DPAC response to TUC statement on PIP today

All Posts, Access to Work, Motability, News, PIP, Speeches, Universal Credit, welfare cuts, Welfare reforms 1 Response »

May 182026

We are disappointed with the TUC statement on PIP today calling for reform on PIP by linking PIP with work.

General secretary Paul Nowak says: “The Government has a vital opportunity to support more disabled people into work through the Timms Review…. Only a genuine reform of Pip will ensure that disabled people who can work receive the support they need to move into and stay in work.”

But PIP is paid to people who work and who don’t work. It is not paid on the basis of work – it is paid on the basis of daily living and mobility/getting around. Work does not come into the assessment, nor should it. It may help people to access work, but that is not the primary purpose of it.

The TUC statement suggests that PIP reform and the Timms review is justified and should involve consideration of work. It is now being reported in the media as ‘PIP rules should be changed to get disabled people into work.’

DPAC member Bill Scott says: ‘I’m a lifelong trade union member and long time activist but I feel utterly betrayed by what Paul Nowak has said and so will hundreds of thousands of other disabled people. Honestly I’ve spent over 20 years trying to build bridges between the trade union movement and disabled people and I feel as though I’ve totally wasted my time as all the suspicions that disabled people had about them are borne out.’

DPAC member Lee Starr Elliot moved a motion at the CWU conference calling on the TUC to do better when it comes to the gov attack on social security for deaf and disabled people: Recommitting to Action Against Disability Cuts. It was passed unanimously. Video and text below.

I stand before you today because we are witnessing a coordinated, systemic attack on disabled workers – an attack that is being dressed up as “reform” but feels like a declaration of war on our class. Last year, at the TUC Congress, we stood together. Motions 38 and 39 were passed unanimously. The entire trade union movement pledged coordinated and sustained action against disability cuts. The CWU was at the heart of that fight.

But today, there is a dangerous silence coming from Congress House.

The TUC leadership has suggested that because of minor concessions on PIP, the “emergency” has passed. They claim they no longer need to implement the actions we voted for.

Conference, they are wrong.

These concessions are a sticking plaster on a gaping wound. They are temporary, lasting only until the conclusion of the Timms Review. And let’s be clear: the promised “co-production” with disabled people is a sham. We aren’t being consulted; we are being managed.
While the TUC waits, our members are suffering. Cuts to Motability, the gutting of Access to Work, and the squeezing of the Universal Credit Health Element are not “policy adjustments” – they are life-altering emergencies.

And it’s not just the Department for Work and Pensions. Decades of austerity and the systematic underfunding of local councils have decimated social services, transport, and education. When a council can’t provide a bus or a carer, it is the disabled worker who is imprisoned in their own home.

Perhaps most sickening is the targeting of the next generation. Through the Milburn and Streeting reviews, we see a government obsessed with “over-diagnosis” and “work-readiness.” They are threatening to abolish Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCPs) and forcing 55,000 young disabled people into compulsory placements under the shadow of sanctions.

This is not “support.” This is state-sponsored bullying.

That is why this motion is vital. We are instructing our NEC to stop the TUC from dragging its feet. We are calling for:

1. *A coordinated movement-wide campaign* that exposes the cumulative impact of these cuts.

2. *An accessible, static demonstration* and a mass lobby of Parliament. We need to show them our faces and our strength.

3. *A weekend demonstration against Labour’s austerity plans.* We must send a message to this government: You cannot balance the books on the backs of disabled workers.

4. And finally, we demand an *independent disability review* – one led democratically by disabled people and trade unions, not by Whitehall bureaucrats working for the benefit of their mates and their pockets.

Conference, we don’t just want a seat at the table; we want to change the menu.

The TUC must recommit and be led by the disability community not the politicians. We must support the movement to move united and We must stand with our disabled members, not just in words, but in struggle. I move. Solidarity

Disability News Service December 4th

Access to Work, All Posts, Assisted Dying Bill, Benefits, DWP, News, Politics, Universal Credit, welfare cuts, Welfare reforms No Responses »

Dec 052025

DWP and Treasury silent over mystery of £2 billion cuts to disability benefits 1

‘Unacceptable’ new figures show rejections of Access to Work claims have shot up this year 3

Watchdog’s silence after removing figures that showed social security spending is not ‘spiralling’ 5

Manifesto calls on next Welsh government to enable disabled people to ‘flourish and thrive’ 7

Deaf people who use BSL face ‘entrenched’ health and social care exclusion, say government advisers 9

Years of scapegoating rhetoric has led to ‘envy and resentment’ of those with blue badges, research finds 11

Other disability-related stories covered by mainstream media this week 14

DWP and Treasury silent over mystery of £2 billion cuts to disability benefits

The government has refused to explain the impact that last week’s budget will have on disabled people who receive benefits, despite repeated requests for clarity over cuts of up to £580 million a year.

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) and the Treasury have both failed to provide any details of the cuts to spending on disability benefits of nearly £2 billion over five years.

It is just DWP’s latest failure of transparency since Labour’s new minister for social security and disability, Sir Stephen Timms, promised to improve its openness to public scrutiny in September 2024.

Treasury documents published on the day of last week’s budget showed that, from next April, the government will increase DWP’s “capacity” to carry out reassessments of disabled people’s capacity for work through the work capability assessment (WCA).

DWP will also carry out more face-to-face assessments, which have been drastically cut back since the early weeks of the pandemic, both through WCAs and assessments of eligibility for personal independence payment (PIP).

The Treasury’s budget costings document also said DWP would be “changing the frequency” of reviews of PIP awards, which would allow it to “complete award reviews on time, reducing the number of people who are called to a PIP assessment when their function has not changed, and allowing providers to redirect resource to WCA re-assessments”.

The budget document described this measure as “extending Personal Independence Payment award reviews periods”.

The budget costings document said these changes will “ensure people receive the right health or disability benefit and the system is sustainable”.

But there are significant question-marks over these measures, because the changes together are set to save the government £85 million next year, £310 million in 2027-28, £520 million in 2028-29, £580 million in 2029-30 and £455 million in 2030-31, a total of £1.95 billion over five years.

Disability News Service (DNS) has been asking the Treasury and DWP to clarify how these cuts will be made for more than a week.

The Treasury initially claimed that the budget documents were not announcing new policies, but were “just costing existing plans from planned welfare reforms – so nothing new from this”.

But neither department has been able to point to where or when these “existing plans” were announced by DWP, particularly the changes in reviews of PIP awards, and how these changes will affect PIP recipients and those on out-of-work disability benefits.

Although the government has previously made it clear that it wanted to increase reassessments through the WCA, and to increase the number of face-to-face WCAs and PIP assessments, these ideas were included in March’s green paper.

Green papers are supposed to lay out policy proposals for consultation, but they are not announcements of final decisions on government policy.

DNS has been unable to find any DWP announcements on these and the other measures in last week’s budget documents since the spring budget on 26 March 2025, other than a brief reference to carrying out more PIP face-to-face assessments in a speech by the then work and pensions secretary Liz Kendall in May.

Both DWP and the Treasury have refused to provide clarity on the budget changes, with DWP instead releasing a statement that failed to explain what measures it was taking on PIP award reviews*.

It is the latest in a string of DWP failures on transparency since Labour came to power, continuing years of similar failings under successive Conservative-led governments.

At Labour’s annual conference in Liverpool, in September 2024, Sir Stephen told DNS: “The department has absurdly refused to answer lots of the questions that you have asked and that is something that we want to change… because public scrutiny is a good thing, and it puts pressure on ministers and on civil servants to have the consequences of what they are doing known about publicly.”

Meanwhile, DWP’s controversial new anti-fraud bill – now to be known as the Public Authorities (Fraud, Error, and Recovery) Act – has become law after receiving royal assent on Tuesday.

Last month, cross-party MPs warned that ministers’ refusal to introduce a key protection into the bill could see a repeat of the countless deaths caused by the austerity measures of past governments.

And they warned that future “authoritarian” governments could misuse the powers the Labour government has claimed through the bill, which applies to England, Scotland and Wales.

One of those powers will allow DWP to force banks to examine the accounts of claimants of means-tested benefits and then provide details of any accounts where there have been potential breaches of benefit eligibility rules.

Disability Rights UK said it was “deeply concerned” at the “bank spying bill” becoming law.

It said on X/Twitter: “A government agency that is notorious for punitive sanctions and bureaucratic faults that have cost lives, this will have dire consequences.”

*The statement is included here as a footnote, as it failed to answer the questions put to the department by DNS: “We are increasing the number of face-to-face assessments and tackling the backlog of Work Capability Assessments we inherited, by changing the frequency of PIP assessment reviews. This will ensure claimants receive the right level of support while at the same time reducing unnecessary award reviews, as we shift our focus from welfare to work, skills and opportunities.”

4 December 2025

‘Unacceptable’ new figures show rejections of Access to Work claims have shot up this year

Ministers have been forced to admit that the proportion of Access to Work claims they are rejecting has leapt by more than a fifth this year, with disabled campaigners describing the figures as “unacceptable” and “clearly worrying”.

The figures, provided through a response to a written parliamentary question, show the proportion of applications rejected has risen by more than 22 per cent in 2025-26 so far, compared with 2024-25.

This follows a rise of more than 12 per cent in 2024-25, Labour’s first year in control of the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP)*.

It is the strongest evidence yet to support concerns being raised by disabled campaigners, who have been warning for months that Access to Work (AtW) support is being cut.

The figures came just days after Disability News Service (DNS) reported that DWP was claiming that “an issue” with data was preventing it releasing detailed monthly figures on AtW claims.

The new figures were released by Sir Stephen Timms, the minister for social security and disability, in response to a question from Labour’s former shadow minister for disabled people, Vicky Foxcroft.

Rather than requesting more detailed monthly data, as DNS had done, she had asked for the number and proportion of AtW claims that had been closed in each year since 2022-23.

In 2022-23, Sir Stephen told her, 31,482 applications were not approved, which was 30 per cent of all decisions.

The proportion of applications rejected fell to 24 per cent in 2023-24, the last full year of the Conservative government, but then last year under the new Labour government – which claims it is trying to increase the number of disabled people in work – it rose to 27 per cent of all applications being rejected (a 12.5 per cent increase).

And so far this year (April to October), the proportion of claims rejected has increased even more sharply, with 27,297 applications not approved, one in three (33 per cent) of all decisions, a rise of more than 22 per cent (six percentage points) on 2024-25.

Although he provided these figures, Sir Stephen failed to provide Foxcroft with data showing the frequency of reasons for rejections (which include “no contact from the applicant”, “insufficient evidence provided”, “applicant not eligible” and “application not pursued”.

Disabled consultant, broadcaster and campaigner Shani Dhanda, co-founder of the Access to Work Collective, said the increase in claims being rejected was “unacceptable”.

But she also called again for clarity from ministers on exactly what was happening within the AtW system.

She told DNS: “We still have no idea where people are being lost in the system, and the vague reasons given tell us nothing about what actually went wrong.

“What we see on the ground is chaos: phone calls going unanswered, people cut off mid-call, evidence repeatedly misplaced, and applicants waiting so long for approvals, change of circumstances or renewals, that work opportunities disappear.

“The fact that non-approvals have jumped to 33 per cent, the highest in recent years, while transparency has been stripped back, is unacceptable.

“Access to Work is meant to support disabled workers, not shut them out.”

David Buxton, chief executive of the disabled people’s organisation Action on Disability, which in October produced evidence showing the average AtW support hours of disabled people it had been working with had plunged from 22.5 to just four in two-and-a-half years, said the new figures were “clearly worrying”.

And he criticised the department for the lack of transparency over what was driving the increased rejections.

He said: “Without clear data, we are all being left to guess, but what’s absolutely clear is that disabled people need a system that works.

“We must push for workable, sustainable and effective solutions that genuinely support people to stay in work.”

He added: “The numbers point to a system that is struggling to meet disabled people’s needs.

“When more than 100,000 applications over recent years have not been approved, and when a third of decisions this year are non-approvals, that has a very real impact on people’s ability to stay in work or take up new roles.”

Catherine Eadie, a social enterprise founder and Access to Work claimant, and a member of the Access to Work Collective, added: “For those of us dealing with Access to Work daily, these figures match what we see: procedural errors, misinterpretation of guidance, misplaced evidence, and delays so long that people’s jobs and businesses become unviable while they wait.

“When approval rates drop this sharply and explanations get vaguer, trust is impossible.”

Foxcroft told DNS: “I encourage ministerial colleagues to investigate this concerning increase in the number of cases being rejected by the DWP and ensure that it feeds into their wider work on reform of the current programme.”

She said: “It has long been clear that Access to Work is not fit for purpose.

“I am pleased that ministers have acknowledged this and begun to take action through the Pathways to Work green paper.

“These statistics show, however, that there is still a long way to go towards removing the workplace barriers disabled people face every day.”

DWP is expected to announce its proposals for AtW reform in the next few weeks.

*It took control in July 2024, so the first three months of 2024-25 were under Conservative control

4 December 2025

Watchdog’s silence after removing figures that showed social security spending is not ‘spiralling’

The government’s “independent” spending watchdog has refused to explain why it removed figures from its crucial budget forecast report that proved spending on social security is not spiralling out of control.

The move by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) will help the government – and commentators – justify expected future cuts to spending, such as to personal independence payment and out-of-work disability benefits.

This week, the Sunday Times reported that the government was set to push ahead with plans, first proposed in March’s Pathways to Work green paper, to prevent disabled young people under the age of 22 from receiving the health element of universal credit.

And in a speech in London on Monday, the prime minister, Sir Keir Starmer, said that the social security system had “trapped people in poverty”, particularly young disabled people.

Her said young disabled people were being “simply written off” and trapped “in a cycle of worklessness and dependency for decades” which “costs the country money” and was “bad for our productivity”.

Disability News Service and academics, other journalists and disabled activists have been using the OBR figures since early this year to dismantle claims that “welfare spending” is increasing at an unmanageable rate.

But these crucial figures have been omitted from OBR’s latest Economic and Fiscal Outlook report, which was published last week alongside the budget.

The figures were first highlighted by a disabled activist in February, after they were included in the OBR’s October 2024 Economic and Fiscal Outlook.

The October 2024 figures showed that the share of GDP* taken by social security spending was stable, and was even predicted to fall from 11.1 per cent to 11.0 per cent in 2027-28 and 2028-29, before rising slightly back to 11.1 per cent in 2029-30.

Updated figures were included in an OBR report in March this year**, and they showed that social security spending was predicted to be even lower – as a proportion of GDP – than previously predicted.

The figures were included in one of the charts released alongside the Economic and Fiscal Outlook report, which is published alongside every budget.

That chart (chart 5.2) tracked “welfare spending” as a proportion of GDP for every year back to 2010-11, when it was 12 per cent of GDP.

But last week’s version of chart 5.2 was substantially different.

Instead of showing how spending has changed year by year since 2010-11 as a proportion of GDP, table 5.2 now shows how the proportion of government spending in different areas has changed relative to 2010-11 levels, making it impossible to compare social security spending levels year-by-year and prove that it has not “spiralled”.

What last week’s OBR report does show (see table 5.1 in the main report) is that the chancellor’s spending decisions – including scrapping the two-child benefit cap – have not led to an increase in the proportion of GDP being spent on social security, compared with previous predictions.

The figures show that welfare spending for 2024-25 was significantly lower than predicted last year (10.8 per cent compared with a predicted 11.1 per cent) as a proportion of GDP, while the predicted spending for this year is also lower than was forecast by the OBR last year (10.9 per cent versus 11.1 per cent), while the forecast levels for the next four years have remained unchanged.

These figures show that any attempt by media, civil servants and politicians – such as chancellor Rachel Reeves last year, DWP in January, and opposition MPs such as Tory leader Kemi Badenoch in September – to make false claims that social security spending is spiralling out of control would be misleading, if not deeply dishonest.

This week, OBR’s press office refused three times to even acknowledge emails asking why it had removed the historic figures from the report.

The Treasury had also not commented by noon today (Thursday) on whether it requested OBR to remove the historic welfare spending figures.

OBR’s refusal to comment came in a week that its chair, Richard Hughes, resigned after the watchdog mistakenly published its outlook report before Reeves had delivered her budget speech to MPs.

*Gross domestic product, the size of the country’s economy in a particular year

**Chapter five of OBR’s Economic and Fiscal Outlook – March 2025, chart 5.2, shows welfare spending as a percentage of GDP: https://obr.uk/efo/economic-and-fiscal-outlook-march-2025/

4 December 2025

Manifesto calls on next Welsh government to enable disabled people to ‘flourish and thrive’

The national body for disabled people’s organisations (DPOs) in Wales has issued five major demands to political parties ahead of next spring’s elections to the Welsh Senedd.

The Disabled People’s Manifesto, published by Disability Wales, includes a call for the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) to be incorporated into Welsh law.

It also demands a “robust” disabled people’s rights plan – which should include the appointment of a minister for disabled people – ahead of the current Welsh government’s 10-year plan, which is likely to be published this month.

And it calls for Welsh politicians to champion disabled people’s leadership – supporting disabled leaders in public life, and ensuring they are represented in decision-making and policy development – and for government to fund the work of DPOs.

The manifesto demands a guaranteed right to independent living, with reforms to social care, health and housing that focus on dignity, choice, and accessibility, and for the new government to promote inclusion, and end the institutionalisation of disabled people.

And it calls for the social security system to be devolved from the UK to the Welsh government, as has been – partially – achieved in Scotland.

The manifesto, From Barely Surviving to Truly Thriving, has been developed with DPOs from across Wales and individual disabled people.

In all, more than 250 disabled people helped shape the manifesto, which outlines demands from politicians over the four years from the May 2026 elections.

Although the Welsh Labour government included a pledge to incorporate UNCRPD into Welsh law in its programme for government in 2021, Disability Wales says no progress has been made towards this goal, and so the convention remains “a guiding framework rather than a legally enforceable standard”.

A draft version of the Welsh government’s Disabled People’s Rights Plan, when it was published in May, saw the government accused of putting up a “smokescreen” with a document that lacked “teeth” and was full of pledges to carry out reviews and produce guidance while offering no new money.

The 61-page plan included no significant promises on key areas such as social care, accessible housing and transport, and disability poverty, and was short of concrete targets.

Disability Wales says in its manifesto that the draft plan “must be strengthened to ensure long-term impact and accountability”, while there must be “sustained investment and infrastructure” for DPOs so they can be “essential partners” in delivering the plan.

Disability Wales also says in its manifesto that disabled people “remain underrepresented in political and public life”.

