to trash this pledge and do the opposite.”
He called on ministers to withdraw the bill and the other Pathways to Work proposals, and suggested that failure to address the flaws and engage with disabled people and disabled people’s organisations could lead to action in the courts and by the UN.
He said: “We will not let up until these proposals are overturned.
“The winter fuel payments debacle shows they are politically inept and haven’t learnt anything.
“We are putting all Labour MPs who vote for these cuts on notice that they will regret it when they are defeated at the ballot box.”
Mikey Erhardt, campaigns and policy officer for Disability Rights UK, said: “The government’s bill cutting the level of universal credit payments for disabled people and unjustifiably narrowing the eligibility for PIP is simply asking MPs to make indiscriminate and dangerous cuts that will massively worsen the lives of millions of disabled people.
“No minor mitigations or concessions can make these cuts safe.
“Disabled people are going to end up losing thousands of pounds per year that we rely on to survive.
“Ultimately, any MP who thinks it’s OK to vote through these cuts because of a tapering-off period of support is being taken for a ride by the government.”
And Disabled People Against Cuts Cymru, which has fought against the government’s “blatantly discriminatory and inadequate” consultation process in Wales, said: “There is no economic or moral argument, no matter how convincing, that will sway the government on this matter.
“They aren’t interested in evidence, because they are cynically treating us as a political football for votes.
“The proposals are utterly flawed, by every measure.
“They must be withdrawn, and the government must start again on welfare reform, in a process led by disabled people, carers, and the workers who deliver the health, care, and welfare system.”
*This aspect does not apply to Scotland
**See chapter five of OBR’s Economic and Fiscal Outlook – October 2024, chart 5.2
19 June 2025
New figures show legalising assisted suicide is not safe, with government preparing to cut billions from benefits
Disabled activists say vital new polling shows that it is not safe to legalise assisted suicide when the government is preparing to cut billions of pounds a year from spending on disability benefits.
The findings were released yesterday (Wednesday) on the day the government published its new universal credit and personal independence payment bill (see separate story), which will implement many of the cuts, and two days before MPs vote on Labour MP Kim Leadbeater’s terminally ill adults (end of life) bill.
Tomorrow’s vote is thought to be the critical moment that will decide whether assisted suicide eventually becomes law in England and Wales, despite being widely and fiercely opposed by the disabled people’s movement.
In a final effort to persuade MPs of the dangers posed by legalisation, Not Dead Yet UK (NDY UK) yesterday released polling that showed two-thirds (65 per cent) of disabled people agree that if benefits are being cut, disabled people living in poverty may be likely to seek assisted suicide instead of struggling financially.
Three-fifths (59 per cent) of the more than 2,000 British adults who were polled by Whitestone Insight for NDY UK either agreed or strongly agreed with the statement.
Phil Friend, NDY UK convener, said: “This polling proves what we’ve been saying – you cannot safely introduce assisted suicide while so many disabled people live in poverty, and especially when the government is cutting some disabled people’s benefits.
“Our research shows 65 per cent of disabled people think those facing poverty and benefit cuts will be pushed toward assisted suicide.
“That’s coercion, not choice.
“The assisted dying (terminally ill adults) bill must be stopped.
“Parliament cannot pass this legislation while simultaneously dismantling some of the support systems that support disabled people.”
But there were also other worrying findings from the polling.
More than two-thirds (67 per cent) of disabled people polled agreed that some disabled people may feel a sense of responsibility to access an assisted death if they feel they are a burden on family, friends or society.
More than six in 10 (63 per cent) of all those polled agreed or strongly agreed with this statement.
And more than two-thirds of all those polled (67 per cent) agreed that parliament should prioritise improving access to care for disabled people before legalising assisted suicide.
Mike Smith, an NDY UK spokesperson and former disability commissioner for the Equality and Human Rights Commission, said: “Too many MPs are considering this legislation in the context of reducing some individual’s suffering at the end of life without having regard to the many thousands more whose lives will be threatened because of it.
“We have to consider not just the detail of the bill, but the environment and reality into which it will be introduced.”
Baroness [Jane] Campbell, founder of NDY UK, said: “Many of my parliamentary colleagues tell me their number one concern about legalising ‘assisted dying’ is the potential for coercion of vulnerable people by families or others, whether it’s conscious or unconscious, to seek an early death rather than become a burden or die in intolerable circumstances.
“Parliamentarians are right to be concerned.
