Government ignores warnings of new DWP deaths, and UN intervention, as MPs pass universal credit cuts bill
Labour MPs have voted to impose £2 billion-a-year cuts on disabled people who cannot work, despite a last-minute intervention by UN disability rights experts, and repeated warnings that the bill will cost lives.
Despite efforts to defeat the much-changed bill, or at least soften some of its remaining measures – particularly by a small group of backbench Labour MPs – the universal credit bill* was easily passed by MPs last night (Wednesday).
It will now be debated in the Lords, but peers will almost certainly not be able to make any changes to the bill, and it is now likely to become law later this month.
Disabled people and disabled people’s organisations were last night using words such as “shameful”, “cruel”, “a gut punch” and “a deep concern” to describe the bill and the process that led to it being approved by MPs.
The bill will see cuts to spending for new claimants of the universal credit health element of more than £2 billion-a-year by 2029-30.
By 2029-30, this will mean 750,000 universal credit claimants who cannot work for disability-related reasons seeing their health element addition frozen at £50 a week, compared to the £97 a week existing claimants currently receive.
Existing health element claimants and just 80,000 new claimants – less than 10 per cent of new claimants – will be protected from this cut because they are terminally-ill or qualify for Labour’s new “severe conditions” group.
Although there was some relief last week that the government withdrew planned cuts to personal independence payment (PIP) – at least until the end of a year-long review headed by social security and disability minister Sir Stephen Timms – there was still significant opposition from Labour MPs to the bill’s cuts to out-of-work disability benefits.
Disabled Labour MP Olivia Blake – who later voted against the bill – told fellow MPs that it would push many disabled people further into poverty.
She said: “Disabled people know what is best for us.
“We should be investing in people’s independence, not leaving them on the sidelines or pushing them into poverty.
“That is a matter of justice, but in the end it saves money as well.”
Nadia Whittome – who also voted against the bill – paid tribute to the disabled people whose “tireless campaigning” led to the government removing its planned cuts to PIP from the bill, but she said the legislation would still take about £3,000 a year from many disabled people in the future.
She described herself as a disabled MP – possibly for the first time in the Commons – and warned that “benefit cuts and loss of payments help to trap women experiencing domestic abuse, make children grow up in poverty and even cost lives, like that of my constituent Philippa Day”, whose death was caused by flaws in the PIP system**.
Whittome was among several MPs who pointed to a letter sent to the UK government late on Monday by the UN’s committee on the rights of persons with disabilities, expressing concerns about the bill and its apparent assault on disabled people’s rights (see separate story).
And she praised the work of DPO Forum England for helping her draft a new clause that would have ensured the government had to produce a document showing the human rights impact of the bill before it could be implemented.
Whittome said: “As a disabled MP, I have first-hand experience of the disability benefits system.
“We have all met constituents who are already not getting the support they need.
“The question today is this: do we let their number grow?”
Labour’s Alison Hume – who voted against the bill – called for an urgent change to the culture of the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).
She mentioned the death of Jodey Whiting and the successful eight-year campaign of her “incredible” mother, Joy Dove, to prove via a second inquest that the department’s decision to wrongly stop her disabled daughter’s out-of-work benefits after a string of safeguarding failings was the “trigger” for her to take her own life.
Hume said her own experiences with her disabled son showed her that “the culture of the DWP is hostile to disabled people.
“That culture must change if we are to have any chance of building a sustainable, fair and compassionate welfare system for the future.”
Independent MP Zarah Sultana warned that MPs’ decisions on disability benefit cuts and reforms have previously led to deaths.
She also mentioned Jodey Whiting, and Errol Graham, who starved to death after his out-of-work disability benefits were wrongly removed, and she said his death was “not a tragic exception, it was a political consequence”.
She said: “These are not just names; they are the human cost of decisions made in this place.”
John McDonnell, a long-time supporter of the disabled people’s anti-cuts movements, who voted against the bill, pointed to a banner that had been brought to the House of Commons by disabled activists during the David Cameron Conservative government, which showed disabled people who had taken their own lives because of austerity cuts and reforms to disability benefits.
McDonnell, a suspended Labour MP, said: “It was one of the most distressing things I have seen in my political life, and I wept that day.
“I do not want that to happen again.
“Let us be honest, as sure as night follows day, if cuts go through on the scale proposed, people will lose their lives. People will suffer immense harm. Let us all understand that.”