It calls for all political parties to publish the percentage of their representatives who identify as disabled people and their targets for improving these figures in the run-up to the 2026 Senedd and 2027 local government elections.

The manifesto says that barriers to independent living “strip away autonomy and keep people trapped in unsuitable housing, inflexible care arrangements and discriminatory environments”, and it calls instead for accessible housing, inclusive health services, and an end to institutional care.

It also calls for a national campaign to tackle the “ableism, stigma, and discrimination” faced by disabled people.

Devolving social security systems to Wales would enable “more responsive, fair, and inclusive support systems, designed in coproduction with disabled people and DPOs”, the manifesto says.

It concludes: “Disabled people in Wales deserve more than mere survival.

“We deserve the right to truly flourish and thrive.

“We know that change is possible, but it requires commitment, collaboration and courage.

“We call on all political parties to adopt these five calls and work with us to build a Wales where disabled people are not just supported but celebrated.”

Disability Wales has also launched a “commitment form”, asking every political party and candidate to state clearly and publicly where they stand on each of the manifesto’s five calls.

Their responses will be updated during the Senedd election campaign and used afterwards to monitor delivery and implementation of the policy demands.

Rhian Davies, chief executive of Disability Wales (DW), said: “DW’s vision is for an inclusive, equitable and barrier free society.

“Disabled people in Wales deserve more than mere survival; we deserve the right to truly flourish and thrive.

“Following the recent module two Covid-19 Inquiry report, which criticised government failure to appreciate the level of risk faced by disabled people, resulting in escalating death rates and a reversal of rights, this manifesto is a call to action for all political parties to commit to real change.

“Together, we can move from surviving to thriving.”

Natalie Jarvis, DW’s policy and research officer, said: “As someone involved in the co-production of this manifesto alongside DPOs and the voices of hundreds of disabled people across Wales, I have heard stories of exhaustion, frustration and injustice but also of hope, resilience and vision.

“Disabled people know exactly what needs to change.

“What we need now is the political will to act and for parties to commit to our calls within their own manifestos ahead of the elections.”

4 December 2025

Deaf people who use BSL face ‘entrenched’ health and social care exclusion, say government advisers

Deaf people who use British Sign Language (BSL) face “entrenched” and “systemic” exclusion from health and social care services across Britain, according to a new report by government advisers.

The report* found that Deaf and Deafblind people’s lack of access to services costs the Treasury millions of pounds through “unmet needs, wasted appointments and delays in care”.

Better access to health and social care services would allow more Deaf and Deafblind people to find work and progress in their careers, and contribute more through taxation, says the report.

The report focuses on the experiences of Deaf and Deafblind BSL-users in England, Scotland and Wales, and is based on a review of their access to services carried out by the government’s BSL Advisory Board’s health and social care sub-group.

The report found a “deep-rooted lack of trust” within Deaf and Deafblind communities following repeated experiences of exclusion from services, which often left them “traumatised” by a lack of access to health and social care.

One Deaf woman spent five months sleeping in an accident and emergency cubicle because there was no bed available in mental health services that had BSL support.

Repeated access failures and exclusions often cause “accumulated trauma” over a person’s lifetime, says the report.

BSL users usually need “high levels of motivation, perseverance with inaccessible systems and patience with the inexperience of professionals trying to meet their needs” if they want to access services, the report found.

Many BSL-users avoid social care and health services completely due to their past experiences because they believe their communication needs will not be met.

There are believed to be about 87,000 Deaf BSL-users in the UK, and 25,000 people who use BSL as their main language.

The report makes a string of recommendations to the UK and devolved governments, including calls to establish national, 24/7 video relay services for England and Wales; set up national BSL complaints services within England, Scotland and Wales; provide mandatory deaf, deafblind and BSL awareness training for all NHS and social care staff; and address “language deprivation” in deaf children through “early and comprehensive” BSL provision and support for families.

The Locked Out report* follows the passing of the British Sign Language (BSL) Act in April 2022, which was introduced as a private members’ bill by Labour MP Rosie Cooper and recognised BSL as a language of England, Wales, and Scotland.

The act provided Deaf people with no new rights, but it secured significant support from the Deaf community, and it led the following year to the government setting up its BSL Advisory Board to offer advice to ministers on key issues affecting the Deaf community.

All the board’s members are deaf or deafblind, or have deaf parents or a deaf child.

Craig Crowley, the board’s co-chair, says in a foreword to the report that the document is a “powerful call to action and a roadmap towards a more inclusive and equitable future for BSL users within our health and social care systems”.

He says: “We acknowledge the distressing reality of delayed diagnoses, inadequate treatment, and the emotional impact of communication breakdowns, but we strongly believe these are challenges we can, and must, overcome.”

The British Deaf Association (BDA) welcomed the new report and its “stark” findings, describing it as the “most comprehensive examination ever undertaken into the barriers faced by Deaf and Deafblind BSL users across the NHS and social care systems”.

It said the persistent failures in communication access were causing avoidable harm, entrenched inequalities, and the denial of basic rights for tens of thousands of Deaf and Deafblind people across the UK.

Rebecca Mansell, BDA’s chief executive, said: “This is a ground-breaking report that lays bare the challenges that deaf signers face every day with the NHS and care system. 

“This report confirms what Deaf and Deafblind people have been telling government for decades: the health and social care system is not built with our communities in mind. 

“We are particularly delighted to see the strong focus in the report’s recommendations on the steps that governments must take to address language deprivation in deaf children and adults.

“We strongly endorse the recommendation that governments provide free BSL courses for the families of deaf children. 

“This recommendation backs up the recently published report, The Value of British Sign Language – An Economic Analysis, written by Rand Europe, the policy research organisation.

“This reports that the teaching of BSL to young deaf children and their families delivers an impressive economic return on investment – up to £14 for every £1 invested. 

“This report requires a strong and supportive government response, and we will be contacting BDA members to urge them to write to their MPs.” 

The Department of Health and Social Care had failed to comment on the report by noon today (Thursday).

*Locked out: Exclusion of deaf and deafblind BSL users from health and social care in the UK

4 December 2025

Years of scapegoating rhetoric has led to ‘envy and resentment’ of those with blue badges, research finds

Years of scapegoating rhetoric and politicians casting disabled people as “scroungers” have reinforced prejudices about the blue badge parking scheme and led to “envy and resentment” instead of equal access, according to a four-year research project.

Half-hearted implementation of the scheme has left disabled people who rely on it feeling worried, angry and frustrated, and like “second-class citizens”, because of the encounters they have had while trying to use their badges, the research concludes.

The research was carried out by Vera Kubenz, a disabled postgraduate researcher at the University of Birmingham, and herself a blue badge holder.

She said this week that she feared that recent rhetoric around disabled people receiving “free cars” through the Motability scheme, and the need for cuts to disability benefits, would lead to a fresh wave of such aggressive and hateful encounters.

In a summary report based on her research, Disabled People’s Encounters with Strangers in Accessible Parking Spaces, Kubenz concludes that, as long as there is wider societal prejudice, hostility and suspicion aimed at disabled people, “there can be no such thing as a truly accessible space”.

As part of her research, she surveyed more than 300 disabled people with experience of encounters – good and bad – while using their blue badges.

In the survey, 74 per cent of disabled people said they had been accused of “faking” their impairments while using their blue badges.

These types of encounters were particularly common for younger disabled people, with some told they were “too young” to be disabled.

One of those who took part in the survey, who is 49, said: “A member of the public stopped me as I was parking in a Blue Badge space.

“He knocked on my window, I wound it down and he told me I shouldn’t be parking there, and I had no right to be there.

“I explained I was disabled. He said I was too young and there was nothing wrong with me.

“I proceeded to get into my wheelchair and get out of the car, in fairness, he did look quite embarrassed when I got out of the car.”

The impact of such encounters was clear, with 91 per cent of disabled people who took part in the survey saying they worried about them, with 40 per cent always worrying and 35 per cent worrying a lot, while more than two thirds (68 per cent) said they sometimes did not use their vehicles because of the worry.

Another survey participant said: “A man in his 50s came over trying to take our car keys out of the car (luckily it was a keyless ignition Motability vehicle).

“When he realised he couldn’t get the key he came round to my side trying to grab my Blue Badge.

“We was called every name under the sun. The c word, the n word, lots of f yous.

“All because we had parked in the disabled bay… I was that upset with the whole incident I wanted to just leave and not have my operation.”

Common locations for encounters were supermarket carparks (87 per cent of those surveyed), near shops (70 per cent) and at hospitals or GP surgeries (58 per cent).

Most people (70 per cent) experienced encounters between a few times a year and a few times a month.

People with chronic illness, who were neurodivergent, or who had mental health conditions were particularly likely to be confronted over their use of accessible parking spaces.

Many of those surveyed said that being under constant suspicion meant they always felt on edge and worried that an encounter could happen at any moment.

Two thirds (67 per cent) of disabled people taking part in the survey had experienced hate and harassment in accessible parking spaces.

Negative encounters could involve staring, tutting, or hushed comments, while nearly half (46 per cent) of people had been insulted and a third (32 per cent) had been threatened, while some (six per cent) had been subjected to physical violence.

But most people (69 per cent) had also had at least one positive encounter, often a positive chat with another blue badge holder.

Kubenz says in the report that enforcement of blue badge spaces is often a postcode lottery.

Although some of those surveyed said their councils took action to enforce rules around the use of blue badges, many others said their council took no action.

One said: “I wish that Blue Badge parking was properly policed because what we have now is the worst of both worlds, people making assumptions and not looking at the badge and trying to police it for the benefit of those who do, but in doing so make lots of assumptions.”

Ultimately, says Kubenz, all disabled people who use blue badges risk confrontations because “nobody can live up to the impossible stereotype required for being truly ‘deserving’”.

The survey of 304 blue badge holders was carried out in 2023, while there were 20 follow-up interviews; it was open to holders of blue badges who had had at least one encounter, were over 18, and lived in England.

Kubenz told Disability News Service this week: “I am very concerned that the renewed government and media statements about disabled people’s ‘free cars’ and cuts to both in- and out-of-work benefits will intensify the resentment non-disabled people have against all disabled people, and that this will lead to more encounters because people feel entitled to ‘police’ blue badge bays because they are seen as a perk rather than essential for access.

“These confrontations can range from underhanded comments to intrusive questions, verbal abuse, and even physical violence.

“I fear the current government rhetoric will directly contribute to more aggression and hate towards disabled people.”

She added: “Many of the people interviewed had little faith that the government would change anything about blue badge policy or awareness, precisely because they are responsible for so many of the misconceptions that lead to encounters.

“I conclude in my research that currently the blue badge scheme only provides bare minimum access; it is not about equality, but about keeping disabled people ‘in their place’.”

On Friday 12 December, between 12pm and 1pm, Kubenz is hosting a webinar on the findings of her Politics of Parking project, with guest speakers Anjna Patel, a trustee of Disabled Motoring UK, and accessible transport campaigner Christiane Link

4 December 2025

DWP’s plans ‘in tatters’ as McFadden scraps white paper on further disability cuts

Ministers have dumped plans for a major white paper containing a swathe of further cuts and reforms to disability benefits, following months of activism by disabled people and allies that forced the government into a major U-turn this summer.

Work and pensions secretary Pat McFadden, who only took on the role last month, confirmed the move in a meeting with representatives of disabled people’s organisations (DPOs) earlier this month.

One DPO said yesterday (Wednesday) that the admission was a “major success” for disabled people who fought the summer cuts bill.

But DPOs also warned that activists would need to keep up the pressure on ministers because McFadden had made it clear that, despite abandoning the white paper – which is likely to have significant political implications for the Labour government – individual measures would be taken forward.

He insisted in the meeting – first revealed this week by Greater Manchester Coalition of Disabled People – that further reforms would go ahead, but they would be introduced individually rather than all together in a white paper.

The white paper was set to be based on many of the measures outlined in the Pathways to Work green paper, and responses to a subsequent public consultation.

The results of that consultation should be published before the end of this year.

The decision to bin the white paper means that many of the reforms suggested in March’s green paper – including removing the health element of universal credit for those under 22; reform, and possibly cuts, to Access to Work; a time-limited replacement for contributory employment and support allowance; scrapping the work capability assessment; and changes to the safeguarding, conditionality and sanctions regimes – are likely to be announced separately over the coming months.

Some – but not all – of the reforms will still require legislation.

McFadden’s admission that he had dumped the white paper was made in a meeting on 14 October with Fazilet Hadi and Svetlana Kotova from umbrella organisation DPO Forum England.

Hadi, head of policy for Disability Rights UK, told Disability News Service (DNS): “I definitely think that the amazing campaigning from disabled people and our allies against the PIP cuts has left the government feeling very bruised.

“The change of heart in publishing a DWP white paper, and the delay in launching the SEND white paper, bear this out.

“Having said this, Pat McFadden has been moved to DWP to drive through cuts to social security, so the lack of a white paper doesn’t mean that there won’t be further threats to the benefits of disabled people.

“It just means that those threats won’t all come at once.”

Kotova, director of campaigns and justice at Inclusion London, agreed.

She said: “There is a pause, but it does not mean reforms won’t be coming.

“And we need to keep the pressure and persuade or force the government to switch its focus from cutting benefits or ‘fixing us’ to be more work ready to putting resources and its attention to making workplaces more inclusive.”

Among their arguments in the meeting, she said, was for the government to move money from employment support towards the Access to Work scheme.

Steve Darling, the Liberal Democrat work and pensions spokesperson, has lodged a parliamentary question about the “deeply disturbing” situation after being alerted by DNS.

He said: “At the time of a cost-of-living crisis, it is concerning that the secretary of state could be moving away from a more thoughtful, considered approach, to one more driven by cuts than by strategy.

“This will only add to the stress and uncertainty that disabled people are facing with the threat of more cuts to disability benefits next year.

“I have therefore asked the secretary of state a named day parliamentary question to find out when (if at all!) the white paper will be published, to try to shed some light on this fraught situation.”

Rick Burgess, from Greater Manchester Coalition of Disabled People, who first revealed publicly that the white paper had been dumped, told DNS: “They are not confident that they will get a big piece of legislation through parliament anymore.

“It shows we really scared them. It’s a huge embarrassment for them. All their plans are in tatters, and they are afraid of losing another showdown in parliament.

“A Starmer government couldn’t survive another drubbing.”

But he said he did not think ministers had changed their attitudes towards welfare reform, only that they were not confident they could push a large bill through parliament.

And he said it would be much harder for disabled people to stop a stream of smaller reforms, and that “keeping track of them is going to be really tricky”.

Linda Burnip, co-founder of Disabled People Against Cuts, said the government’s move to drop the white paper was “obviously a major success for disability rights activists and the many months of campaigning”.

But she said it appeared likely that ministers would use secondary legislation to “sneak things through in dribs and drabs and hope changes won’t be noticed”.

McFadden told Fazilet Hadi and Svetlana Kotova at the meeting that no decisions had yet been taken on barring under-22s from the health component of universal credit, and that it was a priority of his to get more young people into work.

They said he seemed to indicate that time-limiting contributory benefits would be taken forward relatively soon.

Hadi said: “We emphasised the need for government to join up its policies on disabled people and to coproduce solutions with us.

“We urged him to move funding to the Access to Work scheme from the additional money being spent on employment support.”

Reforms – and almost certainly cuts – to personal independence payment are expected to follow next autumn, following a review being headed by Sir Stephen Timms, the minister for social security and disability.

Sir Stephen today (Thursday) launched the review, and announced his disabled co-chairs – Dr Clenton Farquharson and Sharon Brennan – as well as a recruitment process for the 12 members of a steering group that will jointly lead the review.

He said the majority of this steering group would be disabled people or representatives of DPOs.

DWP had not commented on McFadden’s admission by noon today (Thursday).

30 October 2025

‘Shocking’ figures show parents linked to DWP service face death rates up to three times higher

Parents who pay to support a child through the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) and its Child Maintenance Service (CMS) face death rates up to three times higher than others the same age, according to “shocking” and “deeply troubling” new figures.

Analysis by Disability News Service (DNS) has shown that, for every age group between 20 and 54, those who use the service – known as “paying parents”* – face a much higher rate of death than those of the same age who do not have to deal with the CMS.

DNS carried out the analysis using figures obtained from DWP through a freedom of information request.

The request followed concerns raised by campaigners who have called for an inquiry into the deaths of parents driven to take their own lives by DWP’s refusal to correct errors in child support demands.

The figures, which are particularly exaggerated for younger age groups, have been passed to the Commons work and pensions committee, which is at the early stages of an inquiry into concerns about CMS.

Among the inquiry’s aims will be how to “improve the way it deals with families”, and concerns over how CMS calculates payments, and enforcement of its decisions.

The DNS analysis shows that, for all those aged 20 to 24 in England and Wales, the rate of deaths in 2024 was 0.04 per cent, compared with 0.13 per cent for CMS paying parents (more than three times higher).

For those aged 25 to 29, the rate of death was more than twice as high for paying parents, and for those 30 to 34 it was twice as high (0.12 per cent versus 0.06 per cent).

The difference in death rates narrows for older age groups, but there is still a substantial difference for every group analysed by DNS, with CMS paying parents aged 50 to 54 facing a death rate of 0.46 per cent in 2024, compared with 0.34 per cent for all adults in that age group.

Results for 2022 and 2023 show similar, striking differences.

Over those three years, there is not a single age group between 20 and 54 – the only groups examined in the analysis – where the death rates are not higher for paying parents than for all adults in England and Wales.

Although the figures do not show how many of these deaths were suicides, they do add strong evidence to the claims of campaigners who believe the higher rates of death for paying parents are at least partly caused by errors by CMS and its toxic culture, including its refusal to correct its mistakes.

DWP said this week that it was carrying out reforms aimed at streamlining CMS but that it did not “recognise” the DNS figures or any suggestion of a causal link between the actions and culture of CMS and the deaths of paying parents, although it did not point out any errors in the DNS calculations.

Ian Briggs, from research and campaign group STOPS (StopSuicides UK), which focuses on the harm caused by CMS, said: “I, and many others, have long known that the CMS and the DWP have been responsible for driving many parents to suicide.

“For years we have tried to highlight this to the DWP, yet every attempt is met with the same denial – that there is no link between the CMS and suicides.

“Even when presented with clear and credible evidence gathered by the STOPS group, the official response from ministers has remained one of outright dismissal.”

His son Gavin took his own life five years ago.