“It is guaranteed that some people seeking an assistive death will die because they believe what society reinforces every day, that dying early is the only way to avoid such fears becoming a reality.
“Coercion is hard to detect, and the current bill offers no effective safeguards to prevent coerced applicants dying as a result.
“This is terrifying.”
19 July 2025
Tribunal allows DWP to continue to hide information from secret reviews into universal credit deaths
A tribunal has allowed ministers to continue to hide vital information from scores of secret reports into deaths of universal credit claimants, just as they publish a new bill that will have a major impact on the working-age benefits system.
The new universal credit and personal independence payment bill, published yesterday (Wednesday), will cause fresh safeguarding concerns for hundreds of thousands of disabled people who pass through the universal credit system.
But the decision of the information rights tribunal means MPs debating the bill will be prevented from seeing recommendations made by 63 secret reviews into deaths linked to universal credit between January 2020 and November 2023.
Disability News Service (DNS) has been trying for more than 18 months to secure information from DWP that would show what recommendations for improvements were made by civil servants who carried out these internal process reviews (IPRs), dating back to the early months of the pandemic.
These could have been critically-important, both for disabled campaigners and MPs, as the new bill will impose sweeping cuts to universal credit, with further reforms and cuts to come in future months (see separate story).
The information commissioner decided in July 2024 that DWP should release the information to DNS, after the department initially refused to do so, following a freedom of information request.
But DWP appealed that decision to the information rights tribunal.
And despite the same tribunal ruling in April 2016 that similar information must be released by the department, it has now supported DWP’s appeal and its claim that it did not need to release the information to DNS because it “was intended for future publication”.
The three-person panel reached this conclusion even though it is now five years since the first of the IPRs was completed, and more than 18 months since DNS requested the information.
There is still no sign of the information being released, and in nearly a decade since it was first forced to release recommendations made by its secret reviews – then called peer reviews – it is believed that DWP has never published the kind of detail requested without it being demanded through a freedom of information request.
It is highly unlikely that DWP will release such potentially damaging information in the next few months, as the Labour government will be trying to push controversial and unpopular cuts to the disability element of universal credit through parliament in its new bill.
Wendy Stubbs, who leads DWP’s advanced customer support transformation team, told the tribunal in a written statement that IPRs “provide an internal review of a customer’s interactions with the department and whether the correct processes were followed”.
The information commissioner previously argued that it did not consider it “reasonable to delay the release of the IPR recommendations” to DNS.
But Stubbs claimed in her witness statement in January 2025 that DWP would publish the information bit by bit, beginning in the last quarter of 2024-25.
No such information has yet been published.
She claimed that DWP would publish the IPR information from 2022-23 by 31 March 2025, the information for 2020-21 and 2021-22 by 30 November 2025, and the information from 2023-24 by 31 March 2026.
This will mean the full information requested by DNS in November 2023 – if DWP does publish it – will not be published for more than two years after it was requested, with some of the information from 2020-21 not published until more than five years after those IPRs were completed.
The information commissioner supported DNS in the case because it concluded that DWP would not publish all the information requested.
DNS continues to share that view.
The tribunal appeared to believe – wrongly – that the information to be published by DWP would identify the deceased claimants, as it argues in its ruling that “releasing the information after a period of time would be fairer on and cause less distress to the families of the deceased than immediate disclosure upon request”.
DWP has argued for years that it would be unlawful for it to publish any information from IPRs that identifies deceased claimants.
DWP declined to comment this week on why ministers believed it was right to continue to hide such crucial information as parliament is about to start debating a new bill that will include significant cuts and reforms to universal credit.
But it claimed it would publish the recommendations in due course in a managed way which accounts for the sensitive and personal information that IPRs can contain.
19 June 2025
Two members quit government’s ‘tokenistic’ network because Disability Unit is ignoring disabled people
Two disabled leaders have quit the “stakeholder network” set up to ensure that the voices of disabled people are at the heart of the government’s work, after months – and even years – of “inertia” and a failure to respond to their input.
They have spoken out to raise serious concerns about the work of the Disability Unit and the current government’s commitment to listening to disabled people.
They have both described to Disability News Service (DNS) how the government’s Disability Unit repeatedly failed to even acknowledge information they provided about the barriers disabled people are facing in the north-east of England over months and years.