Steve Darling, the disabled Liberal Democrat MP and his party’s shadow work and pensions spokesperson – who joined his party in voting against the bill – said the events surrounding the bill had been “chaotic” and “shambolic”, while it had been “irresponsibly rushed through”.
He also accused the Labour government of using Sir Stephen “as a human shield” because of the decision to appoint him to review PIP instead of carrying out immediate cuts.
Although he later voted for the bill, disabled Labour MP Liam Conlon linked the increase in the number of claimants of disability benefits with a “decade of savage cuts to our NHS and community care services”.
He said: “This country now has the lowest life expectancy in western Europe, one of the highest rates of preventable deaths among rich countries, and one of the lowest numbers of neighbourhood nurses and GPs per head among wealthy nations.
“The dismantling of preventive care has not only brought our NHS to the brink; it has done more than anything else to drive the increase that we are discussing in the number of people who are on health-related benefits and who are disabled.”
Cat Eccles, the Labour MP for Stourbridge – who voted against the bill – another who mentioned the UN letter, spoke of previously claiming universal credit after experiencing health problems.
She told MPs: “I was in receipt of universal credit for about a year, receiving £690 a month, but that did not even cover my rent and bills, and I was at risk of losing my rented home.
“Thankfully, I had friends and family to support me, but not everyone is that fortunate.
“My confidence plummeted, and the feelings of failure, rejection and uselessness at not being able to sustain myself were all-consuming. Nobody chooses this life.”
She added: “In my constituency of Stourbridge, many people have thanked me over the past few days for voting against this flawed bill last week – not just disabled people and their families and carers, but charity workers, work coaches, nurses and local authority staff.
“Nobody supports this bill: not Deaf and disabled people’s groups; not charities; and not health organisations. Not even the United Nations supports it.”
Richard Burgon, who voted against the bill, asked fellow Labour MPs whether they could support a bill that would cut the support of 750,000 disabled people who were already on low incomes.
He added: “Disabled people who come to see us in our constituency surgeries will not understand if we, as Labour people, vote for this cut to universal credit tonight or abstain.
“We will live with that vote in every single constituency surgery between now and the next general election.
“This is not a left and right issue in the Labour party; this is a right and wrong issue.”
Three other disabled MPs – Emma Lewell, Marsha de Cordova and Marie Rimmer – all voted against the bill, although they did not speak in the debate.
But some Labour MPs who had opposed the PIP cuts voted yesterday for the cuts to the universal credit health element, and measures to create a new “severe conditions” group, for claimants who are likely to have fewer requirements to engage with work coaches than others receiving the health element.
Labour MPs who have previously opposed cuts to disabled people’s support but who voted for the bill last night included Debbie Abrahams, who chairs the work and pensions committee; Vicky Foxcroft, the former shadow minister for disabled people, whose resignation as a whip helped kickstart the backbench Labour rebellion over the PIP cuts; and disabled MP Marie Tidball, who voted against the PIP cuts last week.
Another disabled Labour MP, Jen Craft, also voted in favour of the bill, as she had last week.
There was one small government concession, secured through the efforts of Tidball and others, who had called for a firmer commitment to co-production with disabled people of the Timms PIP review.
Sir Stephen promised there would be a majority of disabled people or representatives of disabled people’s organisations on a group he will set up that will “lead and deliver” and co-produce the review, but he shied away from promising that disabled people on this group would have a veto on the review’s conclusions.
Instead, he said he would “aim for a consensus among all those taking part”.
He said the outcome of the review would be “central to the legislation that follows”.
He claimed that the universal credit bill would “protect existing claimants in a powerful way, including those with fluctuating health conditions, but it will move decisively to a more proactive, pro-work system”.
And he claimed that the bill “begins to repair a broken system that holds people back, by removing work disincentives from universal credit”.
All the non-government amendments aimed at improving the bill, and which were voted on, were defeated, and the final vote on whether the bill should be approved and passed to the House of Lords was passed by 336 votes to 242.
Before yesterday afternoon’s debate, disabled activists warned that the events of the last few weeks would leave many disabled people struggling to trust Labour MPs for the final four years of this parliament.
Andy Mitchell, in parliament yesterday for a last-ditch lobby of MPs, said: “It’s such a betrayal of everything we believed Labour stood for.