The coroner at Gavin’s inquest refused to investigate his father’s claims that the actions of the CMS had contributed to his decision to take his own life, even though the agency had wrongly claimed he owed £16,000 in support payments, after claiming his income was £76,000 rather than the £26,000 it was in reality.

Ian Briggs said this week: “The mortality rates recently revealed through John’s** research and exposed by Disability News Service cannot all be explained away as coincidence.

“While not every death may be due to suicide, these figures reveal a deeply troubling pattern that demands urgent scrutiny.

“At some point, there must be a full and independent public inquiry into these disturbing facts and the systemic failures within the CMS and DWP that continue to destroy lives and families.

“I would like to personally thank John and Disability News Service for… exposing these shocking mortality rates, and for giving a voice to the countless families – like mine – who have suffered unimaginable loss.”

Craig Bulman, who was left with PTSD after the Child Support Agency mishandled his case – the agency, the predecessor of CMS, eventually paid him a £5,000 consolatory payment – said the figures uncovered by DNS were “shocking”.

He told DNS: “Even allowing for statistical margins, the death rates you’ve calculated are deeply disturbing and point to something seriously wrong within the Child Maintenance Service.”

The Child Support Agency’s failings left Bulman homeless, triggered a mental breakdown, and caused the loss of his job.

He said this week: “These figures confirm what families have been warning for years – that the Child Maintenance Service is operating without proper oversight or duty of care.

“Death rates among paying parents are up to three times higher than the national average, and yet the DWP has failed to investigate or publish these findings.

“This now warrants an independent inquiry under the Inquiries Act 2005.”

In January 2023, during the final session of a previous inquiry into CMS by the Commons work and pensions committee, Labour MP Debbie Abrahams told of a paying parent whose arrears had been inaccurately assessed “and the frustration that he found ultimately led to him taking his life”.

She said his mother had previously written to DWP “expressing real concerns about mental health” but there had been no reply.

She added: “This is not the first time. We had a panel before Christmas that also provided data about the suicides of paying parents who were inaccurately assessed in terms of the arrears that they owed.

“This is tens of thousands of pounds that they said that they owe, leaving literally pounds for them to exist on.”

She asked Tory work and pensions minister Viscount Younger at the time if DWP collected data on suicides of paying parents.

He told her: “Could I just say that, being new into the department, I am already aware, having seen some of the correspondence that I have had to look at and sign off on, of some absolutely tragic cases?

“It is absolutely appalling that cases can lead to people taking their own lives.

“That is dreadful and we must look at all ways in which we can avoid that or have systems and processes that do not lead to that.”

Despite those comments, a DWP spokesperson said this week: “Over 780,000 people engage with the Child Maintenance Service, many of whom are experiencing a difficult time in their lives, and all staff are trained to support vulnerable customers.

“We do not recognise this data or suggestions of a causal link between the CMS and deaths among parents.”

*Child maintenance covers how a child’s living costs are paid when one of the parents does not live with the child

**DNS editor John Pring

***The following organisations are among those that might be able to offer support if you have been affected by the issues raised in this article: Mind, Papyrus, Rethink, Samaritans, and SOS Silence of Suicide

30 October 2025

Former detective exposes culture of disability discrimination within ‘institutionally disablist’ Met

A culture of institutional disability discrimination within the Metropolitan police is exposed today by the former head of its disabled staff association.

Dave Campbell, who retired this year after serving 32 years as a police officer, has told Disability News Service (DNS) that he believes disability discrimination within the force is rampant and that the Met is institutionally disablist.

He believes this “corporate culture” impacts how the force engages with disabled members of the public.

Campbell was chair of the Met’s Disabled Staff Association (DSA) for six years, and he was also vice-president of the Disabled Police Association of England and Wales.

His disclosures come only days after DNS revealed that prosecutions of disability hate crime across the country were continuing to plummet, with police forces in England and Wales passing on just a tiny proportion of recorded cases to prosecutors.

For six years, Campbell repeatedly tried to persuade the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) to act on his concerns, before his retirement earlier this year.

It was his intervention that ensured the recent Casey review of the force’s internal culture and standards of behaviour examined the treatment of disabled people, when its initial focus was on racism, sexism and homophobia.

He believes the review provided an “alarming insight into how disabled people feel about their place in the organisation”, as he told Met commissioner Sir Mark Rowley in a letter last year.

He has told DNS that the upper levels of the Met have made it clear through their actions and inflexible policies – which he says marginalise disabled staff, and stem from outdated attitudes – that they do not want people who become disabled to continue serving as police officers in the force.

He says several disabled officers and staff have left the force because of their disability-related treatment and have written directly to the commissioner expressing their “despair and concerns”, without receiving any acknowledgement.

Over the four years between 2019 and 2023, he says, more than 200 disability discrimination employment tribunal claims were taken against the Met, including a significant number which included claims of race or gender discrimination.

The Casey review found an even higher number – 358 – in the five years between 2017-18 and 2021-22, but it was criticised by disabled campaigners for concluding that MPS was institutionally racist, sexist and homophobic, but not that it was institutionally disablist.

Campbell believes the number of disability discrimination tribunal cases increased after the Casey review by up to 60 per cent in 2023-24 compared to the previous year, while the DSA received hundreds of emails from distressed colleagues about the way they were being treated by their managers.

He has told Sir Mark that disability-led internal grievances are also at a high level, while many of his members had “no confidence or trust in the grievance management process” or in the ability of the Culture, Diversity and Inclusion directorate – set up after the Casey review – to produce change.

In the wake of Casey’s report, Campbell – as DSA chair – commissioned an independent review of disability inclusion and workplace adjustments in the force, by the Business Disability Forum (BDF), which reported its findings in September 2024.

Disabled colleagues in the DSA were asked if they had witnessed or personally experienced unfair treatment at work through disability-related harassment, bullying or discrimination, and 358 of the 775 who responded to the survey said yes (46 per cent), and another 123 (16 per cent) said maybe, a total of 62 per cent.

Of 504 police officers, 49 per cent said yes, and 15 per cent said maybe, a total of 64 per cent.

Of the 775 responses from disabled officers and civilian staff, less than 20 per cent (160) agreed with the statement: “MPS is an organisation that recognises and values disabled people.”

And just 65 (eight per cent) agreed that “feedback and complaints are listened to”.

One respondent said: “If you treated any of the other protected characteristics as you did disability then there would be uproar and heads would roll.”

Campbell believes the BDF report supports the view that MPS is institutionally disablist.

He told Sir Mark in last year’s letter: “In my experience Disability discrimination in the MPS is viewed less significantly and addressed differently in comparison to Race, Homophobia, Gender or any other type of Discrimination…”

In an earlier letter to Sir Mark, in 2022, Campbell told him: “There needs to be a change in attitudes [towards disabled officers] and an end to conscious labelling, as sick, lame, lazy, shirker, which are all derogatory terms yet seemingly acceptable…”

He has yet to receive any “tangible” response to the concerns he raised in last year’s letter and the survey report.

Campbell, a detective sergeant before his retirement, has himself twice taken successful action against the Met for disability discrimination, winning the first case at tribunal and then securing an MPS settlement before the start of a tribunal for the second case.

He describes himself as a person of ethnic origin, and has experienced intersectional discrimination, which he says is widespread in the Met.

He said the same complaints are being made “time and time again” at tribunal and through the force’s internal grievance process, which shows there is a “systemic” problem and failure to address these issues through an absence of “corporate memory” and a lack of “morality”.

Currently, about 3,500 police officers have adjustments made for them to allow them to continue in their roles, he said, out of about 36,000 officers in total across the force.

Campbell believes the number of MPS disabled officers and civilian staff may be as high as 10,000 – almost a quarter of the workforce – because many staff do not share their impairment with the force “due to concerns of how they will be treated”.

The Met’s DSA has more than 6,500 members and has 37 peer-to-peer support networks for disabled staff.

Campbell says he has increasingly been coming across incidents where the force’s occupational health department is making recommendations for adjustments to be made for officers who become disabled – often caused by their duties – but managers are refusing to agree to these adjustments.

Instead, officers are often told: “If you cannot do the job then you should just leave,” or: “This isn’t the right job for you.”

He told DNS: “We are just hitting a brick wall. This is about holding the police to account for systemic behaviour both internally and externally.

“If these attitudes exist towards disabled people in the workforce, what hopes do disabled people have when they become victims of crime?”

Louise Holden, Inclusion London’s senior policy officer for disabled people and crime, said: “I admire Dave Campbell and his tireless work within a disablist organisation.

“I share Mr Campbell’s concerns about how the Met treat disabled victims when their attitude to their own disabled staff is so appalling.

“Things have gotten worse since the A New Met for London plan following the Casey review.

“The work Inclusion London was involved in stopped and the new structure is a closed shop.

“Community confidence is at an all-time low.

“There has been no follow-up to the Casey review and with the Met decision to stop investigating non-hate crime incidents, without any consultation, it’s clear the Met is just not interested in disability issues.

“There has been no radical reform, only half-baked gestures and platitudes that amount to nothing.

“We are calling for renewed engagement with us, so we can support the Met with our expert knowledge on these issues.

“I hope the Met is ashamed of how they have behaved since the Casey review and want to work with us again.”

Commander Simon Messinger, the Met’s professionalism and senior lead for disability, said: “We are fully committed to driving positive change across the Met and fostering a culture of inclusion, and have taken significant steps to improve how we support disabled colleagues.

“This progress has helped us to achieve Disability Confident level three status, the highest level of recognition within that scheme, which reflects our determination to improve how we recruit, retain, and support our staff.

“We know there is much more to be done and will continue to work with the Met police Disabled Staff Association, and partners such as the Business Disability Forum, to drive further progress.”

A spokesperson for the mayor of London said: “The mayor is clear there is no place for harassment or discrimination in the workplace and is committed to working with the Met police to deliver a New Met for London where everyone can thrive.

“Since the Baroness Casey review in 2023 the Met has implemented a number of improvements for disabled employees, including the introduction of disability passports, Disability Smart assessments and the force is now a Disability Confident employer, improving how they recruit, retain and develop disabled staff.

“But there is more to do and the Met is working closely with the Disability Independent Advisory Group and the new chair of its Disabled Staff Association to listen and act on concerns to deliver a fairer and more inclusive Met.”

*If you have information about a police officer or member of staff who works for the Met and is corrupt or abusing their position and power, you can call the force’s anti-corruption and abuse hotline anonymously on 0800 085 0000

30 October 2025

Committee calls cuts bill ‘discriminatory’, even though all its Labour MPs voted for it

A Labour-led committee of MPs has called the government’s universal credit cuts act “discriminatory” and warned that it will push disabled people into poverty, despite every one of its Labour members voting for the legislation in July.

The Universal Credit Act will see the health element of universal credit halved for most new claimants from 6 April next year, from £105 to £54 a week.

All seven Labour MPs on the committee* voted for this cut in July.

But Labour’s Debbie Abrahams, who chairs the committee, said this week: “This is not only discriminatory, but without mitigations, will potentially push more people with disabilities and health conditions into poverty, exacerbating their condition and pushing them further away from the labour market.”

She was commenting on the publication of the government’s response to the committee’s report on the Pathways to Work green paper.

Her committee’s report had called on the government to delay the cut to the health element until it had carried out an “independent and comprehensive assessment of the impact the change could have on disabled people”.

But in this week’s response, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) dismissed those concerns.

Instead, it pointed to the “sustained, above inflation increase” to the standard allowance of universal credit (UC), which will also be introduced through the bill.

It said that this, together with the cut to the health element, would address “perverse incentives in the UC system and better encourages those who can work to enter or return to employment”.

Asked why she had voted for the cut to the health element when she thought it was discriminatory and would push more disabled people into poverty, Abrahams told Disability News Service (DNS) in a statement: “I worked very hard to secure major concessions on removing the cuts to PIP and people currently on UC health in the welfare bill.

“The bill isn’t perfect, and that was reflected in the work and pensions Pathways to Work report and its recommendations.

“However, voting against the bill would have meant that the increase in the standard allowance wouldn’t have gone ahead, and that was seen as a major positive aspect of the bill.

“This increase is not just for this year, but for each year until the end of this parliament.

“I am still continuing to work hard on securing mitigations around the reduction in support for newly disabled people from April next year and I remain committed to ensuring disabled people across the country have access to the support they need.”

Meanwhile, DWP has refused to explain to the committee what assessment it made of the bill’s impact on safeguarding, before the legislation was introduced to parliament earlier this year.

The bill had originally included steep cuts to personal independence payment (PIP), before a backbench Labour rebellion – following three months of activism from disabled people and allies – led to those measures being removed.

But there has been almost no discussion in parliament – and little or no information from ministers – on the bill’s potential impact on safeguarding claimants.

In its response to the committee’s report, DWP has made no mention of safeguarding, although it said that it had carried out an equality impact assessment for the bill.

But the impact assessments published on parliament’s website make no reference to safeguarding.

Asked by DNS why it failed to respond properly to the committee’s recommendation to release its assessment of the bill’s impact on safeguarding, and whether it did assess the safeguarding implications of the original bill, DWP said it was looking to improve its safeguarding approach, which included a review of the green paper consultation responses.

A DWP spokesperson said: “Our welfare reforms package was appropriately advised and numerous protections were baked into our plans.

“We are shifting our focus from welfare to work, skills, and opportunities, so more people can move out of poverty and into good, secure jobs as part of our Plan for Change – backed by £1 billion a year for employment support by the end of the decade.”

Grassroots groups of disabled people, such as Black Triangle, Disabled People Against Cuts, the Mental Health Resistance Network, and the Spartacus network, spent years highlighting deaths linked to DWP’s actions.

Concerns have also been raised by relatives who have called for action after the deaths of their family members.

Some of the evidence linking DWP with the deaths of benefit claimants has come through prevention of future deaths reports written by coroners, several of which only emerged years after they were written.

Other evidence of persistent DWP safeguarding flaws has emerged through freedom of information requests to the department, which have revealed how hundreds of recommendations for improvements have been made by DWP’s own secret reviews into the deaths of claimants.

Some of these reviews showed DWP staff continuing to make the same fatal errors, year after year.

The evidence collected by DNS and others, stretching back more than a decade, has shown how DWP repeatedly ignored recommendations to improve the safety of its disability benefits assessment system, leading to countless avoidable deaths.

It also shows how DWP hid evidence from independent reviews, and how the department failed to keep track of the actions taken in response to recommendations made by its own secret reviews.

Evidence also demonstrates that the cultural problems within DWP extend far beyond the assessment system, touching all aspects of its dealings with disabled people in the social security system.

The evidence, compiled over the last decade by DNS and other journalists, academics and activists, shows systemic negligence by DWP, a culture of cover-up and denial, and a refusal to accept that the department has a duty of care to those disabled people claiming support through the social security system.

Much of that evidence has been brought together in a detailed timeline, as part of the Deaths by Welfare project headed by Dr China Mills and supported by Healing Justice Ldn, which works with marginalised and oppressed communities.

*Debbie Abrahams; Johanna Baxter; Damien Egan; Gill German; Amanda Hack; Frank McNally; and David Pinto-Duschinsky

**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

30 October 2025

Disabled people warn of ‘severe’ consequences if chancellor removes Motability VAT exemption

Disabled people have warned of “severe” consequences if the chancellor goes ahead with reported plans to remove the Motability car scheme’s VAT exemption in next month’s budget.

Disability News Service (DNS) reported last week how the company that runs the scheme, Motability Operations, had warned that removing the VAT tax break entirely could impose an upfront cost of at least £3,000 on even the cheapest cars it offers.

There is no certainty that the chancellor will go ahead with removing the tax exemption entirely – which was revealed by the Times – and she may abandon the plans completely.

But the minister for social security and disability, Sir Stephen Timms, failed to deny plans to target the VAT exemption when asked by disabled Labour MP Emma Lewell on Monday about potential cuts to the scheme.

Instead, Sir Stephen said again that there would be no changes to personal independence payment until next autumn.

Yesterday, a Reform UK press conference on the party’s plans to slash disability benefits – particularly personal independence payment (PIP) – saw the party target the Motability scheme.

The party’s work and pensions spokesperson in the Commons, Lee Anderson, said the scheme had “got completely out of hand” and was “an absolute scandal”, and he suggested that all those receiving Motability cars should only be able to secure a “blue three-wheeler”*.

He said: “What’s wrong with that? Let’s go back to that.”

Meanwhile, disabled people who rely on Motability to maintain their independence have told DNS this week of the drastic impact that increased costs could have on their ability to afford a car through the scheme, and how this would affect their ability to work, enjoy leisure opportunities, and attend medical appointments.

Julia Dalton, a Motability customer for more than 40 years, relies on an adapted vehicle, which she says has allowed her “to work for over four decades, contribute taxes, and live independently” in east Yorkshire.

As an electric wheelchair-user, she needs a large vehicle with a hoist to lift her wheelchair into the car.

She said: “Without Motability, I could never have afforded a suitable vehicle.

“It is not possible for me to use a cheap second-hand car because if it breaks down, I cannot simply use a hire car that is not adapted for my needs.

“Without a reliable vehicle I would not have been able to get to work and would likely have lost my job.

“This scheme has protected my independence, wellbeing, and ability to contribute”.

She says that advance payments – on top of contributing the enhanced rate mobility component of PIP every month – have risen significantly in recent years.

Her latest vehicle in March cost her £4,000 in an advanced payment as well as £1,500 for essential adaptations.

She said: “I am managing financially, but even I would struggle to pay thousands more on top.

“If someone like me is at risk of coming off the scheme, what happens to those with less support?

“The consequences are severe: disabled people stuck at home; people losing work because they cannot travel; missed medical appointments; isolation.

“Motability is not a luxury. It is a lifeline.”

She added: “If exemptions are removed or costs continue to rise, we risk destroying a system that enables disabled people to live, work, and participate fully in society.

“I am deeply grateful for Motability. I want to see it protected for the future, so others can have the same opportunities that I had.”

Emma, from Leicester, told DNS that her Motability wheelchair-accessible vehicle (WAV) – which needed an advance payment of £4,500 – had made “a huge positive difference” to her life, and allowed her to continue to visit her dad after he had a stroke, firstly while he was in hospital, and then at home.

She said: “WAV taxis are expensive and difficult to arrange, and using public transport would have been impossible for me health-wise.

“Without that access, he might have declined further or needed residential care.

“The scheme has literally kept our family connected and independent.”

She said the knock-on effects of removing the VAT exemption – and the insurance premium tax, which is reportedly also being considered – would “make it even harder for disabled people to stay mobile”.

She said: “The knock-on effects would be huge — more reliance on carers, increased pressure on health and social care services, and greater difficulty getting to appointments or even maintaining social contact and contributions to society.