In her letter resigning as a member of the north-east regional stakeholder network (RSN) last Thursday, Claire Andrews said she and the disabled people’s organisation she works for “no longer believe this government is listening or meaningfully consulting with us”.
Andrews, a development manager for Difference North East, has been a member of the network – whose members are not paid for their work – since last July.
She wrote in her resignation letter that Difference North East did not believe that “the government’s current way of involving disabled people in decision-making is fit for purpose.
“We think it is inaccessible, unprofessional, and unresponsive and more importantly, it does not represent the needs, issues or wishes of disabled people.”
She told DNS that the RSN was “tokenistic”.
She said: “It feels as a disabled person very disrespectful of lived experience and our local knowledge that it’s just not being considered at all, particularly because members give so much time to it.
“For local people and organisations to be so willing to share feedback and share local expertise, and to have it entirely disregarded, it goes against what this network was supposed to achieve; but it feels very representative of the current political agenda towards disabled people.
“We are stood there saying we will work with you, we want this to be better, but I honestly feel they are not listening.”
She added: “There are big things going on that are impacting disabled people in the north-east, and there are no updates, there is no transparency.
“This network’s main purpose is to champion the rights of disabled people, it’s supposed to centre their voices and views to make sure they are at the heart of UK government, and right now there are huge proposals going on and we have no updates, we haven’t been considered.”
In the last eight months, the web page showing details of quarterly meetings between RSN chairs and Sir Stephen Timms, the minister for social security and disability, has been updated just once, with the minutes from the December meeting – which focused exclusively on employment – added on 10 April.
The north-east RSN has had a temporary chair since the last permanent chair resigned in December, but Andrews stressed that the problems are being caused by the Disability Unit, although the failure to appoint a permanent chair has not helped.
She has emailed the chairs of all nine RSNs to call on them to consider their own positions and join her in resigning.
She also told DNS there had not been a single in-person consultation event in the north-east on the government’s much-criticised Pathways to Work green paper, with the nearest events taking place in Leeds and Glasgow.
Members of the north-east RSN have not received a single update on Pathways to Work, despite the national consultation, which closes next week, she said.
Difference North East is now setting up a new disabled-led group (PDF) that Andrews hopes will provide a much-stronger voice for disabled people in the north-east, and one that she hopes the government will have to listen to.
Another member of the north-east RSN, Jo Cole, who had been a member since the RSN was set up by the Conservative government in 2019, resigned her membership in February in response to the growing “inertia and lethargy” she had witnessed over the years.
Cole, co-founder of disability charity Neuro Key, which carries out research and provides information, advocacy and peer support to neurodivergent people and those with neurological impairments in the north-east, said she believed the Disability Unit was simply ignoring the input of RSN members, and certainly those from the north-east.
She told DNS that the Disability Unit had been “controlling the agenda” and ignoring the information RSN members were sending them.
She said: “It’s all well and good holding online meetings, but what are you going to do about the issues, and there was never any response, never any feedback, absolutely nothing.
“The regional stakeholder network was set up as a tick-box exercise and I do not engage with tick-box exercises.”
She believes the network is “defunct” and was “deliberately made that way” and that the new Labour government realised almost immediately after winning power “how appalling it was”.
Cole has been sending case studies and briefings to the Disability Unit since soon after she joined the network in 2019, but she said she never received so much as an acknowledgement, let alone a response to her evidence.
Much of that evidence concerned the “untenable” level of harm being caused to disabled people by the social security system and the inaccessibility of the public transport system.
Other members, including Andrews, have also sent information to the Disability Unit without receiving a response.
Just hours after DNS asked the government to comment on their concerns, and the lack of an in-person consultation event in the north-east, the Department for Work and Pensions quietly announced that there would now be one next Thursday (26 June), which was announced with just eight days’ notice.
A government spokesperson said in a statement: “We are committed to championing the rights of disabled people and working with them so that their views and voices are at the heart of everything we do.
“The Regional Stakeholder Network (RSN) is integral to ensuring that disabled people are able to regularly share their regional insights with the government on disability issues.
“We remain committed to working collaboratively with the RSN to make sure disabled people’s voices are fed into the work of the government.”
19 June 2025
Government’s ‘weak’ response to damning transport access report puts right to travel in ‘grave danger’
The government’s “weak” response to a major report on the inaccessibility of the transport system has left the future of disabled people’s right to travel in “grave danger”, campaigners warned this week.