“Working with Timms is going to be really difficult after what he’s done and said.”
And Megan Thomas, from the Coalition Against Benefit Cuts, who was also helping organise the lobby, told Disability News Service: “Disabled people are seeing this as a betrayal.
“This is not what we were campaigning for, it’s not what we were promised.”
*Previously named the universal credit and personal independence payment bill
**The Department: How a Violent Government Bureaucracy Killed Hundreds and Hid the Evidence, DNS editor John Pring’s book on the years of deaths linked to DWP’s actions and failings, including those of Jodey Whiting, Errol Graham and Philippa Day, is published by Pluto Press
10 July 2025
Urgent letter from UN to Labour government warns: We think your cuts continue Tory attack on disability rights
A UN committee of disabled experts has told the government that its new benefit cuts bill appears to be a fresh attack on disabled people’s rights, a year after it issued a similar warning to the Conservative government.
The letter sent to the UK government by the UN committee on the rights of persons with disabilities followed intensive efforts by disabled people’s organisations (DPOs) to provide the UN with evidence of the impact of the government’s planned cuts to out-of-work disability benefits.
The UN letter suggests the Labour government is continuing on a path laid by successive Conservative governments through their cuts and reforms to disabled people’s support since 2010.
Last year, the committee told the Conservative government it had made “no significant progress” in the more than seven years since it was found guilty of “grave and systematic” violations of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, following an inquiry sparked by a complaint by Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC).
Now the committee has told the UK government that it has “received credible information indicating that if approved, the [bill] will deepen the signs of regression that the Committee indicated in its 2024 report on the follow-up to the inquiry.”
This week’s letter was sent by the committee to the UK government on Monday evening.
It pointed to cuts to the health element of universal credit for most new claimants; the risk of these cuts increasing disability poverty; the lack of proper consultation with disabled people’s organisations; and concerns over the use of artificial intelligence to monitor the bank accounts of universal credit claimants.
But it also highlighted “public statements” by MPs and government departments that have portrayed disabled people as “making profit” from benefits, committing benefit fraud, and “being a burden to society”.
The letter gives the government until 11 August to respond, with the committee set to examine the concerns publicly at the UN in Geneva later in August.
The initial work to compile evidence for the committee was carried out by a small group of disabled activists within DPO Forum England, which later expanded to include representatives of other disabled people’s organisations (DPOs).
These other DPOs included the coalition that monitors implementation of the UN convention in the UK, DPAC, Disability Rebellion, Crips Against Cuts, and Amnesty International UK’s disabled people’s human rights network.
Their evidence had to be redrafted after the government agreed last week to remove measures to cut billions of pounds of spending on personal independence payment from the bill.
The DPOs were convinced that the bill would still prove highly damaging to disabled people, and activists met online last Friday with Jorge Araya, secretary of the UN’s committee on the rights of persons with disabilities.
They stressed the urgency of the situation, with the government set to rush through the legislation before the summer recess on 22 July.
They managed to produce a detailed letter describing their concerns by Monday, allowing Arraya to secure the committee’s approval, and send its letter to the UK government.
Within hours, disabled activists were contacting MPs who have backed parliamentary efforts to scupper the bill, and several of those MPs mentioned the letter in yesterday’s final Commons debate on the bill before it passes to the Lords (see separate story).
Rick Burgess, co-chair of DPO Forum England, who helped put the letter together, said: “I think it’s shameful that yet again, disabled people have had to appeal for international help to defend us against our own government.
“This was meant to be a change of government, and we are having to do the same things against a similar kind of hostility.
“It’s shameful, it’s absolutely shameful.
“The Labour party needs to look at itself and they need to look at the people in charge of it and say, ‘what have we let happen here within our party?’ if they have got a shred of their integrity or principles.”
Mark Harrison, a member of the Reclaiming Our Futures Alliance steering group, said he was glad the UN committee had expressed its concerns about the legislation and the “poisonous rhetoric” of ministers in justifying the cuts.
He said: “It feels like Groundhog Day, except it is not Cameron and Osborne but a Labour government attacking us, our rights and living standards.
“This is terrible politics, a Labour government vilifying disabled people and using the Tory media to parrot their lies.
“They will live to regret this, as disabled people and the public will remember in the same way as they did with pensioners’ winter fuel payments, the two-child benefit cap and continuing austerity for local government and the NHS.”