“If the tax relief were removed, I simply wouldn’t be able to afford a vehicle and would be stuck in my house even more.”

Richard, a Motability-user for 30 years, from the West Midlands, told DNS that the scheme was vital as a wheelchair-user living in inaccessible housing, and that he and many others would be forced to leave the scheme because it would become unaffordable if its VAT exemption was removed.

He has a progressive, neurological muscle-wasting condition and uses his Motability car to drive to a pool to swim, which allows him to keep the strength in his shoulders that he needs to pull himself up and down the stairs of his home.

Without the car, he would not be able to use the stairs and would end up in expensive extra care housing or a nursing home.

He said: “Being stuck at home would be very detrimental to my mental health.

“It will have similar effects on many, especially those who would have to give up work due to unaffordable initial payments.”

April, who has been a Motability customer for 15 years and lives in Lancashire, said the scheme has allowed her to maintain her independence and job and “gets me to and from my workplace safely and stress free”.

She has a small automatic hatchback which now requires a £1,000 advanced payment, when previously there was no advance payment required.

She said: “I fear these government proposals will make Motability pass these costs on to the scheme users – to the detriment of those struggling on low incomes and those needing larger adapted vehicles.

“The scheme must be preserved for those of us that need it to maintain our independence, to work, attend appointments, and to live decently, with dignity and safety.”

Michael Newbold, from Staffordshire, a Motability customer for more than 20 years, said the scheme was “essential” for him and his disabled wife.

He said: “I need a car for appointments and shopping, also for leisure.”

They have already had to cope with the council stopping paying for a personal alarm, and for the insurance on his stairlift.

He said: “It’s like little by little they are taking all the things that make life easier.

“Most people, in my opinion, will not be able to afford the VAT rise if they are in a similar position as me.”

Another customer, Phil, told DNS that he and his wife Kath would be “totally screwed” without their Motability vehicle.

They are both disabled, but it is Kath who is the Motability customer as she uses a powerchair following a spinal stroke, so she needs a WAV.

Phil said: “We had to find a £4,000 down payment for our WAV and when it has to go back [at the end of the lease] we’ll have to find the same if not more for the next vehicle.

“Adding VAT on top would make it unaffordable for us.”

Without the car, he said, they would be “totally isolated”, and they already both struggle with their mental health.

He said: “I can only believe others in the disabled community will be affected in the same way.

“My wife and I are from Bristol and it’s a city with an awful bus service so another reason the Motability scheme is so vital for us.”

*A reference to the Invacar that was provided by the government to disabled people up until the late 1970s, when it was replaced by the Motability scheme

**Motability Foundation, the charity that oversees the car scheme, is a DNS subscriber

30 October 2025

Disabled people face ‘systemic’ barriers in accessing community equipment, parliamentary inquiry finds

A cross-party group of MPs and peers has called on the government to draw up a national strategy to address the “deeply troubling” and “systemic” barriers that prevent disabled people accessing the equipment they need to live independently.

Hundreds of disabled people and professionals across the UK fed into the inquiry by the all-party parliamentary group for access to disability equipment, which found an “inconsistent” community equipment system that was in crisis due to fragmentation, underinvestment, and a lack of leadership.

The inquiry heard of disabled children missing school because the correct hoists had not arrived; disabled adults unable to live independently and forced out of their jobs because repairs to equipment were taking months; and carers driven to “physical and emotional exhaustion”.

It found too many disabled people faced long delays, unsuitable equipment and “a lack of joined up support” within the system, which provides equipment such as grab rails, hoists, wheelchairs, ramps, specialist mattresses, and assistive technology.

The group’s report includes findings of a survey from more than 600 users of equipment, carers, professionals and equipment-providers.

More than half of equipment-users who took part (55 per cent) said they believed services were worsening.

The same proportion said they did not have access to the equipment they needed.

One equipment-user told the inquiry that the support offered “barely scrapes the barrel of what people actually need to live their everyday lives.”

More than a fifth of those surveyed (22 per cent) said they had waited more than two months to receive their equipment once it had been approved.

The report heard of the experience of Rhys Porter, who has cerebral palsy, and went without essential equipment, including a hoist and home adaptations, for two years.

His parents had to help him use a commode seat in his bedroom and drag him into the family bathroom on a towel once a week.

He was only able to go ahead with vital surgery because the charity Newlife provided him with a portable hoist.

The report calls for a “cohesive” national strategy; funding reform of the current “fragmented” model; action to address lengthy waiting-times for assessments and equipment; improved communication with equipment-users and between local authorities, health bodies, and government departments; a national advisory board with service-user representation; and action to improve reuse and recycling of equipment.

Labour MP Daniel Francis, chair of the all-party group, said: “Across hundreds of testimonies, one message came through loud and clear: the system designed to support disabled children and adults is failing them.

“It is failing to deliver equipment on time, failing to provide the right support, and failing to listen to the very people it exists to serve.

“Under the current system we’re seeing children missing school, adults being forced out of work and carers injuring themselves.

“It’s failing patients, carers, and the sector alike, and it’s high time for the government to get a grip.

“Access to community equipment is not privilege, it’s a daily necessity.

“We need a national strategy for community equipment and clear leadership and accountability in its delivery.

“Ensuring everyone is given the right support at the right time is simply a matter of political will and commitment.”

The Department of Health and Social Care was unable to comment on the report by noon today (Thursday).

30 October 2025

Regulator’s annual report shows impact of social care crisis on disabled people

An annual report by the care regulator has highlighted how the continuing social care crisis is impacting disabled and older people who need support in their own homes.

The Care Quality Commission said in its annual State of Care report that the health and social care system remained “fragmented and under severe strain”.

It said that demand for local authority-funded support had continued to rise, while the job vacancy rate in adult social care was still three times higher than in the wider employment market.

And it said that more community services were “urgently needed” to support people to stay in their own homes for longer.

The report includes evidence from members of CQC’s Experts by Experience group, which has come from their own experiences of care and support and from talking to other service-users during CQC inspections.

Living in a rural area can particularly affect alternative options if a homecare agency is providing poor care, the report says.

One of the Experts by Experience told CQC: “The only other agency down the road hasn’t got any space for me. Where do you expect me to go?

“I’m telling you what’s wrong and the things I’m not happy with, but I don’t feel like I’ve necessarily got a choice to change that.”

CQC’s Experts by Experience said disabled people had told them how they had been “left to sit or lie in soiled or wet clothing for hours while waiting for their care worker to arrive”.

The report says: “As local authorities around the country increasingly look to make savings, it seems likely more will signpost people to support in the community, ration the care they do provide, and reduce the provision of other statutory and non-statutory services.

“As well as negatively affecting the health and wellbeing of those in need of social care support, this could increase the pressure on the health and care system and the voluntary, community and social enterprise sector, and further increase the burden on unpaid carers.”

As CQC only began implementing its new single assessment framework in January 2024, it is not possible to directly compare the latest ratings from its inspections with previous years.

Inspections have been focused on services where CQC information suggested people might be at risk.

The ratings produced through the framework for about 3,000 adult social care services (out of a total of about 20,000 services across England) show four per cent were rated inadequate, another 26 per cent were seen as requiring improvement, 67 per cent were rated good, and two per cent were seen as outstanding.

Professor Sir Mike Richards, CQC’s chair, said: “The Casey Commission will be an important step in reforming social care – but it won’t solve the core funding problem.

“We continue to call for long-term, sustainable funding for adult social care.”

30 October 2025

Chancellor’s reported plans to impose VAT on Motability could add £3,000 to even the cheapest cars

The chancellor’s reported plans to target the Motability car scheme for new taxes in next month’s budget by removing its VAT exemption could impose an upfront cost of at least £3,000 on even the cheapest cars it offers, the company has calculated.

Motability Operations spoke out after an article in the Times – which has strong contacts within Whitehall – suggested that Rachel Reeves would be “dramatically reducing an exemption by which cars leased under the scheme do not have to pay VAT or insurance premium tax”.

The Times said that VAT tax breaks “worth about £1 billion a year are set to be scrapped in the budget”.

But targeting the Motability car scheme in next month’s budget by completely removing its VAT exemption would add thousands of pounds every three years to the bills of some of the poorest disabled people in the country.

The potential tax-raising measure – which would be aimed squarely at disabled people – follows months of mounting hostility aimed at disabled people and the Motability scheme in the right-wing media and on social media.

But Motability Operations, the company that runs the scheme, said this week that removing VAT relief “would make cars unaffordable for most disabled people, leaving only the wealthiest able to access the scheme – a result that would fundamentally undermine its purpose”.

It confirmed to Disability News Service (DNS) that, if Reeves placed VAT at 20 per cent on all Motability cars – and assuming no changes elsewhere in the scheme – it would increase the overall cost of a lease over three years by £3,000 for the cheapest cars it offers.

This would mean disabled people would have to find an advance payment of £3,000 for even the cheapest models, on top of having to contribute all their enhanced mobility component of personal independence payment (PIP) to fund their monthly lease payments.

It would mean the scheme would instantly become unaffordable to tens of thousands of disabled people seeking independent mobility.

Motability Operations said the median household income of a disabled person using the scheme is just £18,500, half the UK average.

Graham Footer, chief executive of Disabled Motoring UK (DMUK), told DNS: “DMUK is concerned by the recent reports in the national media that the chancellor is considering making changes to the Motability scheme, including removing the tax breaks.

“The fact this is even on the table for consideration is a worry.

“If the chancellor goes ahead with the changes, it will have a significant detrimental impact on Motability customers and for many it will put the scheme financially out of reach.”

A Motability Operations spokesperson said: “The scheme operates at scale, allowing bulk purchasing and strong manufacturer discounts.

“Removing the zero-rating would erode this efficiency and undermine the social purpose of enabling independence and affordable mobility.

“There would also be a knock-on impact to jobs in the automotive sector.”

Motability Foundation*, the charity that oversees the car scheme, has described some of the “recent, misinformed commentary” about the scheme as “profoundly disheartening” and said that it “unfairly stigmatises disabled people”.

It said the scheme “provides a vital service to disabled people, helping them to overcome significant mobility barriers” and “a foundation of independence which also helps to address the transport equity gap”.

Earlier this year, Motability Foundation’s disabled boss hit back at months of “hostile”, “harmful” and inaccurate media reports and online comments about how the scheme is run and its disabled customers.

Chief executive Nigel Fletcher said then that he believed the “climate of stigmatisation” of disabled people “risks rolling back decades of progress in promoting disability inclusion and understanding”.

He told DNS: “It creates an environment where disabled people are scrutinised and made to feel they must justify their right to mobility and participation. This is unacceptable.”

Coverage has included reports of comments made by Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch, who claimed that new Motability vehicles were being leased by people with food intolerances.

Other reports have suggested that Motability vehicles are handed out “free” – rather than in exchange for most or all of the higher rate mobility element of PIP, and sometimes an additional advance payment – and with few if any checks on eligibility, misleading statements that were repeated today (Thursday) by Conservative shadow work and pensions secretary Helen Whately.

There have also been widespread reports in the media and on social media attacking Motability customers and accusing them of abusing the scheme.

*Motability Foundation is a DNS subscriber

23 October 2025

Psychologists’ charity fails to raise concerns over job coaches in surgeries, weeks after £640K DWP contract

The national charity representing psychologists failed to speak out about the serious risks caused by placing work coaches in GP surgeries, just weeks after it was awarded a £640,000 contract by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).

There was alarm among many disabled people when DWP announced earlier this month that it was expanding a programme to “embed” job advisers in GP surgeries, mental health services and other healthcare settings.

They believe that for many disabled claimants of out-of-work benefits, particularly those with mental distress, ill-health and trauma, the idea of facing a DWP officer in a healthcare setting, at a time when they need support rather than pressure to discuss work, would be “horrifying”.

Among those speaking out was Dr Jay Watts, a disabled activist and herself a consultant clinical psychologist, who said: “It’s really dangerous for the government to put work coaches in GP surgeries.”

She said many mental health claimants already find it “scary” to visit their GPs because they “tend not to be believed”, while surveys show a substantial proportion of them are “absolutely terrified of the DWP”.

She said she feared the DWP scheme would prevent many claimants accessing healthcare.

Despite these concerns, the British Psychological Society (BPS) – which represents psychologists – appeared to be broadly supportive of the DWP scheme, in a statement it issued last Thursday (16 October).

It appeared to suggest that the scheme could be useful, given the right training for the job advisers, saying: “While a job adviser could act as an incentive and offer support to those with mental health problems to return to work, it is vital this isn’t to the detriment of a person’s recovery by adding further stress and anxiety.

“Ideally, all job advisers should be psychologically informed and work to identify a person’s strengths and support them in managing change.”

But it has now emerged that this statement was published just four weeks after DWP awarded BPS a £641,000 four-year contract to carry out accreditation of the department’s in-house work psychologists.

BPS yesterday (Wednesday) denied any connection between the award of the contract and its statement on the DWP scheme.

But one campaigner, who first spotted the contract award, told Disability News Service this week: “The BPS’s views on employment advisers are totally compromised by this and should not be regarded as objective.”

The grassroots, user-led mental health group Recovery in the Bin (RiTB) added: “The BPS have betrayed every person in need of mental healthcare and social security.

“We are being treated like livestock who either produce or are sent to the abattoir.

“The NHS will be polluted with work fetishism and people will not trust anything medical professionals do, as everything will be corrupted to a work outcome, instead of what is best for the person.”

Another disabled activist said the BPS response was “appalling” and “completely unethical”.

They said: “I would be terrified if I had to face a DWP officer in my GP surgery, or worse, during an inpatient admission under the Mental Health Act.

“The thought of anyone being in that situation when they need care, not pressure to discuss work, is horrifying.

“Health professionals should protect lives, not enable harm.”

A spokesperson for the British Psychological Society said: “There is no connection between the awarding of the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) contract and the British Psychological Society’s (BPS) stance on the government’s roll-out of work advisers in GP surgeries.

“The BPS is an independent professional membership body, and our positions are shaped by our members, the best available evidence, and our ethical standards as set out in our charter.

“Contract negotiations between the DWP and BPS remain ongoing and as such it would be inappropriate for us to comment further.

“The BPS retains editorial and public independence and will continue to raise awareness where psychological evidence calls for challenge.”

There has been controversy for nearly a decade over DWP’s attempts to blur the lines between the health and employment systems by embedding work advisers in surgeries.

In March 2016, the Mental Health Resistance Network organised a protest about a year-long DWP pilot scheme which saw private sector job coaches placed in six GP surgeries in Islington, north London.

Denise McKenna, co-founder of MHRN, said at the time that the network would “never accept this scheme and we will never give up until it is abandoned”, and described it as a “drastic move” that would cause some people to stop seeing their GPs.

23 October 2025

Peers derail government plans to hand some DWP staff powers to use force against benefit claimants

Government plans under controversial new legislation to give some Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) staff “morally dubious” powers to use force against benefit claimants have been derailed by peers.

The public authorities (fraud, error and recovery) bill was set to give authorised DWP staff the same powers of search, entry and seizure as the police.

But unlike powers granted to the Public Sector Fraud Authority, the bill was also set to allow these officers to use “reasonable force” against benefit claimants when exercising their new powers.

Until now, one of the bill’s most controversial measures was that it is set to force banks to examine the accounts of claimants of means-tested benefits for potential breaches of benefit eligibility rules and then pass that information to DWP.

But a string of crossbench and opposition peers also raised concerns about the “reasonable force” measure on Tuesday during the bill’s report stage.

The crossbench hereditary peer Lord Vaux told the Lords: “This would make it lawful for a DWP officer – not a police officer, but a civil servant – to enter your home, seize your belongings and forcibly hold you down while doing so.”

He said this would be used against benefit recipients, a part of the population who are more likely to be disabled and are “more vulnerable” than the general population.

He said: “The use of physical force marks a far more serious infringement than the powers of search, entry and seizure alone.”

He was supported by Conservative peer Lord [Mark] Harper, a former minister for disabled people, who urged ministers to “not give power to use reasonable force to people who are not trained to use it and do not have proper oversight”.

The Liberal Democrat peer Lord Palmer said that “any exercise of physical powers must surely rest with the police.

“Are we going to train a new breed of DWP officers who have to be tough and able to act as police? It is quite nonsensical.”

Baroness [Claire] Fox, a non-affiliated peer and former Brexit Party MEP, added: “I do not want DWP civil servants, who might have been on a minor training course, to have that power. I think it is wrong.

“For them to have that power of physical force aimed at people on benefits seems wholly wrong and morally dubious.”

The Conservative shadow work and pensions minister Viscount Younger – a former DWP minister – said the government had “yet to offer a convincing explanation of why DWP officials need this power at all”.

He said Conservatives were “deeply concerned” by the new powers being granted to DWP investigators through the bill, and said the measures raise “profound questions about the limits of state power and the safeguards that ought to accompany it”.

Work and pensions minister Baroness Sherlock accepted that the bill would give authorised and trained DWP officers powers to use reasonable force against individuals, but she told fellow peers that the intention was for them “to be able to use that against property, not against people”.

And she said the search, entry and seizure powers would only be used for “serious organised criminality” and “where the DWP has a reasonable belief that someone has intentionally committed sophisticated, often high-value fraud against the DWP” and not against “an average benefit claimant who has accidentally overclaimed by £20”.

She said the “intention is that reasonable force will be used only against things, not people”, which “will be made clear in guidance and training”, and that the powers “will enable DWP-authorised investigators to use reasonable force to access locked cabinets and digital devices once they are lawfully on a premises”.

She said the law would also require that any application to the courts for a warrant to access a property would have to include “information about any vulnerable individuals who may be present on the premises”.

But an amendment proposed by Lord Vaux to remove from the bill the power to use reasonable force against individuals was approved by peers by 212 votes to 144.

Among the disabled peers voting in favour of Lord Vaux’s amendment were Liberal Democrats Baroness [Celia] Thomas and Lord Addington, and Conservatives Lord [Kevin] Shinkwin and Lord [Chris] Holmes.

No Labour peers voted in favour of his amendment.

It is not yet clear whether DWP ministers will attempt to re-introduce these powers into the legislation before the bill becomes law.

A DWP spokesperson said this morning (Thursday): “The amendment is subject to parliamentary process and will be discussed in the house in the next stages of the bill.”

The bill is due to return to the Lords today for its third reading, before it returns to the Commons for discussion of amendments made by peers.