Although there were some pledges of action from the Department for Transport in its response, accessible transport campaigners criticised the overall lack of commitment to addressing the “long-standing litany of accessibility failures familiar to disabled passengers” across the public transport system.
The government was responding to the damning Access Denied report by the Commons transport committee, which called on ministers and the industry in March to “urgently” recognise that the “regularity and severity” of public transport access failures was a human rights issue.
But disabled campaigners said this week that the government’s response suggests anything but urgent action on these access failures.
The government did promise a review of laws on accessible transport, but it refused to draw up an inclusive transport strategy.
It insists instead in its response that accessibility “should be incorporated as a key area of focus” within its overall approach to improving the transport network.
Transport for All (TfA), the disabled-led campaigning organisation, said the government’s response was “weak” and “lacks commitment” and was “an overdue late nod to a longstanding issue” which “perpetuates inaccessibility”.
On regulation, instead of the call to assess whether there should be a single, central regulator to protect and enforce accessibility across all public transport, TfA said the government had proposed “a piecemeal approach of unenforceable charters and internal letters”.
It said this would “leave a spiderweb of legal loopholes, and allow transport providers to continue failing disabled people”.
Despite the committee’s demand for urgent action, TfA said the government’s response “repeatedly avoids setting clear deadlines for action, and glosses over time frames”.
The Association of British Commuters (ABC) said the government’s response showed disabled people’s right to travel was in “grave danger”.
In February, ABC and representatives of Disabled People Against Cuts, National Pensioners Convention and National Federation of the Blind of the UK accused the government of “betrayal” after it dropped plans to put accessibility at the heart of its plans for the new Great British Railways.
Emily Sullivan, ABC co-founder and a disabled researcher in equality and human rights, said the government response to the Access Denied report showed it “has no intention of doing anything” to address the “regulatory and investment crises in rail accessibility”.
As a result of the government’s response, she has now asked the Equality and Human Rights Commission – which in March chose addressing barriers to key public services, including public transport, as one of its priorities over the next three years – to take action on clear breaches of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD).
Sullivan pointed to the government’s continuing failure to ensure a right to spontaneous travel by denying disabled people the right to “turn up and go” across the rail network; its refusal to promise a national action plan on how to achieve “full rail accessibility”; the failure to consult disabled people on some of the key rail issues affecting them; and a deeply flawed regulatory system.
Accessible transport activist Sam Jennings, who runs the campaigning website Disabled By the Railway, was also highly critical of the government’s response.
She said the response to the report was “a nonsense word salad, and from my experience deliberately vague so that the status quo of inaction can be maintained.
“Enough is enough. No rail investment should be signed off unless it’s accessible and inclusive.
“After all, ‘turn up and go’ is an explicit legal right and the failure to uphold our rights is a breach of UNCRPD.
“We need strong leadership now from transport secretary Heidi Alexander, not word salads.
“Successive governments have had three decades to put this right since the first Disability Discrimination Act, and we are still screaming into the void about the basics.”
Disabled activist Doug Paulley, another influential accessible transport campaigner, welcomed the commitment to reforming the “complicated and opaque” legislation on accessible transport, much of which he has highlighted by taking legal action against the industry.
But he said the lack of commitment to improving enforcement of disabled people’s right to accessible public transport was “really disappointing”.
He said: “The existing model doesn’t work, and there’s no reason to believe that further exhorting regulators to do their jobs in this regard will make any material difference.
“Regulators are already subject to the public sector equality duty and have been for many years, as have licensing bodies, yet as noted in the select committee report that hasn’t resulted in reliable effective enforcement.
“It is really disappointing that the government has made no commitments whatsoever to change in that direction, and it completely undermines the whole point of the report.”
He added: “If government really cared about disabled people’s transport rights, they would make it simple and effective to report accessibility failures to a competent body who routinely takes effective action to enforce for disabled people.
“It also doesn’t work unless the government puts their money where their mouth is.
“This response, whilst espousing their commitment to accessible travel, is undermined by the government’s intent on forever delaying and limiting its expenditure on Access for All, failure to ensure purchase of rail vehicles suitable for level boarding, failure to challenge destaffing of public transport, and so many issues.”
Labour MP Ruth Cadbury, who chairs the transport committee, said of the government’s response: “There are warm words and some promising signs in this response to our report.
“But taken together, there is a disappointing lack of urgency to deliver real, lasting progress and improve the daily lives of disabled people – to close the gap between rights and reality.”