The Department for Work and Pensions said it would respond to the UN committee’s letter in due course.
It produced the following statement: “We are changing the broken social security system we inherited so it helps people across the country to live with dignity, genuinely supporting those who can work into employment, and ensuring the safety net will always be there for the most vulnerable.
“We are putting the views and voices of disabled people at the heart of our review to ensure PIP is fit for the future, and are only making changes to the benefit once we have completed the review.”
10 July 2025
Race against time to secure DWP deaths evidence before parliament passes new benefit cuts bill
There is a race against time to force the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to release vital evidence about flaws in the universal credit system before parliament passes a bill that will cut billions of pounds from disabled people’s support.
The government appears set to succeed in forcing the bill through parliament before the summer recess on 22 July, after it passed its final Commons stages yesterday (Wednesday).
The bill will cut the health element of universal credit (UC) for most new claimants from £97 a week to £50 a week, from April 2026, although a small number of new claimants – less than 10 per cent – will see their health element stay at the higher rate and rise in line with inflation*.
Despite these cuts, DWP is continuing to hold back potentially damaging evidence that links universal credit with the deaths of disabled claimants.
This evidence includes a secret “critical friend” paper from 2021 on the department’s safeguarding failures; another paper that details the impact of its errors on “vulnerable customers”; and recommendations made by its own secret internal process reviews (IPRs) following deaths linked to UC, dating back as far as 2020.
It is possible that some of the IPR evidence could be included in the department’s annual report, but that is unlikely to be published before the bill becomes law.
Last year’s annual report was published on 22 July 2024.
Information secured by Disability News Service (DNS) shows there were 63 secret reviews into deaths linked to UC between January 2020 and November 2023, and another 28 IPRs into cases involving serious harm to a claimant that did not result in their death.
But DNS has also been trying for more than 18 months to secure information from DWP that would show what recommendations for improvements – relating to its “capability, culture, behaviour and process” – have been made by civil servants who carried out these IPRs.
The information rights tribunal has ruled that DWP does not need to release these recommendations to DNS because they are “intended for future publication”.
DWP previously told the tribunal that it would release the information bit by bit, beginning with recommendations from 2022-23 that would be released by 31 March 2025; recommendations from 2020-21 and 2021-22 that would be released by 30 November 2025; and recommendations from 2023-24 that would be released by 31 March 2026.
None of this information has yet been published.
Rick Burgess, from the grassroots, user-led mental health group Recovery in the Bin, said: “They are doing all this stuff without MPs having full knowledge of the problems of the system.
“Am I surprised? No, I am not surprised; it is 100 per cent a continuing cover-up.
“The whole attitude of the DWP remains utterly unchanged; I don’t know how any MP can expect that institution to do anything except cause harm.
“I think we need a new ministry of social security that administers social security and has nothing to do with work… and which is safe and says, ‘we will catch you when you fall’.
“How can you say that any functioning democratic processes are happening when you’ve got a system that has been responsible for many, many, many deaths, and that is allowed to cover-up its role in that.”
*Existing claimants of the health element and those new health element claimants meeting the severe conditions criteria (SCC) or considered under the special rules for end of life will see their UC standard allowance combined with the UC health element rise in line with inflation in the next four years. People in the SCC group will be exempt from future UC reassessments. The standard allowance of UC will rise above inflation in each of the next four years
**The Department: How a Violent Government Bureaucracy Killed Hundreds and Hid the Evidence, DNS editor John Pring’s book on the years of deaths linked to DWP’s actions and failings, is published by Pluto Press
10 July 2025
‘Complete shift in thinking’ needed on education of disabled children, says ALLFIE
Inclusive education campaigners have called for a “complete shift in thinking” on how disabled children and young people are educated, just as the government faces public uproar over reforms to the special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) system.
There were widespread reports of another threatened backbench Labour rebellion this week, over concerns that ministers will reveal plans to restrict access to education, health and care plans (EHCPs) when they release a schools white paper in the autumn.
After years of alarm at Conservative moves to push an ever-growing number of disabled children into segregated special schools – at least until the final years of the last Conservative government – Labour’s plans appear to be aimed at ensuring more disabled children can be educated in mainstream settings.
But there are concerns that this will come at the expense of the legal rights to support provided through EHCPs, with significant doubt that the government will invest enough in the education system to provide that support.