23 October 2025

Reeves refuses to apologise for repeating false claim that social security spending is spiralling

Chancellor Rachel Reeves has refused to withdraw a misleading and inaccurate statement that scapegoated disabled people and other benefit claimants for the country’s economic problems.

In an interview with Channel 4 News, Reeves repeated the false claim that welfare spending was spiralling out of control.

She told the programme: “We can’t get to the end of this parliamentary session and have done nothing, because if more and more of our money that we spend as a government is spent on welfare, you’ve got less for the NHS, you’ve got less for schools.”

It came as government sources briefed the Times newspaper that Reeves was intending to raise revenue from the Motability disabled people’s vehicle scheme by £1 billion a year in the budget by attacking its VAT and insurance premium tax exemptions (see separate story).

Disability News Service (DNS) told the Treasury this week that Reeves should be aware that her statement on “welfare” was highly misleading.

This is because figures from the Office for Budget Responsibility reported last autumn* that welfare spending was stable as a proportion of GDP, and that it was lower than it was in 2015-16.

DNS shared figures with the Treasury that showed that the share of GDP was predicted to be 11.1 per cent in 2024-25; the same in 2025-26 and 2026-27; to fall to 11.0 per cent in 2027-28 and 2028-29; and to rise to 11.1 per cent again in 2029-30.

The Treasury, Department for Work and Pensions, and political parties, including Labour and the Conservatives, have been repeatedly shown these figures by DNS, and yet senior figures across the parties continue to claim that spending on social security is “spiralling”.

Last week, the Financial Times agreed with months of reports and analysis from DNS, academics and disabled campaigners, and concluded: “Costs are not spiralling.

“Projected total welfare payments, at around 11 per cent of national income a year, are lower than when David Cameron was prime minister even though there are more pensioners.”

Chris Giles, the paper’s economics commentator, added in his article: “The welfare system is far from perfect but it cannot be blamed for your taxes rising in November’s Budget.”

The Treasury this week refused to comment on why Reeves and fellow ministers repeatedly claim that social security spending is spiralling out of control when it is not, and whether she would apologise.

*Chapter five of OBR’s Economic and Fiscal Outlook – October 2024, chart 5.2, shows welfare spending as a percentage of GDP: https://obr.uk/efo/economic-and-fiscal-outlook-october-2024/

23 October 2025

Timms goes back on his word by refusing to provide crucial evidence of Access to Work cuts

The disability minister has gone back on his word by refusing to provide crucial information that would help expose a “perverse”, secret programme to restrict grants made by the Access to Work disability employment scheme.

Sir Stephen Timms told Disability News Service (DNS) at Labour’s annual conference late last month that he would provide the date on which he approved an order from senior civil servants for Access to Work (AtW) staff to be more “scrupulous” in how they applied guidance.

Now, three weeks on, he is refusing to reveal this date.

This will make it harder to secure the order through a freedom of information request.

Instead of responding to an email from DNS seeking the information, Sir Stephen forwarded the message to the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) press office.

But DWP’s press office also failed to provide the information.

It said in a statement: “No changes have been made to Access to Work policy.”

Instead of providing the date of the order, it provided background information which failed to clarify when, or if, Sir Stephen approved a document about the guidance, but suggested that the changes were put into effect through additional training for AtW case managers.

The briefing did confirm that Sir Stephen had been made aware that this work was taking place.

The DWP press office had failed to clarify the information it provided by noon today (Thursday).

Last week, DNS reported how official government figures revealed the first signs that ministers had been engaged in a “perverse” programme to secretly restrict AtW grants.

The DWP figures showed that the number of people who had any AtW provision approved fell by more than 10 per cent in the year to March 2025.

The figures also showed that the number of disabled people who had AtW requests for aids and equipment approved plunged by 16 per cent on the previous year, while approvals for support for travel to work fell by 14 per cent, and the number of approvals for mental health support dropped by seven per cent.

Figures from the last six months – not due to be published for another 12 months – will eventually show how the cuts to essential funding are “far more severe” than those shown in last week’s DWP figures, one disabled expert has predicted.

In the interview at the Labour conference in Liverpool last month, Sir Stephen admitted that he had seen a submission, which he had approved, which stated that AtW guidance would now be “scrupulously applied”.

He said he could not remember when he saw the submission, but his special adviser told DNS: “I think we need to check.”

Sir Stephen then said he would check in DWP records when this took place, and he added later in the conversation: “But what I can check, John*, is when this happened.”

*DNS editor John Pring

23 October 2025

Disabled people describe impact of ‘very unfair’ extra costs caused by DWP’s universal credit migration

Disabled people have described their anger with the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) for failing to warn them of the significant hidden costs – which can be more than £2,400 a year – of transferring onto universal credit from their old “legacy” benefits.

They have come forward to share how the unexpected hit to their finances caused by moving onto universal credit from employment and support allowance (ESA) has impacted their ability to cope with the cost-of-living crisis.

They are facing extra costs from their local authority as a result of the move, even though DWP has previously insisted that they would – at least initially – be no worse off on universal credit than on their previous benefits once they were forced onto the new system through the “migration” process.

But Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) revealed last week that it had been hearing from disabled people who have been hit hard in two different ways by this process.

Some disabled people have seen their care charges to their local council increase, sometimes by more than £50 a week.

Other disabled people are receiving a much lower discount under their local council tax reduction scheme after migrating onto universal credit.

DPAC said this week that disabled people had continued to come forward to describe the extra costs they were facing, which appear to vary across the country.

DPAC is hoping a legal action might be possible, and it is still looking for disabled people who are eligible for legal aid and might be willing to take a legal challenge with DPAC’s support.

It also encouraged those affected to complain to their MPs, and to continue to share their stories with DPAC.

Linda Burnip, DPAC’s co-founder, said: “Many people are losing over £200 a month which is more than £2,400 a year from already meagre social security payments and that has to be wrong.

“DPAC demand DWP explain what it knew and when about this added cost to the migration process.”

This week, disabled people have described to Disability News Service (DNS) the impact of the unexpected costs of migrating to universal credit from ESA.

Mark Catlin, from Hertfordshire, is now having to pay £30 a month in council tax – rather than nothing – after he was moved onto universal credit from ESA in May this year.

He assumed it was a mistake when he received the bill but when he called the council he was told that the council tax reduction for those on ESA was 100 per cent but was just 75 per cent if the same person moved to universal credit.

Catlin told DNS it was “not easy” to cope with the extra monthly cost.

He said he believed DWP did not care about the extra payments, and that most of its advisors were “not even aware of these changes; if they are, they’re not making people aware of them”.

And he said he was “pretty disgusted” with the council.

He said: “I don’t understand how they can justify the reduction change just because the name of the benefit changes, when there’s been no change in financial entitlement, especially with the cost of living being so changeable.”

Another disabled claimant, Lisa, from Plymouth, moved onto universal credit in June.

She told DNS: “I heard all the government statements saying those moving from legacy benefits would have their entitlement protected and income would stay the same.”

But she found out that the change meant her council expected her to pay 40 per cent of council tax charges, rather than the previous level of 20 per cent, which means an extra £41 a month.

Lisa, who has long-term health conditions, said the extra charge was “very unfair”.

She said: “It’s becoming more difficult to cover expenses and costs to just pay bills and food each month.

“It has become clear the DWP and government ministers have wiped their hands of any responsibility of this extra charge, saying it’s up to the individual councils what rates they set their council tax levels at.”

Labour’s Debbie Abrahams, who chairs the Commons work and pensions committee, was not available to comment on the concerns this week.

Meanwhile, DWP has again refused to say if and when it became aware of the issue, whether it was concerned, or if it would take any action.

Last week, it issued the following statement: “We support millions of people through universal credit every year – including those who have moved from ESA – and it’s a top priority for us to ensure that people receive the help they are entitled to.”

23 October 2025

Ministers’ refusal to raise limit on accessible housing grants is discriminatory, secret reports admits

The continuing refusal of ministers to raise the upper limit on a scheme that helps disabled people make access improvements to their homes is discriminating against some of those with higher support needs, a secret government report has admitted.

The internal review into how the upper limit on disabled facilities grants (DFG) is working was obtained by Disability News Service (DNS) through a freedom of information request, after care minister Stephen Kinnock refused to publish it.

The DFG scheme helps councils in England fund access improvements to disabled people’s homes, but the upper limit of £30,000 was set in 2008.

Councils have a legal duty to provide adaptations for disabled people, subject to a needs assessment, eligibility criteria and a means test, and can also provide funding above the upper limit at their own discretion.

Adaptations can include stair-lifts, level access showers, widening doors, ramps, grab rails, raised toilets, access to gardens, height-adjusted kitchens, heating systems, loft conversions and home extensions.

Seven years ago, an independent review commissioned by the government recommended increasing the limit in line with inflation, and introducing regional variations.

Last year, shortly before the general election, a report by the cross-party levelling up, housing and communities committee highlighted “many shortcomings” in the DFG system, and called on ministers to review the £30,000 upper limit and set new regional upper limits which took account of inflation and construction costs.

Now an equality impact assessment carried out as part of a secret internal review has found that the upper limit of £30,000 is “likely to be adversely impacting small numbers of disabled people in some groups, including children with complex needs and working-age adults”.

It also found that disabled people of all ages “with severe conditions such as multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease or those suffering from acquired brain injuries are also disproportionately negatively impacted by the current upper limit”.

It found that disabled people affected by the upper limit can see vital adaptations delayed as they seek additional funds for the work, “or in the worst cases, the adaptations are not provided”, which can have a “significant detrimental impact on disabled people and their families”.

But it concluded that this discrimination was “proportionate to achieving the aims of the upper limit” because it allowed councils to manage their DFG budgets and support “the majority of eligible individuals to receive an adaptation”.

The secret report added: “In reality, given the benefits of having an upper limit, it [is] unlikely that the DFG will ever be a suitable means of funding the entirety of high cost adaptations.

“There is always likely to be some impact on that high cost cohort, which is always likely to require some additional funding from alternative sources.”

The report concluded that ministers needed to “continually keep the policy under review and improve our evidence and analysis”, particularly to fill “evidence gaps” on disabled people who have “dropped out of applying for a DFG or experienced delays because of the upper limit”.

It also concluded that there were “clear benefits for keeping an upper limit in place” because it “provides a mechanism that helps ensure proper conversations are held about alternatives to adapting the home, and to control costs”.

But it said the government should decide “whether the current level of the upper limit is still appropriate and whether it should be raised”.

Mikey Erhardt, policy lead for Disability Rights UK, said: “The continued refusal of successive governments to raise the upper limit is as frustrating as it is counterproductive.

“Given the state of local authority finances, meaning top-up payments are unlikely, disabled people with the highest needs, whose lives could be changed by adaptations, will likely not get the changes they need to live safely in their own homes.

“The government’s continued housing policy of prioritising the needs of developers, private landlords, and big business necessitates the continued use of systems like the disabled facilities grant.

“Simply put – there are no accessible homes, and those actors have no intention to build them, so we need DFG to create them.

“This report makes clear the goals of the government: short-term cost saving and cost saving alone.

“The report makes clear the dangers of not raising the DFG ceiling.

“We are calling on the government to do the right thing and raise the ceiling and link it to inflation so no more disabled people have to live in dangerous, inaccessible homes.”

Svetlana Kotova, director of campaigns and justice at Inclusion London, also criticised the government for failing to increase the upper limit.

She pointed to Inclusion London’s Barriers at Home report, which found earlier this year that one in three people with mobility impairments do not have level access in their own homes.

She said the government’s failure to raise accessibility standards on new homes and its failure to increase the upper limit on DFGs meant that “new, inaccessible homes will be built, and the adaptations we need won’t be fully funded”.

She said: “It is a scandal that in our country, disabled and older people now have to fundraise to ensure they can access the bathroom, bedroom or get out of the house.

“The government can change this: make sure everyone who needs adaptations can get them, and raise minimum accessibility standards for new homes, so that 10 per cent meet the M4(3) wheelchair-user standard, and the rest meet the M4(2) accessible and adaptable standard.”

The government’s internal review found that most DFGs above the upper limit went to working-age adults (40 per cent) and disabled children (43 per cent), according to reports by councils from 2023-24, with older people receiving another 16 per cent.

The average cost of a high-value adaptation ranged from £47,206 in the north-east of England to £56,685 in the south-west.

The most expensive DFG to be reported by local authorities cost £159,000.

The average cost of a DFG in 2023-24 was about £10,000.

Landlords, the NHS and social services rarely contribute to higher-cost adaptations, so any additional funding must usually come from either the local authority or the disabled occupant.

Most councils told the government that their current budget was either not big enough to meet demand for DFGs, or that they would need to reduce their discretionary grants if budgets do not increase in the future.

DNS requested a copy of the internal review from the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) after care minister Stephen Kinnock told Liberal Democrat MP David Chadwick last month that the report would not be published.

Last October’s budget saw an £86 million increase in central government spending on DFGs, which was set to reach £711 million in 2025-26.

DHSC and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) share responsibility for DFG policy.

They agreed to review the upper limit after a judicial review claim challenged its legality.

DHSC had failed to comment on the internal review by noon today (Thursday).

23 October 2025

Ministers finally announce progress on ‘liberty safeguards’, but also challenge vital definition

The government is set to push ahead with a long-delayed new system of safeguards that could have a significant impact on service-users who are unable to consent to restrictions placed on their liberty in health or social care settings.

There have been years of delays to the introduction of Liberty Protection Safeguards (LPS), which will replace the current Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards (DoLS) in England and Wales.

But care minister Stephen Kinnock finally announced this week that there will be a new consultation on the new LPS system “in the first half of next year”.

The announcement came as the Supreme Court this week heard a case brought by the Northern Ireland attorney general, which is examining the definition of “deprivation of liberty”.

The case challenges two 2014 rulings by the Supreme Court – one of which became known as the Cheshire West ruling – which significantly widened the definition of who would be protected by the DoLS system.

The Cheshire West ruling found that a disabled person was being deprived of their liberty if they were obliged to live in a particular place “under continuous supervision and control”, and they were not free to leave their homes or move away without permission, and they could not consent to decisions about their welfare.

It also found that such people needed “a periodic independent check on whether the arrangements made for them are in their best interests”.

But the Department of Health and Social Care has been heavily criticised for intervening in this week’s case and for asking the Supreme Court to set aside the Cheshire West ruling.

The 2014 rulings led to an increase in referrals from 13,700 in 2013-14 to 322,455 in 2023-24 and a backlog of 123,790 cases.

The rulings eventually led to the drawing up of the LPS system, based on a report by the Law Commission.

The last government had originally planned to bring in LPS in October 2020, but its implementation was repeatedly delayed by Conservative ministers.

The Department of Health and Social Care said this week that the new system would “deliver improved protection and an easier and improved system”.

It said the current DoLS system was “bureaucratic and complex” and led to “poor understanding and application of the law by professionals, unacceptable distress for families” and the lengthy backlog, which placed pressure on the social care system.

Kieran Lewis, rights and migration policy manager at National Survivor User Network (NSUN), said: “We urge the Department of Health and Social Care and the Ministry of Justice to treat their consultation on the Liberty Protection Safeguards with the care it deserves, making it genuinely accessible and actively seeking out people subject to deprivations of liberty, as well as their families and carers, to shape it.

“We also echo calls to defend the Cheshire West judgement and ensure that any changes in the law around deprivation of freedom are made in close collaboration with disabled people and their organisations.

“This is the bare minimum, considering the complete lack of trust that disabled people now have in this government, which continues to demonstrate its lack of real concern for them.”

Kinnock said the consultation was about “fixing a broken system by hearing directly from those with lived experience and their families”.

He said: “There is currently a shameful backlog in the system of unprocessed cases under the current system which means that people’s rights are not being protected.

“At the same time, we know that many people in the system and their families find these intrusive assessments distressing.

“This is about ensuring we are fully focused on the most vulnerable people in our society and their families – understanding their needs, ending the maze of referrals and paperwork, and delivering the best protections and safeguards possible.”

The responses from next year’s consultation will inform a new code of practice to the 2005 Mental Capacity Act, which will be laid before parliament.

23 October 2025

Tory trio mislead party conference on disability benefits as they stir up hostility towards disabled claimants

A trio of leading Tories have used misleading and offensive statements at their annual conference in Manchester to scapegoat disabled people who rely on support from the benefits system and whip up hostility towards them.

The Conservative party made it clear this week that it would go further and faster than the Labour government in cutting disability benefits, and said it would cut £23 billion from social security spending if it won back power.

Some of these savings would be used to pay for the abolition of stamp duty on residential property sales*, which would only benefit the better-off.

The most offensive line may have come from Tory leader Kemi Badenoch, who told the conference yesterday (Wednesday): “I stand for a society where… the vulnerable are supported, but where freeloaders are told where to get off.”

She said a Conservative government would “restrict benefits to those with more severe mental health conditions, not anxiety or mild depression”**.

Disability News Service (DNS) reminded the party this week how government-funded research found that when a Conservative-led government tried to slash the number of people on out-of-work disability benefits and force them into work in the post-2010 austerity years, it led to 590 suicides in three years.

The party had not responded to these concerns by 11am today (Thursday).

Badenoch also told the conference that “after Covid, 2,000 people a day were being signed onto out-of-work sickness benefits”, which she said was “a national tragedy”.

There was no suggestion in the former engineer’s speech that she had connected the impact of a deadly and disabling pandemic with this increase in the number of people being unable to work due to sickness or disability.

Badenoch also appeared to suggest that she supported allowing disability hate speech to pass unpunished, telling Tory members: “I stand for a society where free speech trumps hurt feelings.”

Mel Stride, the former work and pensions secretary and now his party’s shadow chancellor, had spoken earlier in the week of the “spiralling welfare bill”.

DNS has now told the party’s press office on at least three occasions that figures from the Office for Budget Responsibility*** show clearly that social security spending as a proportion of GDP**** is predicted to remain at or close to 11.1 per cent for the next five years, and that it is lower than it was in 2015-16.

Again, the party had not responded to these concerns about Stride’s misleading comment by 11am today.

The party also announced plans to prevent anyone other than British citizens from receiving social security support, if it regains power.

It appears that this would apply to disabled people with significant support needs and those who have legally worked in the country for years through “indefinite leave to remain”.

The third shadow minister to mislead the conference on cuts to disability benefits was shadow work and pensions secretary Helen Whately.

She told Tory members: “Millions are getting benefits for anxiety and ADHD, along with a free Motability car.”

A disabled person can only qualify to join the Motability scheme if they receive the enhanced mobility component of personal independence payment (PIP) or similar benefits.