She added: “Our inquiry heard so much evidence from disabled people about how their ability to work, access services and socialise is denied by transport services that fail to live up to the promises of equality legislation and policies. This can’t go on.
“We need a zero-tolerance approach to discrimination and inadequacies in our transport services.”
19 June 2025
Rebel Labour MPs send final warning to ministers before disability cuts bill is published
Rebel Labour MPs delivered their final warnings to the government this week, ahead of yesterday’s publication of a government bill that will cut billions of pounds a year from spending on disability benefits.
A group of 15 Labour backbenchers took part in a photo-call organised by Disability Rights UK (DR UK) and DPO Forum England to show their opposition to the cuts proposed in the government’s Pathways to Work green paper.
The following day, the government published its new universal credit and personal independence payment bill (see separate story).
One of the Labour MPs, Nadia Whittome, said: “With one in 10 of my working-age constituents in receipt of these disability benefits, I am concerned that these cuts will further devastate my community after 14 years of brutal austerity by the previous Conservative government.
“Poverty is a political choice. I will not choose to make my disabled constituents poorer when we could be choosing to tax the super-rich instead.”
Another MP, Neil Duncan-Jordan, who has helped lead backbench Labour opposition to the cuts, said: “The facts are undeniable: these cuts won’t create jobs, they’ll only push three million people deeper into hardship.
“After 14 years of Tory cuts, the benefits system is already driving disabled people into destitution.
“Another wave of cuts won’t clean up their mess, it’ll make things worse.
“I urge ministers to pause, withdraw these cuts, and work with disabled people’s organisations to redesign a fairer benefits system.”
Georgia Bondy, from DPO Forum England, said after the photo-call: “We are glad to see there are MPs who understand just how essential it is to vote against disability benefits cuts for the 24 per cent of the population who are disabled.
“However, we need more MPs to join them in stopping this catastrophic legislation if we are to avoid devastation to disabled people’s lives, carers’ income and local councils’ financial stability.”
Mikey Erhardt, DR UK’s campaigns and policy officer, said the photocall was “a strong demonstration that the government’s minor concessions have failed to convince MPs that these cuts are anything except dangerous, ill-thought-out and needless.
“Despite promising a consultative process, the government is trying to force through a vote on proposals it won’t even share detailed information about.
“Rather than delivering change, this government is attempting to implement cuts that are even more severe than those of the austerity years.”
The MPs were speaking on the day that some of them took part in a parliamentary debate on disabled people in poverty.
Richard Burgon, one of those who took part in the photo-call, told the Westminster Hall debate that the “immoral” package of cuts would become “a millstone around the necks of not just the Labour government but every MP who fails to vote against it”, as thousands of their constituents are “thrown into hardship”.
Disabled MP Steve Darling, the Liberal Democrat work and pensions spokesperson, warned of the impact of the cuts on deprived communities.
He told fellow MPs: “I represent the most deprived community with a Liberal Democrat representative, Torbay, and I am concerned that the cuts to PIP will see cash sucked out of some of our most deprived communities across the country.
“That is money that would go to people doing support work such as cleaning, helping people to go shopping, taxis and so on being sucked out of what are already our most impoverished communities.”
Labour’s Rachael Maskell, who took part in the photo-call, told ministers: “The diagnosis is wrong and the treatment is no cure; all these cuts will do is to displace the cost and displace the problem.
“It was not disabled people who broke the NHS waiting-lists.
“It was not disabled people who removed the access to mental health services.”
She said: “It is the system, which has failed them for 14 years, that has done that to them – which is why we must change direction and not progress with these cuts.”
Duncan-Jordan, who secured the debate, said he believed the government was “rushing these proposals through” and he reminded fellow MPs that PIP was not an out-of-work benefit, “so cutting it is likely to undermine efforts to get people into employment, rather than supporting them into gainful work”.
He argued that the rise in the number of PIP claimants, which the government has repeatedly highlighted, was “largely the result of declining public health in this country combined with the increased financial hardship that disabled people are facing”.
Danny Kruger, a Conservative shadow work and pensions minister, said he did not believe Labour’s cuts would lead to “significant savings” because “the costs will be shunted elsewhere in the system”, such as onto local authorities and the NHS.
He admitted that the benefit reforms introduced by his own party in government over 14 years meant “the axe fell disproportionately” on some groups, although he claimed that “some genuinely positive measures were introduced”.