The Alliance for Inclusive Education (ALLFIE) called on the government this week to “stop playing games with our lives”, and to provide “legally enforceable rights” to inclusive education in mainstream settings.
The EHCP issue became particularly toxic for the government this week after a letter to the Guardian newspaper from charities, family organisations and public figures.
The letter warned that “every sign from the government” suggests the white paper will remove the right to an EHCP from children attending mainstream schools.
It added: “Local authorities want EHCPs drastically reduced, or removed altogether, to relieve them of duties they often find costly and troublesome.”
The letter said about 270,000 disabled children with EHCPs are currently educated in mainstream settings, providing them with “legally enforceable” documents describing the support they are entitled to.
Among those signing the letter were non-user-led disability charities such as the National Autistic Society, Mencap, and Sense, and parent-led groups such as SEND National Crisis and Special Needs Jungle, although the disabled people’s organisation Disability Rights UK also added its support.
But ALLFIE declined to sign the letter because it said it did not support the current EHCP system, which it said was “primarily premised on resources and support that are available”, although it also did not back the government’s plans to remove or restrict access to EHCPs.
The problem, it said, was that the current system relies on “bureaucratic evaluations, eligibility thresholds, and means-testing methods resulting in dehumanising experiences”.
Its position was backed by Disability Action Haringey, which said this week that it “stands in solidarity with ALLFIE and echoes their concerns”.
ALLFIE’s chair, Navin Kikabhai, said the current “gatekeeping” system was “broken and fragmented” and was “desperately requiring a radical rethink and shift in practice”, even though EHCPs have enabled some disabled children and young people to access mainstream education.
He said: “We know that the current system pitches family against family for resources, often favouring those families who have the financial means to pursue legal representation.
“Why should a disabled child or young person need a plan to go to their local school or college alongside non-disabled peers, their friends, siblings and neighbours?
“This is a social justice and human right issue.
“We need a complete shift in thinking and practice.
“We need an Inclusive Education Act that makes it illegal for mainstream schools and colleges to refuse admission to a disabled person on the basis of their identity.”
And, he said, the government needed to remove the reservation against article 24 of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities*, phase out all forms of segregated provision, and “commit to a fully inclusive education system”.
He added: “The government must stop playing games with our lives.
“The education of disabled children and young people must not depend on the goodwill or budgets of local authorities.
“Rights are not optional.”
Questioned about the government’s reforms in the Commons this week, education secretary Bridget Philippson said little about its plans, other than promising that children will “get better access to more and strengthened support with a much sharper focus on early intervention” and that Labour would be “investing more in support for children with SEND”.
She added: “The guiding principle of any reform to the SEND system that we will set out will be about better, strengthened and improved support for children both inside and outside special schools.
“We want improved inclusivity and more specialist provision in mainstream schools and absolutely to draw on the expertise of the specialist sector and create the places where we need them.
“There will always be a legal right to the additional support that children with SEND need.”
*This means the UK has reserved the right for disabled children to be educated outside their local community, while an “interpretive declaration” explains that the UK believes the convention allows it to continue to operate both mainstream and special schools
10 July 2025
Minister ignored concerns from disabled advisers, months before publishing cuts bill
A minister ignored concerns about proposed benefit cuts that were raised in a meeting by his own network of disability advisers, months before the government published its ill-fated universal credit and personal independence payment bill.
Minutes of a meeting in March show all nine chairs of the government’s regional stakeholder network (RSN) – most of whom are disabled people – raised concerns about reports of government plans for cuts and reforms to disability benefits.
The quarterly meeting of RSN chairs was held on 10 March, a week before the publication of the government’s Pathways to Work green paper, which announced billions of pounds of cuts to disability benefits, and more than three months before the bill was published.
Two chairs even told Sir Stephen that fewer of their members than usual had attended their latest network meetings because of the stigma, fear and stress around the issue.
Despite the concerns raised by his network chairs, Sir Stephen Timms, the minister for social security and disability, pushed ahead with the plans for billions of pounds of cuts to personal independence payment (PIP) and the health element of universal credit.
That refusal to listen to grassroots concerns led to last week’s backbench rebellion over the PIP cuts, and to further anger this week over cuts to the health element of universal credit that remained in the bill (see separate story).
Sir Stephen’s failure to listen to his own disabled advisers raises fresh concerns over his pledge to co-produce the review of PIP he will be leading, which is expected to report in autumn 2026.