In fact, DWP figures show – as highlighted by the Benefits and Work website – that only about 190,000 PIP claimants have ADD, ADHD, anxiety or anxiety-related conditions as their “main disabling condition” and receive an enhanced mobility component.

And many of this group will not have exchanged their PIP mobility component for a Motability vehicle.

It is possible that Whately was referring to all those disabled people with anxiety and ADHD who have a Motability vehicle (ie including those with a different main disabling condition in addition to a mental health condition or being neurodivergent), but – if so – her statement was still highly misleading.

And even if that had been her intention, Motability Operations, the company that runs the scheme, says it has only a total of 860,000 customers, and many of those use their allowance to hire a powered wheelchair or mobility scooter.

Whately’s comments also suggest that PIP claimants receive a “free” car in addition to that benefit, when in fact a claimant usually has to exchange all their mobility allowance to lease a Motability vehicle, and must also often make a non-refundable advance payment.

Once again, the Conservative party had refused to comment by 11am today on Whately’s figures.

*It is believed this would apply to primary residences in England and Northern Ireland

**Although she said she wanted to “restrict benefits”, it is unlikely that she meant that people with anxiety or “mild” depression would be prevented from accessing mainstream benefits such as the standard universal credit allowance

***See chapter five of OBR’s Economic and Fiscal Outlook – October 2024, chart 5.2

****Gross domestic product, the size of the country’s economy in a particular year

9 October 2025

Government ‘has lost its way’ on accessible housing, after new towns report ignores disabled people

The government has been accused of losing its way on accessible housing, after refusing to explain why a report by its “taskforce” on delivering a series of new towns across England does not include a single mention of disabled people.

The independent report – commissioned by the government – recommends 12 potential locations for new towns across England, with at least 10,000 new homes in each location.

But the 135-page report contains only two brief references to the need for accessibility, either with the new homes themselves or the built environment surrounding them, and there is no mention of working-age disabled people.

One reference in the report says new towns should “include homes for older people, as well as specialist housing built to accessible and adaptable standards”.

The other says the mix of homes in new towns should include “homes for market sale, private rent, affordable housing, and specialist accommodation for students, families, and older people, all within a single coherent masterplan”.

Disabled people’s organisations that have been campaigning for action to solve the accessible housing crisis were critical of the latest failure by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG).

Mikey Erhardt, policy lead for Disability Rights UK, said: “It is unacceptable that, in 2025, a plan to deliver thousands of new homes, to tackle the housing crisis, will do nothing to improve the lives of disabled people.

“Relegating the needs of millions to a classification as ‘specialist’ shows just how entrenched ableist views are within the department.

“What is specialist about creating places that millions can actually call home, instead of the less than 10 per cent that disabled people can currently even visit?

“Yet again, we see a government department that has lost its way in trying to triangulate policy in favour of big developers and landlords, with disabled people as ever missing out.

“Talk about a missed opportunity; they’ve not even chosen to commit to a minimum number of accessible or wheelchair-accessible homes, let alone ensuring DDPOs* are included in the planning process.

“If our newest towns can’t be accessible, which ones will be?”

Last week, housing secretary Steve Reed announced that the government would build 12 of the new towns across England, but he and his party failed to make any pledge that accessibility would be central to their design.

More than 15 months after the general election, disabled people are still waiting for the new government to say whether it will introduce stricter minimum accessibility standards for new-build homes in England, three years after a pledge by the last Conservative government – which was never fulfilled – to take action to address the critical shortage of accessible housing.

Laura Vicinanza, senior policy and stakeholder engagement manager for Inclusion London, said: “The taskforce talks about accessible ‘specialist housing’, but accessible and adaptable standards must apply to all housing, so we’re not cut off from our communities.

“Housing with a baseline level of accessibility benefits us all – it allows us to stay in our homes longer as our needs change and we age.

“Three years ago, the Conservative government committed to raise the minimum accessibility standards for all new-build housing to the M4(2) accessible and adaptable standard, but they didn’t follow through.

“It’s time for Labour to commit to M4(2) accessibility for all new-builds, and for 10 per cent of new housing to be M4(3) wheelchair-accessible, focused in social housing.

“This is the opportunity to ensure that this wave of new housing and new towns doesn’t lock us out of safe housing for another generation.”

This week, Disability News Service (DNS) asked the government why the taskforce and its report had almost completely ignored disabled people’s housing needs, and the opportunity to build in accessibility across the new towns from the beginning; and why there was nothing in the taskforce report that sets a minimum level of accessible homes, including how many wheelchair-accessible homes should be built in the new towns.

DNS also asked for reassurance for disabled people that the government’s new towns plans would build in accessibility right from the start and from the ground-up, in co-production with disabled people and their user-led organisations.

MHCLG declined to explain why the taskforce report contained so few references to accessible housing and built environment in the new towns and failed to mention disabled people.

And it once again said it would set out its policies on accessible new-build housing shortly.

At last year’s Labour party conference, in September 2024, after DNS questioned the party on the failure of ministers to mention the accessible housing crisis, a Labour spokesperson promised the government would “set out its policies on accessible new build housing shortly”.

An MHCLG spokesperson said in a statement this week: “Everyone deserves to live in a decent home that is suitable for them and meets their needs.

“We will create New Towns that work for everyone, including disabled people, and we welcome recommendations from the taskforce that they should include specialist housing built to accessible and adaptable standards.

“We’re committed to working with disabled people and their organisations to shape these new communities together.”

*Deaf and disabled people’s organisations

9 October 2025

Alarm over government’s choices to lead ‘over-diagnosis’ review that could help ministers cut benefits

The government’s decision to commission a review of alleged “over-diagnosis” of mental health conditions and neurodivergence has caused alarm among many disabled people, with fears that it will allow ministers to justify further sweeping cuts to disability benefits.

There is also concern that health and social care secretary Wes Streeting has commissioned two high-profile mental health figures with controversial backgrounds to lead the review.

Although the government has not yet confirmed the review will take place, it will reportedly examine the prevalence of mental illness and neurodivergence, “with a particular focus on whether some conditions are being overdiagnosed”.

But disabled activists believe its authors have been chosen because they will “help to slash the social security bill”.

The review will apparently be chaired by Professor Peter Fonagy, while the vice-chair will be Professor Sir Simon Wessely.

Fonagy is a highly-decorated clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst but he has also been closely associated with the Serenity Integrated Mentoring (SIM) programme, which was described as unethical, unlawful and unsafe and “a national scandal” that had put people in severe mental distress at risk of being denied vital support.

He was lead author of an article (PDF) whose co-authors included Paul Jennings, the former police officer who founded SIM, and which examined how SIM was working in London and concluded six years ago that it was “promising”.

Jennings described Fonagy in one presentation as a “senior supporter” of the programme.

Campaigning by the StopSIM Coalition later exposed SIM as discriminatory, coercive and punitive, and eventually persuaded NHS England to admit it was wrong to endorse SIM without applying “sufficient scrutiny” and to accept that this had harmed service-users.

Wessely’s appointment is likely to prove even more divisive.

He helped recruit patients onto the notorious, and later discredited, PACE trial – part-funded by the Department for Work and Pensions – and he was hugely supportive of the PACE research (PDF) into the use of controversial treatments such as cognitive behaviour therapy and graded exercise therapy for those with ME.

In 1993 (PDF, page 17)*, Wessely had written to the then Department of Social Security to argue that the only difference between “chronic fatigue syndrome, or ME as it is sometimes known” and “the major psychiatric disorders” was “the existence of a powerful lobby group that dislikes any association with psychiatry”.

Wessely argued in his letter that any suggestion that ME was a neurological condition would “discourage any sensible efforts at rehabilitation” and lead to an “ever increasing stream of claims for permanent benefits in people who might otherwise have had a chance of recovery”.

The view – shared by Wessely – that it was the attitudes of people with ME that were preventing their recovery, and the impact of this belief among many doctors and scientists on the treatment of many thousands of people with ME, was described by the Guardian’s George Monbiot last year as “the greatest medical scandal of the 21st century”.

Wessely also led a review of the Mental Health Act, which was criticised for falling “significantly short” of recommending full human rights for people in mental distress, but was a blueprint for Labour’s much-criticised mental health bill.

Although the Fonagy review has yet to be officially confirmed by the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), its existence was revealed by the well-connected Health Service Journal (HSJ).

Linda Burnip, co-founder of Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC), said: “I think the choice of these two people shows how little regard the government, and Streeting and Timms** in particular, have for the fears of disabled people.

“It seems likely that they have deliberately been chosen to help to slash the social security bill.”

The grassroots, user-led mental health group Recovery in the Bin (RiTB) said both appointments were “safe establishment” figures with troubling backgrounds, such as Wessely’s links to the ME “forced exercise programmes” and Fonagy’s links to SIM, which suggested “a very low probability that this will be an open and fair investigation”.

RiTB said: “We expect it will return findings the government will find useful to deny people benefits.

“The issue that should be investigated is the thousands of deaths covered up by the DWP.

“Instead, they want to cause more death.”

A spokesperson for DPAC Cymru said it was “alarmed” at the decision to appoint Fonagy and Wessely, whose backgrounds were “a clear signal” of a “politically-motivated review that has had its outcome decided in advance.

“In the context of an NHS starved of funding, disability welfare cuts, and the UK government’s demonisation of disabled people, it is obvious why these two men have been selected.”

A DPAC Cymru member added: “Normalising mental health and neurodiversity normalises seeking help and clarity which makes diagnosis more accessible.

“We’ve always existed, we’ve always been different, we just didn’t have the ability to seek help or diagnosis.

“This whole ‘autism is new’ and ‘over-diagnosed’ argument is just another load of rubbish to demonise young people, make disability a taboo, exclude disabled communities, and save rich people pennies on providing help to people who really need it, and it frustrates me so incredibly much.”

Bethan Edwards, co-founder of the Stop SIM Coalition, which has now been disbanded, told Disability News Service (DNS) this week: “Professor Fonagy led an evaluation of SIM during its implementation in London in 2018 and 2019.

“SIM involved withholding care from people in extreme mental distress and involved the threat of criminalisation for attempting to use statutory services to meet significant mental health needs.

“It should not have taken a group of service-users to bring this to the public and professional bodies’ attention in 2021, leading to SIM’s demise.

“The alarm could and should have been raised sooner, including by Professor Fonagy himself.

“I, therefore, have very little confidence that the DHSC’s review will put the well-being and safety of people with mental health needs ahead of the Labour governments agenda – to cut welfare spending and to continue underfunding mental health services.”

And Kate Skinner, a neurodivergent campaigner, psychology student and academic research assistant, told DNS: “In my mind, the government’s potential reasons behind this review are straightforward: if fewer people qualify for diagnostic labels (such as ADHD), then fewer people will qualify for benefits, accommodations, and specialist services, as so many places lock the provision of support behind these labels.

“Reviews like this one feel like their real purpose is redefining who counts as being ‘deserving’ of support, as evidenced by the wider media, which has been chipping away at the ‘validity’ and ‘deservingness’ of neurodivergence for a while now.”

She said: “I understand why many disabled people, particularly those who are neurodivergent, are deeply concerned about this review.

“Psychology and psychiatry have a long history of researchers deciding what is ‘best’ for others, while ignoring the lived experiences of the people they study.

“This history of exclusion and paternalism already makes it difficult to trust that this new review, commissioned in such a negative light, will be conducted with genuine openness or ethical integrity.”

Skinner added: “One of the professionals leading this review [Wessely] has previously argued that greater awareness of mental health conditions may not be ‘beneficial’, and has warned against ‘over-professionalising’ or ‘medicalising’ certain conditions.

“Therefore, it is difficult not to feel that the government is seeking to use ‘experts’ to push through a harmful, ideologically-driven agenda.

“Until reviews like this are shaped and conducted by those they claim to represent, any talk of ‘overdiagnosis’ will continue to sound less like healthy, scientific investigation and more like deep, cynical suspicion.”

DHSC declined to comment on the HSJ article.

*This document was obtained from the National Archives through the efforts of disabled barrister Valerie Eliot Smith, who has ME

**Sir Stephen Timms, minister for social security and disability

9 October 2025

Coach firm to pay thousands to accessible transport activist after driver lied that he threatened violence

A coach operator that passed on defamatory lies about a well-known disabled activist who exposed the inaccessibility of one of its coaches will have to pay him substantial damages, and make a humiliating apology in open court.

A driver for Bolton-based Tyrers Coaches fabricated claims about Doug Paulley, alleging he had threatened a Network Rail coordinator with violence and that he hurled swearwords at him over an access failure at Rochdale train station 13 months ago.

Tyrers had passed on the allegations to the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA), and another transport company, Arriva.

The incident occurred after Tyrers – which was one of the companies providing a rail replacement service on behalf of government-owned Northern Trains – had been unable to accept Paulley onto its vehicle because the relevant door was not working.

Coaches from two other companies were also not able to accept Paulley on board, with one driver not trained to operate the accessibility equipment, and the other vehicle not wheelchair-accessible.

Tyrers later told DVSA and another transport company, Arriva, that Paulley had threatened violence, was physically threatening, called its driver “a d**khead” and told him he didn’t know what he was “f***ing doing”.

Paulley later discovered by accident – when his solicitor submitted a subject access request to DVSA in connection with another discrimination case – what Tyrers had said about him.

The coach company was unaware that Paulley – who has spent years exposing access failures across the transport industry – had recorded the incident on a camera attached to his wheelchair.

He was able to use the recording to show that none of the claims made by the Tyrers driver had been true.

He decided to launch a defamation claim in the high court because of the risk of serious damage to his reputation, and – he told Disability News Service – because he wanted to address the “reprehensible”, discriminatory and dishonest behaviour of transport companies and coach drivers, and their “horrific, hateful, ableist behaviour”.

Tyrers has now agreed to pay him £7,500 in damages and a further £1,000 for a breach of data protection law.

The company will also have to write to DVSA and Arriva, making it clear that the allegations it shared were false.

And it will have to apologise in open court for the false claims it made, and for the distress and damage caused to Paulley’s reputation.

Tyrers had not commented on its actions by 11am today (Thursday).

Train company Northern has also apologised to Paulley, after one of its managers claimed in an email that he “goes around Railway Stations and tries to find fault at each location”.

The email had been sent out after Paulley complained about the Rochdale incident, in which he had been “simply trying to travel and encountered genuine accessibility barriers” with the rail replacement bus service.

He told Northern in a complaint: “When I documented these experiences, it was as part of my legitimate role as a nationally recognised transport accessibility advocate, not as malicious troublemaking.

“The suggestion that I ‘go around’ railway stations looking for problems fundamentally misrepresents evidence-based documentation of accessibility failures as some form of personal vendetta.”

He said the language used showed “a concerning institutional prejudice against disabled passengers who exercise their legal rights to document accessibility failures and hold operators accountable”.

And he said it had “contributed to the toxic atmosphere” that enabled the discriminatory behaviour by Tyrers, and the subsequent “inaccurate, defamatory allegations” that were made about him.

Paulley said Northern’s actions had created “chilling effects that may deter other disabled passengers from reporting legitimate concerns”.

Northern has now apologised in an email for the distress caused by its manager’s comments and told Paulley his campaigning was “invaluable” and “helps us learn from our mistakes” and that his work over the years “has been greatly appreciated and has played an important role in helping us improve”.

Paulley’s data protection case against another transport company is ongoing.

A Northern spokesperson said the company had no further updates to the apology issued to Doug Paulley.

But he added: “As referenced [in the emailed apology], the work that campaigners including Mr Paulley do is invaluable.

“The comments in the email about which the complaint was received are not reflective of Northern’s views, and we are truly sorry for any distress caused by these comments.”

9 October 2025

Access to Work dossier of evidence shows ‘real harm’ and job losses caused by DWP cuts and failings

The Access to Work scheme is failing Deaf and disabled people, and its “decline” in the last two years has caused them “real harm”, with some support packages cut by 80 per cent, according to a detailed dossier of evidence prepared by a user-led organisation.

The 33-page report was put together by London-based Action on Disability (AoD), which said its evidence shows “systemic administrative failure, lack of transparency, and potential breaches of equality and human rights obligations” by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).

The evidence has been sent to the National Audit Office (NAO) as part of its ongoing investigation into how DWP is addressing “challenges” in the operation of the Access to Work (AtW) scheme.

NAO launched its investigation earlier this year following concerns that increased demand for AtW support, and other factors, had “adversely affected DWP’s administration of the scheme”, with “growing backlogs of people waiting for their applications to be processed or their claims to be paid”.

Much of the AoD report is based on its experience assisting disabled people with their AtW applications, renewals and appeals, in which their awards were “reduced, delayed, or rendered unusable due to unimplementable conditions”.

Between January 2023 and July 2025, it says, average support hours per week for more than 35 work placements it monitored have fallen from 22.5 to just four, while the average waiting time for an AtW case manager to be allocated has risen from eight weeks to 30, the job retention rate has halved from 88 per cent to 43 per cent, and the progression to paid work for those on supported internships has fallen from 72 per cent to 28 per cent.

Employers working with AoD say the deterioration of the scheme since 2023 has led to “job losses, reduced hours, and withdrawal from inclusion programmes that were previously successful”, with a significant decline in confidence in AtW among employers.

The dossier was shared with Disability News Service (DNS) this week, just days after DNS reported how disability minister Sir Stephen Timms admitted signing off on a directive that led to widespread cuts to disabled people’s AtW support packages.

Sir Stephen admitted to DNS last week that he had signed off on an order for AtW staff to apply guidance more “scrupulously”, after civil servants submitted a “proposal” to him to approve.

Among its concerns, the AoD report says changes to the way the scheme operates have made it harder for disabled people to contact their AtW case manager, while leading to inconsistency around quotations, inconsistent decision-making, and delayed or unclear pathways for appeals.

The effect of the changes has been to exclude disabled people from employment, destabilise supported internships, and undermine employers’ commitment to inclusion.

This has left AtW no longer operating “as a transparent, accountable, or lawfully administered scheme”, says the report.

The impact of changes over the last two years has been “a significant reduction in awards, increased administrative delays, and a breakdown of communication between AtW and service users, reversing years of progress in inclusive employment”.

And it says its evidence suggests that DWP has refused to publish internal policy instructions; denied claimants procedural fairness; obstructed transparency; and failed to ensure economy, efficiency, and effectiveness in public spending.

The report particularly highlights what AoD calls a “systemic policy shift”, with many applications that would previously have been awarded 100 per cent of a disabled person’s support needs in the workplace now being awarded about 20 per cent of their assessed needs.