Labour’s Bell Ribeiro-Addy, said the briefing she received from the disabled people’s organisation Disability Advice Service Lambeth had “only deepened my conviction that the cuts are wrong and deeply damaging”.
She said the government should instead be looking for savings by slashing the profits of the multinationals “that make a profit off the humiliating PIP assessments”, with Maximus, the US firm that carries out many DWP assessments, recently reporting a 23 per cent rise in profits.
In her response to the debate, employment minister Alison McGovern spoke about the action taken by the government on issues such as wealth taxes, the child poverty strategy, free school meals, the NHS, and employment support, but she said almost nothing about the many concerns raised by MPs about the PIP cuts.
She said that the level of poverty among disabled people “demands our attention and action” and that disabled people “have the right to dignity, the right to work and the right to have power, choice and control over their lives.
“When someone is in poverty, regardless of whether they are disabled, they are robbed of the opportunity to choose how to live their own life, which is why the situation we face today is so very shameful.”
Meanwhile, disabled activists and allies have warned that the government’s cuts would also have a significant negative impact on disabled people who menstruate.
They say that PIP applicants with conditions like endometriosis and fibroids face a much lower than average award rate, with their debilitating symptoms often dismissed as “just a period” and the PIP process failing to account for the “cyclical exacerbation” of their symptoms and support needs.
The open letter, prepared by activist Hat Porter, hosted by menstrual justice charity Irise, and supported by other menstrual justice and disability organisations, calls on the government to reverse its “catastrophic” cuts.
It warns that tightening the PIP eligibility criteria “would make it even harder for people with conditions and support needs which fluctuate on a daily basis and through their menstrual cycle”.
The letter says the cuts would “further entrench the longstanding failures of the UK disability benefits system to recognise the ways in which symptoms, challenges, and support needs can fluctuate throughout the menstrual cycle or be intrinsically linked to menstrual and gynaecological health”.
And it calls on the government to engage with disabled people to consider how the PIP system can meet the needs of disabled people who menstruate, take better account of the experiences of people with fluctuating conditions and impairments, and adapt the PIP system to “explicitly recognise managing menstruation as an activity of daily living”.
19 June 2025
Other disability-related stories covered by mainstream media this week
The government’s welfare plans have to be pushed through, Keir Starmer has said, indicating that there will be no further concessions in the face of a potentially significant Labour rebellion over cuts to disability benefits. Speaking to reporters on his way to the G7 summit in Canada, the prime minister set out his determination to get the plans through parliament, after ministers warned mutinous MPs about the consequences of voting against the government: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/jun/15/welfare-plans-keir-starmer-labour-rebellion-disability-benefit-cuts
People with anorexia could be allowed to die by assisted death under a proposed bill, more than 250 campaigners have warned, urging MPs to vote down the legislation when it returns to the Commons. A letter to MPs, signed by 268 people who have had eating disorders, warned: “If this bill had been law during the years many of us were struggling, we would have used it to end our lives.”: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/assisted-dying-anorexia-kim-leadbeater-b2767857.html
Disabled people could lose more than £10,000 a year through Sir Keir Starmer’s benefit cuts, a group of MPs has warned. In a damning report, the all-party group on poverty said some claimants who will be made ineligible for personal independence payment face losing £886 per month: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/starmer-welfare-benefits-pip-cuts-b2769631.html
Nearly one in five pupils in England are receiving support for special educational needs in the classroom, according to government statistics. It comes as separate statistics show a sharp rise in the number of tribunals concerning special educational needs support, as parents challenge the support on offer for their child: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c23mdz2728zo
A 16-year-old wheelchair-user has described being “petrified” at being left on his own in an upstairs room when a fire broke out in his school. Lucas, from Tameside, Greater Manchester, said the experience in November inspired him to launch the #NoStudentLeftBehind campaign to improve fire safety for disabled students and make evacuation chairs compulsory in schools: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cz9kwpy152wo
Guardian writer Frances Ryan has been named one of Vogue magazine’s 25 women “defining Britain”, stating her work covering the rights of disabled people had become “essential reading”. The publication said Ryan’s efforts to spotlight the lives of disabled people were “needed more than ever”, with official statistics suggesting that a quarter of people in the UK report some kind of disability: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/15/guardian-writer-frances-ryan-named-one-of-vogues-25-women-defining-britain
19 June 2025
News provided by John Pring at www.disabilitynewsservice.com