Among those who raised concerns in the meeting, RSN South East chair Chloe Plummer warned Sir Stephen that she would not have been able to remain in work without her PIP, while media speculation and uncertainty about PIP proposals was causing “huge anxiety”*.
Justin Donne, chair of RSN East Midlands, spoke of the “fear around people being pushed back into work and the risk of losing financial help”, according to the minutes.
Louise Mckiernan, chair of RSN West Midlands, said there was a need for clarity around PIP “being a disability rather than work-related benefit” – clarity that ministers repeatedly failed to provide in the following months, while even adding to the confusion – while also pointing out that media speculation about the cuts meant disabled people feared losing their PIP.
RSN London’s Marc Goblot spoke of the “concerns about signalled PIP cuts”, while John McDonald, interim chair of RSN North East, said there was a “real sense of fear” about “potential cuts and being forced into work”.
Carl Suckling, deputising for the chair of RSN East of England, told Sir Stephen that stress caused by media speculation meant disabled people “live in fear of receiving a letter about life changing benefit cuts”.
And he said there was a need for “counter-messaging” from the government in response to the media portrayal of disabled people as “shirkers or spongers who play the system”.
Last month, Disability News Service reported how two disabled leaders had quit the RSN after months – and even years – of “inertia” and a failure to respond to their input, and raising serious concerns about the government’s commitment to listening to disabled people and about the work of the Disability Unit.
*Note: the quotes used in this article are from the government’s minutes, rather than exact comments made by the RSN chairs in the meeting
10 July 2025
Frustration after government only issues partial ban on new floating bus stops
Disabled campaigners have expressed their frustration with ministers after they imposed a “pause” on the most dangerous types of “floating” bus stop but refused to halt the rollout of all such installations.
The National Federation of the Blind of the UK (NFB UK) is among disabled people’s organisations that have campaigned for years to highlight the risks of floating bus stops, particularly to blind and partially-sighted bus-users.
The charity has warned that such infrastructure is “not safe or accessible for blind and visually impaired pedestrians,” and that the designs are “discriminatory”.
It has previously pointed out that the Equality Act has “failed to protect blind, deafblind and visually impaired bus passengers, as well as many other disabled and vulnerable bus passengers from unsafe bus stops”, which it said was “nothing short of a national scandal”.
The announcement of a pause was made by transport minister Simon Lightwood during debate in the committee stage of the bus services (no 2) bill last Thursday.
The government has also promised to issue guidance on the design of floating bus stops within three months of the bill becoming law, but it has ruled out banning all floating bus stops because it believes that could put the safety of cyclists at risk.
Lightwood said the government recognised that “more needs to be done to make these installations accessible to all”.
He said this was why ministers had decided to “instigate a pause on designs [in England] where passengers board and alight directly into a cycle track shared between pedestrians and cyclists”.
These bus stops are known as “shared used bus boarders”, and they expose passengers to the risk of crossing cycle lanes when either boarding or leaving a bus.
But campaigners, including many who are blind and partially-sighted, have also been calling for years for the government to ban the “bus stop bypass” type of stop, where a cycle lane is routed behind the bus stop, creating a bus stop “island”.
This type of floating bus stop also creates significant risks of collisions with cyclists for pedestrians, particularly those who are blind or partially-sighted, and, NFB UK said this week, “renders bus services inaccessible for blind people”.
Lightwood added later in the debate: “This government do not believe that a complete ban on [all] floating bus stops is appropriate, given the need to improve safety for cyclists and to enable more people to cycle.
“The requirement to publish statutory guidance, to which local authorities are required to have regard, will enable the government to set out clearly what is expected of authorities in terms of making floating bus stops accessible.”
Andrew Hodgson, an NFB UK executive council member, said: “We are very disappointed about the outcome following debate in the House of Lords and at committee stage (in the Commons).
“We had hoped for a total ban on future bus-stop bypasses of all types and that all of the existing ones would be taken out.
“We feel that the proposed review of bus-stop bypass design is flawed, as the very people who have installed them will be assessing their future design.”
But the government’s actions were also thrown into confusion when it emerged that the previous week, in answering an oral question in the House of Commons, Lightwood had appeared to promise to pause the installation of both kinds of floating bus stop.