This occurs when AtW categorises the assistance requested as a “job aide”, meaning the support worker is viewed as performing part of the job on the claimant’s behalf, rather than helping the disabled employee to overcome barriers related to the work.

AoD says AtW’s “rigid” approach fails to recognise the “legitimate” support that many disabled people need to complete their work independently, such as prompting and structured guidance.

It says AtW’s lack of recognition of such an approach to support has led to significant funding reductions of up to 80 per cent, disproportionately affecting people with learning difficulties, autistic people, those with acquired brain injury, or people with sensory processing impairments.

The report says the 20 per cent award policy “is like handing someone a plank that only stretches a fifth of the way across a river and then blaming them when they fall in”.

The NAO said its report was likely to be published early next year, and its team was still “gathering evidence through different methods”.

A government consultation on the future of Access to Work closed on 30 June, and DWP says it is now reviewing those responses and the scheme and working with disabled people and others on its proposals.

A “collaboration committee” on Access to Work – whose members have remained anonymous – concluded its work this month, and DWP says its views and concerns will now help shape the department’s policymaking.

DWP continues to insist that no changes have been made to AtW policy.

David Buxton, chief executive of AoD, said: “Access to Work should be a bridge into employment.

“Instead, thousands are being left stranded mid-way.

“The scheme’s decline is costing jobs, damaging wellbeing, and wasting public money.

“We hope the NAO’s inquiry restores transparency, fairness, and trust.”

A DWP spokesperson said: “We inherited an Access to Work scheme that is failing both employees and employers, which is why – as part of our welfare reform – we consulted on how it could be improved.

“We are reviewing all aspects of the scheme and will develop future policy with disabled people and the organisations that represent them.”

Meanwhile, disability consultant Alice Hastie, who specialises in providing AtW advice, warned this week that DWP had now shut down the AtW complaints email address, which she said “seems like a bizarre (and barely legal!) way of reducing the number of complaints they have to deal with”.

DWP said last night (Wednesday) that its policy is that email is not a valid contact method for complaints unless this has been agreed as a reasonable adjustment.

It is believed that the complaints email may have been shut down because it was for internal use only and its existence was not supposed to have been leaked to claimants.

9 October 2025

Greens show contrast with other major parties on disability cuts and refusal to stir up hostility to claimants

The Green Party is set to continue to contrast its policy approach on disability with other political parties by supporting disabled people who rely on benefits and have already experienced years of austerity cuts.

The newly-elected leader of the Green Party of England and Wales, Zach Polanski, told members at their annual conference in Bournemouth that the party would fight for the many disabled people “who have found themselves at the sharp end of brutal government cuts”.

His speech was focused on reducing the cost-of-living and addressing “rip-off Britain”, demanding more from “the very wealthiest”, tackling climate breakdown, attacking the “alarm bells of authoritarianism” within the Labour government, supporting the NHS and community cohesion, protecting “rights” and “liberties” through a “politics of hope”, and supporting migrants.

But there was almost no mention of how the party would fulfil these pledges, other than a repeated emphasis on wealth taxes, although its general election manifesto last year pledged a five per cent increase in the level of disability benefits, free personal care for adults, and more money to support disabled children in mainstream schools.

The difference in emphasis from the Liberal Democrat conference – where party leader Ed Davey spoke in an interview of targeting disability benefit fraud – and particularly the Labour, Reform and Conservative party conferences (see separate story), was clear.

There were no attacks on disabled people claiming benefits in Polanksi’s speech, and no calls for cuts to spending on supporting disabled people, or complaints about the “over-diagnosis” of mental distress or neurodivergence.

Instead, he said his party would fight for hard-pressed families, renters who live in “shoddy accommodation” and are wary of further rent increases, and “thousands and thousands of disabled people in the UK who have found themselves at the sharp end of brutal government cuts”.

In his speech, Polanski mentioned meeting a disabled man and his carer while knocking on doors with another Green politician, and how they spoke about “how hard everything is and how it just didn’t feel like a single person was representing them”.

Despite his words, there was still no clear picture of what Polanski and the Green Party would do to change that, other than “focusing day-in, day-out on the cost of living”.

One of the party’s co-deputy leaders, Rachel Millward, had told the conference of her experience of physical impairment and associated “horrendous” pain in her 20s, when she had a blue parking badge and an adapted vehicle.

But she said: “Far worse than that was the pain of separation from my community and from nature.

“Conference, please let us always make it a priority to find ways to give people with disabilities much better access to both.”

The contrast with the four main UK-wide parties continued this week, when the Green Party’s other co-deputy leader, Mothin Ali, attacked the “divisiveness and hatred” of the Conservative party and its announcements at its conference in Manchester this week (see separate story).

He said: “The package so far – turbo-charged welfare cuts, draconian anti-migration measures, and axing life-saving foreign aid – would leave few but the wealthiest unscathed.

“These measures are a cruel attack on the sick and disabled, migrants and asylum-seekers, and some of the poorest communities in the world.”

9 October 2025

New film celebrates 10 years since ‘moment in time’ victory over care charges in London borough

A new film released to celebrate 10 years since activists won a campaign to stop their local council charging for care shows how disabled people can achieve important victories by taking collective action, say campaigners who fought for that success.

The film* highlights the eight years of campaigning by Hammersmith and Fulham Coalition against Cuts (HAFCAC), which led eventually to their London borough scrapping home care charges in April 2015.

The campaign began in 2006 when the new Conservative-led council introduced a policy that imposed charges for home care.

HAFCAC was set up to fight the “discriminatory policy”, and it spent eight years lobbying councillors, holding protests and pushing the council to change its policy.

Tara Flood, one of the HAFCAC steering group members, says in the film: “There’s something particularly awful about receiving, through the post or via email, a document, an invoice, that sets out how much you have to pay to enable you to live at home with the support that you need to participate in your community, to be a friend, to be a family member, to be a parent, to get to work.

“No-one else is experiencing that.”

HAFCAC also backed a judicial review legal action against the charges brought by three disabled people from the borough who received home care.

Although they lost the case, one of the high court judges described the policy as sacrificing home care services on the altar of council tax reductions.

The film describes how the coalition raised much of its funding with pub quizzes, at which disabled activists such as Flood, Kevin Caulfield and Debbie Domb – all members of HAFCAC’s steering group – began to build relationships with politicians, including Labour’s Steve Cowan.

Cowan, who would go on to lead Hammersmith and Fulham council, says in the film: “The crucial thing was what Debbie, Tara and Kevin were able to do, was educate me and my colleagues on the need for the social model of disability to be right at the heart of our Labour administration’s approach.”

Months after Labour won back control of the council in May 2014, Cowan announced that Hammersmith and Fulham would be scrapping all home care charges in May 2015.

It remains one of only two councils in England that do not charge for home care, after Tower Hamlets council in east London scrapped adult home care charges from April this year.

Caulfield says in the film: “That moment [in 2014] was a real moment in time to show that campaigning does work, that disabled people getting together and collectively taking action can really have an impact.”

David Webb, a fourth member of the HAFCAC steering group, who ran the fund-raising pub quizzes, describes in the film how having personal assistance has completely changed his life.

He says: “It has given me a measure of choice and control that I didn’t have before.”

Victoria Brignall, who has benefited from scrapping care charges in the borough, says in the film: “People don’t choose to be disabled.

“It’s a tax on disability and we would like disabled people to be treated in the same way as other people.

“You don’t charge people to send their children to school, or to use parks, or to collect your rubbish, so why charge disabled people for their care?”

She says she hopes other councils will now be inspired to abolish home care charges.

Last year, Disability Law Service published research which showed that disabled people across England were continuing to face unlawful discrimination and inequality on an “unparalleled” scale due to “unjust” social care charging policies.

Caulfield points out in the film that tens of thousands of disabled people every year are taken to court for non-payment of care charges.

“That’s just a disgrace,” he says.

He and his fellow HAFCAC veterans say the film serves as both a celebration and a rallying cry, and that they hope their success “will inspire more disabled people to take action”.

The film, launched on Tuesday, is dedicated to Debbie Domb, “a fearless freedom fighter for disabled people’s rights”, who died in 2018.

*The film, ‘£12.40 an Hour for a Shower: The Story of Disabled People’s Struggle to Abolish Home Care Charging in Hammersmith & Fulham’, was directed, edited and produced by disabled film-maker, journalist and author Richard Butchins, and can be accessed with BSL and subtitles only, or with added audio description.

**Inclusion London is campaigning to persuade the government to scrap all social care charges.

9 October 2025

Click here for the Easy Read version.

To:

The Welsh Government,

The Scottish Government,

The Northern Ireland Executive,

The UK Government,

1st September 2025

After a major, if partial, defeat in parliament over disability cuts, the disability minister Stephen Timms promised MPs that the PIP benefit review would be co-produced by disabled people and their organisations.

There is widespread skepticism if this will genuinely be the case. Promises to “engage widely over the summer” have not been met, and there has been no transparency over Timms’ plans for “ten people” to have “a lot of sway”. His comments reveal that he does not understand what co-production means. Timms has also repeatedly declined to acknowledge the many serious failures of the Pathways to Work green paper consultation process, particularly felt in Wales.

We counterpose this to the Disability Rights Taskforce, initiated in partnership with the Welsh Government, which brought together 350 stakeholders and 200 policy experts, as a model of what co-production can look like. However, many Taskforce participants were frustrated that much of their work was ultimately missing from the Welsh Government draft plan. This is a lesson that even co-produced policy will fall flat without accountability. Disabled people’s organisations must be given the necessary resources and powers to carry out the implementation and monitoring of decisions.

[Some of us] cautiously welcome[d] the announcement of the Government’s new Independent Disability Advisory Panel. This panel is separate to, but will feed into, the Timms review of PIP. However, trust remains very low, and the terms – of “up to 10” people – have already been set for us. [See update, below]

We the undersigned demand that:

• The new Independent Disability Advisory Panel must be genuinely independent, representative, transparent, and have real powers of oversight.

• The UK government must acknowledge its failures in delivering the Pathways to Work consultation and legislative process, as a precondition to rebuilding trust and ensuring those mistakes are not repeated.

• The PIP review must be independently led by disabled people and our organisations, inviting the views of carers, volunteers, and workers in health, social care, housing, transport, and welfare.

• Any review of welfare reform must also, in a process led by disabled people, involve trade unions as democratic organisations representing 1.4 million disabled workers as well as representing the workers responsible for the day-to-day delivery of services that disabled people rely on.

• The scope of the PIP review must be widened to all aspects of welfare and employment for disabled people, guided by the principle: from each according to their ability, to each according to their need.

• Dedicated funding must be provided to Disabled Peoples Organisations to support outreach, accessible engagement, and the collection of views from disabled people, including those without internet access or digital skills.

• The devolved governments of Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland, and councils, should recognise and support this independent review even if the UK government refuses to.

• The UK government must immediately halt all cuts to disability and incapacity benefits for the duration of the review, and urgently fix Access to Work.

• Parliament must be given time to properly scrutinise any new legislation.

• The UC bill should be repealed. It is flawed, and was rushed through in an abnormal and undemocratic way.

[Update 4th September] Statement from DPAC Cymru regarding the “Independent Disability Advisory Panel”:

“The recently published terms for the so-called Independent Disability Advisory Panel, including the requirement to sign a non-disclosure agreement, are completely unacceptable. We are going to go back to a full consultation with all of our members and allies and take time for discussion to correct the weakness in our compromise wording of ‘cautiously welcome’ and come back united, realigned on the strongest possible response. We hope you will continue to support the demand for an independent PIP review, led by disabled people, and support this letter with your signature.”

For a full list of signatures and footnotes, see here.

To add your support to the letter, add your signature here

Here are short URLs for sharing the letter:

Non-Easy Read: Bit.Ly/independent-pip-review

Easy Read: Bit.Ly/easy-read-independent-pip-review

Tips on dealing with Access to Work

Access to Work No Responses »

Jun 152022

DPAC were contacted by an individual who was having difficulties renewing his Access to Work. He had been told that their backlog meant his AtW package would not be renewed before it ran out and that in the meantime he would have to pay for his own support.

He successfully challenged this and suggested we share what he did in order to help others in similar situations for which we are grateful.

He says:

“The internal complaint being raised has resulted in my being contacted by a renewal case manager yesterday who will complete my renewal review on ahead of schedule.

The three important steps in my case were as follows –

(i) Phone call to AtW speak to staff and confirm that they advise the internal complaint route if your circumstances warrant it and show that expected delay(s) would aggravate conditions / cause detriment. Its important to do this so you can tell the AtW staff member that you complained as a result of advice from their colleagues – this carries more weight.

(ii) Submit a letter of complaint to atw.complaintsresolutionteam@dwp.gov.uk The key elements are to keep it short (1 page) but set out the detriments linked to delay if there are any.

(iii) Phone call to AtW a couple of working days after the letter has been submitted in order to confirm they have it , then explain to the AtW staff member why you need the case escalated in this manner. This call with prompt the AtW member of staff to complete an online note of their system, creating the complaints process timetable and generating an auto-reply within 24 hours explaining the process.

It was within 24 hours of the last phone call I made to AtW that i was contacted by a renewal case manager to start the renewal process.”

StopChanges2AtW – cases closed for workers on furlough & evidence needed for campaign

Access to Work No Responses »

Aug 192020

Last week, campaigners became aware that from 14 August Access to Work (AtW) was closing cases for Deaf and disabled workers still on furlough. What this means is that when furlough ends, any workers who need AtW to return to work will have to re-apply for their support package. This will increase the burden on Deaf and disabled workers on top of the many other barriers they face to staying in employment. There is no obvious reason why the Department for Work and Pensions should have to close rather than pause their furloughed caseload. We can only assume this is a cynical attempt to save money by making it more difficult for workers to claim support from AtW in the hopes that some will simply give up. Once again, we see the government stacking the decks against Deaf and disabled workers and exposing the emptiness of their rhetoric about wanting to help Deaf and disabled people into employment.

This is also just the latest example of problems with AtW that have been experienced since Covid-19 outbreak and lockdown.

StopChanges2AtW wants to hear any and all examples of difficulties with AtW since 1^st March 2020 that you’ve experienced since early March 2020. These could have negatively affected Deaf and disabled workers as well as interpreters or Personal Assistants paid through AtW.

Please email or send BSL videos to: StopChanges2AtW@gmail.com

We will keep all examples we receive anonymous and use them to produce a mini report which we can use to raise awareness of the types of problems people have faced and to campaign for improvements.

Free Book Draw – The War on Disabled People

Access to Work, Bedroom tax, Benefits, charities, council cuts, Independent Living, Independent Living Fund ILF, local authority cuts, Maximus, Mental Health, Social Model, UNCRPD, Universal Credit, UNUM, WCA, welfare cuts, Welfare reforms No Responses »

May 262020

A picture of the front cover of the book titled: "The War on Disabled People: capitalism, welfare and the making of a human catastrophe by Ellen Clifford". Behind the text is the image of a man on crutches. The full background, including the image of the disabled man, is rendered in shades of red and black. The text is in white.

The War on Disabled People is now available to pre-order from Zed Books:

https://www.zedbooks.net/shop/book/the-war-on-disabled-people/forthcoming/

Zed are offering a discounted price but DPAC realises that the cost will still be beyond the reach of many people – not least because of the issues covered in the book.

We will be giving away a few free copies kindly donated by Zed to names pulled out of a hat on 15th June. To enter please email your name to mail@dpac.uk.net with ‘Book Draw’ in the subject line.

Very sadly the battle for accessible formats to be available is ongoing… watch this space.

Day of Action for Disability Equality in Education, November 21st, nationally

Access to Work, Action, All Posts No Responses »

Nov 152018

Our first day of action for Disabled Equality in Education will see meetings and events in colleges and universities, as well as schools where SEND cuts are destroying integrated education and will culminate in a meeting in parliament where we will bring forward demands for change.

Parliamentary meeting Wednesday November 21^st House of Commons, Committee Room 10 from 5.30pm – 7pm. Some tickets are available for this event and we want as many disabled people as possible to attend:

please email DPAC or elaneheffernan@btinternet.com for tickets

Briefing Document from ALLFIE can be read here https://www.allfie.org.uk/

Cambridge

Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) now has a Cambridgeshire and Essex branch! Come and join us for this protest about disability equality in work. We will be highlighting the government’s persecution of disabled people, reading the names of people who have died because of the horrific cuts and sanctions regime of the DWP, and agitating for real equality of access to work.

We are in solidarity with the UCU Day of Action for disability equality in education, for which events are taking place all day at the Cambridge University Students Union. If you’re going to one of the UCU events, come and join us at 2:30 in Market Square to take the message to the public.

Wednesday, 21 November 2018 from 14:30-16:30,

Market Square Cambridge

Cambridge.

https://www.facebook.com/events/304326216958523/?notif_t=plan_user_invited&notif_id=1542299943763655

Liverpool

Support Wed 21st national UCU Day of action for disability equality in education at Liverpool University

Come and join us

12.00 Rally University Square (Brownlow Hill)

We will be leafleting:

10.45 502 Teaching Block (Mount Pleasant next to Student Guild)

11.45 502 Teaching Block (Mount Pleasant next to Student Guild)

The UCU is taking action to challenge disability discrimination on campus and barriers faced by disabled people in education.

Our union branch recently passed a motion expressing concern about the disability discrimination on campus which is heavily impacting staff and students and demanding that the University complies with the Equality Act 2010 in relation to disability. The issues on campus were also reported in the media.
https://www.disabilitynewsservice.com/union-backs-claims-of-widespread-discrimination-by-hostile-university/

Please come and show your support.

Please contact UCU equalities officer if you can help. Kirsteen.paton@liv.ac.uk

https://www.ucu.org.uk/disabilityequality?utm_source=lyr-ucu-members&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=members&utm_term=all&utm_content=Day+of+action+for+disability+equality+in+education:+21+November+2018

There will be a disabled member of staff speaking, Kirsten (our UCU equalities officer at Liverpool) and a message of solidarity from DPAC would be great.

We are leafleting the 502 teaching block because access is none existent or very difficult.

2017 DPAC Week of Action #SummerofDiscontent #NotOneMoreDay #CutsKill

News, Access to Work, Action, All Posts, Disability Activism, Disability History, Disability Rights 5 Responses »

Jul 032017

2017 DPAC Week of Action #SummerofDiscontent #NotOneMoreDay #CutsKill

Friday 14^th July – Opening ceremony – from 6pm

As the World Para Athletics kick off in London, join us at Queens Elizabeth Olympics Park for our own 2017 DPAC week of action opening ceremony. While Atos continue to be a partner of the IPC, disabled people’s participation in sport and physical activity is declining as a direct result of cuts. Please come to help leaflet those going in to watch the Athletics about the impact of the cuts and how they can get involved in supporting DPAC to fight back.