He had told Conservative MP David Reed that ministers had committed to “writing to all local transport authorities asking them to pause the installation of a specific kind of floating bus stop, where passengers get off the bus straight into a cycle lane or an island”.
The Department for Transport told Disability News Service yesterday (Wednesday) that the government would only be pausing shared used bus boarders, but the department had refused to say by noon today if the minister would apologise for his blunder.
10 July 2025
Report suggests five big ideas that could transform disabled people’s mobility
A new report – co-produced with a disabled people’s organisation – has suggested five “big ideas” that could transform disabled people’s mobility.
The Transforming Mobility report aims to ensure disabled people are included when places “become more ambitious in transforming mobility”.
The research was led by Transport for All and disabled members of the charity Sustrans, which works to improve opportunities for walking, wheeling and cycling.
Among the report’s five big ideas is to increase the number of “side road zebra crossings” – painted white zebra strips across a junction but without the flashing lights and zig-zag approach markings – so more drivers give way to disabled people and others waiting to cross the road.
When tested in Greater Manchester, they led to 65 per cent more drivers giving way, providing disabled people and other pedestrians with the space they need to cross a road.
Another of the big ideas is to create accessible “mobility hubs” that would make it easier to walk, wheel or cycle to the bus, train or tram.
The report also suggests taking space away from cars on some streets and making it available instead for walking, wheeling, cycling, and public transport; and cutting the amount of space allocated to car parking to make room for benches, trees, bike parking, and wider pavements.
And it says disabled people should be paid to become members of local access panels, so they can “help shape local transport decisions”.
The report says that mobility in the UK is currently “neither fair nor sustainable, especially for disabled people”, with disabled people experiencing “greater barriers to mobility, including cost, accessibility and safety”.
The project surveyed disabled people across the UK and found that less than half of those who cycled, or travelled by bus or train, viewed these kinds of transport positively, while walking and wheeling was rated negatively by one in five disabled people, including around safety, accessibility and comfort.
The survey also found that four-fifths (78 per cent) of disabled people supported a public commitment from public transport providers to improve the design of trains, buses and trams.
The survey found three-fifths (58 per cent) of disabled people support cutting car use across urban areas to “reduce congestion, speed up buses, and make places more pleasant to walk, wheel and cycle in”, although the report says it is essential that any such plans ensure disabled people who rely on cars do not face barriers to making their journeys with “freedom, dignity, ease and confidence”.
The report’s findings come from a 2024 survey of more than 1,000 disabled people across the UK, carried out by researchers at More in Common, and workshops with disabled people in Birmingham, Edinburgh, and Oxford.
The research was funded by Motability Foundation*.
Dr Ruth Cumming, senior research officer at Transport for All, said: “We all need the freedom to travel – for work, for school, for shopping – and to make those journeys easily and safely.
“Disabled people are often blocked from that.
“Including disabled people as experts in transport and urban planning ensures our requirements are built into developments, creating streets, communities and cities that we can all use and enjoy.”
Tim Burns, head of research at Sustrans, said: “We know disabled people face greater barriers to getting around and accessing the things they need to live well – while also wanting to travel more sustainably.
“Our report highlights tried and tested ideas, increasingly being adopted across the UK.
“Disabled people want transport to change.
“When disabled people are represented, the outcomes are better for everyone.”
*Motability Foundation is a Disability News Service subscriber
10 July 2025
My new book shows exactly why we need the disability movement, says disabled author
A disabled journalist has said she hopes her new book detailing the history of disability activism will show other disabled people how they can fight back against the waves of attacks on their rights and support.
Rachel Charlton-Dailey’s book, Ramping Up Rights: An Unfinished History of British Disability Activism*, was published on Thursday (3 July), just a day after MPs voted on a watered-down bill that will cut billions of pounds a year from disability benefits.
As she says in its introduction, she hopes it will allow disabled people to see “where our movement came from, and why it’s still needed in the 2020s”.
Much of the book describes the non-violent direct action that parts of the movement have used since the late 1980s to draw attention to the struggle against oppression.
In an online interview on Friday with Steve Topple, a journalist with the radical working-class media organisation The Canary, Charlton-Dailey said she believed direct action by disabled people was still essential, at a time when their rights are so clearly under attack.
Partly, she said, that is because of the widespread misinformation about disabled benefit claimants being spread by the media and government.
She said: “More than ever, we do need the disruptive action, but we also need the explaining… we do just need to talk to people and say, ‘you know that’s not true, don’t you?’”
This, she said, is why the new anti-cuts campaigns like Taking the PIP, which she is heavily-involved with, are so important, because they show what is “actually happening”.
Both direct action and campaigns like Taking the PIP are necessary, she said.
“We shouldn’t be building one up more than the other… and we should be the ones who are doing the explaining side.”
Asked by Topple for her “standout” piece of direct action, she points to the successful campaign by the Disabled People’s Direct Action Network (DAN) to ensure that former Tory MP Robert Hayward – who had wrecked an attempt to introduce a disabled people’s civil rights bill, and then lost his seat in 1992 – lost a by-election in the safe Conservative seat of Christchurch, Dorset, in 1993.
DAN activists chased Hayward around Christchurch, ensuring that his would-be constituents knew exactly how he had sabotaged attempts to bring in anti-discrimination legislation.
Charlton-Dailey said: “They chased him around for three days on the campaign trail.
“I would love to do something like that.”
She said all her conversations locally – she lives in Sunderland – were about the cuts to disability benefits, and that it was clear MPs were not listening to their constituents.
She said: “We know just how fucking scared people are, and I think they don’t realise just how much this affects pretty much everybody.
“They want us scared and they want us confused because it means we are less likely to fight back, and we are more likely to accept the bullshit when we are scared and confused and we don’t know how to fight back.”
She said her book was “giving people the ways that they can fight back and the way that they can keep going”.
Asked by Disability News Service where she saw the movement in five years’ time, she said: “Hopefully, stronger and better. I want to hope that we will not need to be where we are now, that we won’t need to be constantly fighting.
“But I think that we’ll just be going from strength to strength and hopefully that we’ll be a lot more unified.
“I’m trying to hope that we don’t need to exist, but we will always have to exist.”
Asked by Topple what the movement could do better when it comes to disability activism, she said: “A lot of it is just inclusion… making sure people are included, making sure there is more provision for a lot of people who can’t go to protests every day.
“It’s making sure we keep up the fight, and keep the pressure on.
“Basically it is just getting involved, trying to get involved as much as you can, like joining your local groups… getting involved online as much as you can, sharing, just talking to people more than anything, and just making sure that we’re getting the truth out there.”
The book – described by Kamran Mallick, chief executive of Disability Rights UK, as “a call to arms”, and by the Guardian’s Frances Ryan as a “much needed take on disability history and our power in protest” – covers events up until March 2025.
She told Topple that so much had happened since March, when she had to stop updating the book ahead of its publication, that from that point until now “it feels like we’ve lived about 20 political cycles”.
Her one regret is over her criticism in the book that there had not been much online disability activism, because in the last few months that has changed.
She said: “Since then, we have had online protests, and we’ve had online communities spring up, out of necessity.
“They needed to spring up, and we needed new life in the movement.”
Since March, she said, all that has changed, with “some really incredible action from disabled people”, and she pointed particularly to the week of action from the new Crips Against Cuts.
Charlton-Dailey said there was “lots of soul-searching” before deciding to write the book, because she questioned whether she was the right person for the task, as she “didn’t really know” about the history of the movement until she started her research.
It was appearing at an event alongside Barbara Lisicki – DAN’s co-founder – that gave her the idea to write Ramping Up Rights.
She said: “I really wanted to take people on the journey and make it as accessible as possible, and make it about the people instead of just dates, dates, dates, dates, dates…”
The book is the first time someone has attempted this kind of history of the British disability rights movement and “bring all of it together”, she said.
As disabled doctor and author Grace Spence Green says, Charlton-Dailey’s book manages to trace “disability justice across generations, yet feels so current and pressing”, and is a “damning indictment of the state’s treatment of disabled people”, while also being “an ode to our creativity, perseverance and resilience”.
Ramping Up Rights: An Unfinished History of British Disability Activism, by Rachel Charlton-Dailey, published by Hurst
10 July 2025
Other disability-related stories covered by mainstream media this week
A frail elderly woman says she was raped after turning to strangers online for help because care was not put in place by her local council when she came out of hospital. The woman said she had requested urgent care from Hammersmith and Fulham council having been sent home from hospital: https://www.mylondon.news/news/west-london-news/elderly-london-woman-raped-after-31946194
10 July 2025
News provided by John Pring at www.disabilitynewsservice.com