Meet Stratford station tube at 6pm.

For information on getting to the Park: https://www.queenelizabetholympicpark.co.uk/the-park/plan-your-visit/getting-here

For more information about the World Para Athletics or to purchase tickets to attend the events go to: https://www.paraathleticschampionships.com/

Sunday 16^th July – Carnival Against Cuts

Join DPAC on the Fair Funding for All Schools Carnival Against Cuts. Education cuts are taking learning support away from Disabled pupils and undermining the right to inclusive education.

Assemble Victoria Embankment at midday
Rally at Parliament Square30pm
Family fun, picnics, art, songs, kids’ entertainment and speakers.

Please sign and share the petition: https://www.change.org/p/stop-school-funding-cuts-all-our-children-deserve-a-great-education

For more information and campaigns resources go to: https://www.fairfundingforallschools.org/

Tuesday 18^th July – National Day of Action

This is the day for local DPAC groups and supporters to organise your own actions on local issues that are most important to you. It could be a protest outside a benefit assessment centre, against the closure of a local JobCentre or library or at the Town Hall to oppose cuts to social care – the choice is yours. Don’t forget to tell the local media and please send us details to help publicise your action.

Wednesday 19^th July – Lobby of Parliament for Independent Living

The crisis in social care keeps hitting the headlines but the focus is often dominated by older people’s care instead of violations to Disabled people’s right to independent living. Theresa May has promised a consultation on social care later in the year but Disabled people battling cuts to essential daily support need concrete action now. At the last Prime Minister’s Questions before the Summer recess, DPAC independent living campaigners will lobby our MPs to defend our rights to dignity and choice.

Assemble outside House of Commons entrance from 11am.

We are also asking Disabled people to write to their MPs about their experiences of social care cuts and the detrimental impact on our lives.

Thursday 20^th July – Turn Up and Go protest

Driver Only Operated trains, the removal of guards from trains and rail staff from stations threaten Disabled people’s freedom to travel. On 10^th July DPAC campaigners will be joining RMT staff on their picket lines as they take industrial action to defend our right to access public transport.

On 20^th July we are inviting Disabled people to travel together en masse to the Department for Transport’s headquarters in London to deliver a petition demanding out right to ride.

Assemble outside the Department for Transport at 2pm. Department for Transport
Great Minster House ,33 Horseferry Road ,London,W1P 4DR

Please sign and share the petition: https://www.change.org/p/department-for-transport-disabled-people-demand-guards-on-trains

Friday 21^st July – Anti-Atos protest

For our final day of action, DPAC will be returning to Atos HQ after a long absence. They no longer hold the contract to run the Work Capability Assessment but they continue to ruin the lives of disabled people through their contract to carry our PIP Assessments, notorious for assessment reports riddled with lies and inaccuracies.

Assemble 12.30 pm outside their offices at 4, Triton Square, Regent’s Place, London, NW1 3HG

Bring rugs, food and noise and let’s party.

May 23rd, Bristol, How to Survive Disability Benefits

News, Access to Work, Action, All Posts, Benefits 1 Response »

May 042017

How to Survive Disability Benefits

Facebook Event: https://www.facebook.com/events/670546233151595/

23 May at 19:00–21:00

Trinity Centre

Trinity Road, BS2 0NW Bristol, United Kingdom

Over the past seven years the government has practically declared war on

those with disabilities, long term illnesses or any other conditions

that make life difficult. Support services that enabled us to work or

live normal lives have been stripped away. At the same time the

politicians and their media lackeys label us ‘lazy’ and ‘scroungers’.

Surviving on Employment Support Allowance (ESA) means navigating an

intentionally brutal bureaucracy coupled with a culture of disbelief. It

also means making it through the dreaded Work Capability Assessments,

that have contributed to the deaths of hundreds of people declared ‘fit

to work’.

Making it through all this is often damaging to our health. It can be

stressful, isolating, anxiety inducing, and seems setup to create the

sort of ‘mistakes’ that can leave people penniless. It doesn’t always

have to be this way! We can come together to support each other through

the processes. We’ll be sharing knowledge, tips and tricks to making it

through ESA and look at ways we can join together to confront the system

head on.

This should be of use to anyone who is on ESA and/or related benefits

such as PIP or supporting someone who is. Please be aware this is a

skill share and there won’t be time for folks to offer comprehensive

advice on individual cases (although we can help direct you to places

that offer further support).

Trinity is a very accessible venue, details are here:

https://www.3ca.org.uk/accessibility If you have any accessibility needs

beyond those listed please contact either the venue or ourselves

bristol@afed.org.uk

As always this event is free to attend, but donations to help cover room

hire are appreciated. Hot & Cold drinks & snacks will be available to

keep you going. We’ll also have some anarchist pamphlets, papers,

magazines and stickers some for free/donation and others for a few quid.

Keep an eye out for future events, including our monthly Capitalism: a

Survival Guide workshops!

Please remember that whilst we encourage debate of ideas, we do not

tolerate attacks on individuals; especially in a way that uses

oppressive or threatening behaviour. Whilst we are not at our usual

venue of Hydra Books this month, we’ll still stick to their safer spaces

policy which you can read here : https://www.hydrabooks.org/safer-spaces/

Paid Internship Vacancies, Oxford

All Posts, Access to Work, Action No Responses »

Mar 302017

People and Planet based in Oxford have paid internship vacancies available in a fully accessible workplace.

Their latest campaign is around challenging racist narratives in the media and promoting ethical journalism on migrant’s rights.

This sits alongside our fossil fuel divestment campaign and our workers rights campaign in the electronics industry in the globalSouth.

For more information see hhtps://peopleandplanet.org/work-with-us

English Translation of article published in Junge Welt magazine – The Legacy of Brexit for Disabled People in the UK

Access to Work, Action, All Posts, anti racism, News, Politics 1 Response »

Dec 232016

It’s difficult if not impossible to adequately define the outcomes of Brexit for anyone living in the UK let alone for disabled people. The result where a small minority of the electorate voted to leave the EU has so far caused massive political turmoil but no concrete proposals as the new unelected Prime Minister, Teresa May, thrashes around wildly clutching at straws.

What is certain is that the promise of an extra £350 million a week for our National Health Service has not and will not be forthcoming. In fact this promise promoted widely by the Leave campaigners in the Tory Party and a reason why many UK citizens were conned into voting to leave turns out to have been an outright lie.

Many of the more deluded disabled people who also voted to leave did so simply because they wanted to punish David Cameron the then Tory Prime Minister who was stupid enough to call a referendum in the first place. Having resigned first as Prime Minister and then a little later as a Member of Parliament I’m sure the multi-millionaire Cameron is indeed ‘suffering’. What is certain that disabled people will.

As soon as the outcome of the referendum was known Cameron together with a whole host of Leave politicians turned their backs on guiding the UK through the Brexit process – no doubt so they don’t get blamed for the ensuing disaster.

The devolved governments in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland do not want to leave the EU and in the case of Northern Ireland the Good Friday agreement and peace process means that there must be a parliamentary vote if Northern Ireland is to leave the EU. There is also a legal challenge to seek a parliamentary vote on Brexit as the outcome of the referendum is advisory only. So chaos reigns as the UK population dangle precipitously in limbo.

As well as months spent focussed on the referendum campaign, the immediate aftermath was an election for a new Tory Party Leader and a second internal party election to try to remove the previously democratically elected Labour Party leader. During these many months of political bat and ball and trips around the country by various politicians the rights of disabled people have largely been forgotten especially by the media. Serious campaigning has been put back months as the political focus has been firmly placed elsewhere.

On a plus point the fascist party UKIP which very much led the Brexit campaign on an anti-immigration stance have also fallen into disarray and appear on the verge of oblivion. There have already been several elections for a new leader with none of them being successful in finding someone who stayed more than a couple of weeks. As the old British saying goes “every cloud has a silver lining”

What is certain for the UK is that Brexit has led to a massive increase in race-related hate crime and there is no doubt those who perpetrate these crimes feel their actions are vindicated by the vote to leave. Xenophobia is rampant in parts of the country fuelled by some of the media as well as the Brexit campaign rhetoric. Disability hate crime has been rising year on year since 2010 in part thanks once again to the media-fuelled ‘useless eater’ and scrounger propaganda. For disabled people as well as those perceived to not be British hatred and abuse is only likely to increase in the post-Brexit frenzy that currently pervades the country.

Since Brexit as well the value of the pound has slumped which has already led to an increase in price for even essential daily items including for some the #Marmitegate tragedy where the price of Marmite has already risen in some cases by 12.5 % in shops.

Price increases for food and other essential items is likely to pose a particular problems for disabled people and others in receipt of UK Social Security payments as there is an austerity-led freeze on the amount of benefits which will be paid until at least 2020. The UK already has some of the lowest rates for out-of-work benefit payments in the EU so starting from a very low base rate the value of payments will fall even further as exchange rates fall.

On top of this fall in the value of the pound and freeze on increases in social security payments early in November an austerity-led cap on the total overall amount of benefit payments per household will result in massive reductions of £3,000 less per annum being paid to claimants. Many of those affected by this drastic cut will be disabled although other disabled people will be exempt from this cut.

From next April 2017 disabled people who make a new claim for Employment and Support Allowance and who are found not to be fit for work but able to undertake Work Related Activity which involved forcibly being made to jump though inappropriate and unacceptable hoops to continue being entitled to payments will also see their weekly income cut drastically by one-third. All of these changes will as already said be taking place at the same time the value of the pound falls against other currencies. Needless to say fuel prices are also continuing to rise and the number of UK residents on low incomes who have to choose between eating and heating because they can’t afford both continues to rise.

As disabled people and others wait for the mythical 35 million a day that we’re apparently saving by leaving the EU to be redeployed to help fund our National Health Service as promised we find our Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt putting in place plans to drastically reduce both the number of hospitals – down from 9 to 5 in London – and health service funding elsewhere in the UK through the implementation of Sustainability and Transformation Plans. This is very definitely not what Brexit promised for our health service. Hunt has also further undermined our NHS by stating that we want British only doctors in the near future in spite of the fact that around one-third of doctors currently are from other EU countries.

For disabled people who need personal assistance to live and take part in society Brexit is also bad news. Many people employ care workers/personal assistants from EU countries and now not only does the fall in the value of the pound affect the exchange value of wages paid but on a longer term basis no-one, neither the employers or the employees, have any idea about a future right to work here when the UK leaves the EU. It could of course be years before any more is known.

Workers rights generally are very much an unknown quantity at the moment as well. Teresa May has said the Conservatives want to protect those in place yet many people are on insecure zero hours contracts with no legal protections. The introduction of fees for Employment Tribunal hearings has also negatively affected worker’s rights to challenge unfair dismissals. All of these issues regarding employment rights continue to disproportionately affect disabled workers and the fear that once EU constraints on our employment laws are removed is causing major concerns for those disabled people who are in work.

For disabled people not in work the ending of Workfare and Work Choice schemes funded by the European Social Fund can really only be seen as positive. Neither of these schemes worked well in finding disabled people suitable or sustainable employment opportunities.

Workfare schemes in particular have been likened to unpaid slave labour which they were since claimants were forced to work for no pay under threat of having their benefits removed if they did not. Having said that there were a number of locally EU funded schemes to help disabled and other people into work which have worked well and for which there will now be no further EU funding available.

In other areas of life shared by disabled and non-disabled people the loss of European funding from the Social Fund, from the Common Agricultural Policy and from Regional Development grants will nevertheless be grossly detrimental to the overall standards of living and is likely to have a further negative trickle down impact on food prices. The idea that these funding streams will be replaced by our own government’s spending is laughable given their ongoing austerity agenda and determination to replace Trident nuclear weapons.

A Disappointing Start to the Labour Party Roadshows – GMCDP uninvited

Access to Work, Action, All Posts, News, Politics 1 Response »

Nov 112016

GMCDP uninvited

On 28th October, Greater Manchester Coalition of Disabled People (GMCDP) were contacted by the office of Debbie Abrahams, the Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, and invited to provide a key speaker for the launch of the Labour Party Disability Equality Roadshow on November 11th 2016.

The Labour Party said they wanted

“to ensure that we listen directly to the views of disabled people on a wide range of issues as we begin to develop Labour’s policies for the next election. We hoped to have brief introductory speeches from Jeremy Corbyn, Debbie and yourself, before breaking out into smaller groups to discuss policy themes, drawn from the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.”

The invitation cited GMCDPs “promotion of a rights-based approach to disability, extensive experience of campaigning to assert the rights of disabled people” and we, of course, were pleased to accept.

Two of the major issues that have been important to disabled people, we said, are Independent Living and Assisted Suicide, and we would like to talk about them. This seemed to worry our contact, who said that Labour had not got a formal policy position on the future funding of the ILF and he was concerned that this might be a difficult issue for Jeremy Corbyn and Debbie Abrahams to respond to if this was brought up. We explained that this was broader than the ILF and we wouldn’t be looking to put anyone on the spot, or expecting any commitment from Labour about this on the day.

Despite such reassurances from ourselves the Office of Debbie Abrahams has now withdrawn its invitation to GMCDP to provide a speaker. Although we will still attend, we are immensely disappointed.We have been a part of – and are linked into – disabled people’s organisations and networks and have offered to speak on two of the most serious matters facing disabled people today. We are astounded that the Labour Party does not want to hear us. Because of this we have decided to make our views available widely and are posting this message on our website. Please circulate it as widely as possible, so that the Labour Party knows just how important these matters are.

Please see below the speech we intended to deliver. Please circulate it as widely as possible, so that the Labour Party knows just how important these matters are.

1 Introduction:

Firstly I would like to thank Jeremy, Debbie and the Labour Party for inviting GMCDP to speak today at the launch of your Disability Equality Roadshow. Greater Manchester Coalition of Disabled People have no political affiliations, we have worked with past governments, Labour and Tory alike. We have also protested against both parties.

However, we are now living through an unprecedented period of sustained attacks on disabled people; the services we receive, the support we require and our very right to exist. You will no doubt have read the UN report published on Monday that state austerity policies ‘amount to violations of disabled people’s rights’. I mention this just so you don’t think that disabled people are making all this up.

We face inequality it all aspects of our lives, whether it be transport, housing, education or employment. Employment is a prime example of where we face inequalities at every level, from recruitment, retention, promotion and dismissal. To compound these difficulties the employment support programme Access To Work is being cut. Yes that’s right its being cut! At a time when we should be investing in support, the government is making cuts to this programme. This is impacting particularly upon Deaf People who require British Sign Language interpreters within the work place. If we want to see Deaf lawyers, Deaf teachers and Deaf members of parliament, cutting support is not the way to go about it!

However, for GMCDP and for disabled people’s organisations in the UK, there are two issues that are of greatest concern, two issues that we want to reach out to Labour on.

2 Independent Living

Firstly, the principals of Independent Living for disabled people are being dismantled. The Independent Living Fund has gone. It was established to support disabled people with the highest support needs to live independently within the community rather than locked away in residential care, and the government scrapped it! Jeremy knows this because unlike the majority of politicians who shrugged their shoulders and walked away, Jeremy stood with us outside the Court of Appeals in the cold and stood up for us in parliament and campaigned for the retention of the ILF.

So what has the closure of the ILF meant for disabled people? It’s meant that some disabled people are having their care support cut in half, some disabled people told to wear incontinence pads at night, despite the fact they are not incontinent. Southampton CCG are saying that anyone needing more than 8 hours care support a day now face the threat of going into residential care. Here in Greater Manchester, Rochdale council is planning cuts to its Learning Disability Services by moving some people who have existing tenancies into residential care.

What we need is a national, needs-led system, independent of local authorities to administer independent living support, free at point of delivery and paid for through taxation. This system should build on the learning from the Independent Living Fund and be a key strategic mechanism for ensuring Disabled people’s rights under the UNCRPD are fully and consistently realised across the country.

3 Assisted Suicide

The other big issue, the scariest issue, the most misunderstood and misreported issue is disabled people’s opposition to the legalisation of Assisted Suicide.

At times it feels to us that we are fighting a pincer movement.

On the one side we have austerity and the narrative that has been spun by successive governments that disabled people have had it too easy for too long, that we are bleeding the county dry and that we are unsustainable and an unacceptable expense (I thought that was the banks, but apparently not). There was the punitive introduction of Workfare, the bedroom tax, cuts to Disabled Students Allowance, cuts disguised as reforms to ESA, DLA which are relentless and ongoing.

On the other side we have repeated attempts to introduce Assisted Suicide legislation. Let us be clear that GMCDP, DPAC, Inclusion London and all the other major UK disabled people’s organisations or disability charities strongly oppose any attempt to introduce any Assisted Suicide legislation. At a time when we are facing massive cuts to services and benefits, we need support to live, not assistance to die. It is not only disabled people who oppose Assisted Suicide. The British Medical Association and Royal Colleges of Physicians, GPs and Surgeons and The Association for Palliative Medicine are all opposed to changing the law in relation to Assisted Suicide.

Despite this, supporters of Assisted Suicide claim that disabled people’s opposition to Assisted Suicide isn’t relevant as any such legislation would only apply to people who are terminally ill with less than six months to live and that safeguards would be put in place to protect the vulnerable (I think that means people like me). Well our concerns are relevant because we have the evidence from countries like Belgium, Holland and parts of the USA where Assisted Suicide is already lawful. In almost all cases there has been some kind of ‘mission creep’ on the criteria of who is eligible. It’s follows a similar pattern. At first it is limited to those with ‘less than six months to live’, then is extend to those in ‘chronic pain’ and eventually encompasses those found to be experiencing ‘unbearable suffering’. All such criteria is subjective and ultimately divides society into those deemed worthy to live and those deemed not worthy of life. So we vehemently oppose legislation that would give the state the power to end our lives through fear and coercion and then sold to us as ‘choice’.

Conclusion

Imagine the power we could harness if all those, either for or against Assisted Suicide could instead turn their energies to fighting for better palliative care for all. Fight for a better funded NHS and a social care system that enables people to maintain their choice, control and dignity. Not being able to wipe your own bum, or hold a spoon or dress yourself are not reasons to kill people or lock them away in residential care or withdraw their support so they become prisoners in their own homes.

So we are asking the Labour leadership to talk to disabled people’s organisations about Independent Living and about our opposition to Assisted Suicide. Today is a great start but if you want your policies to be the policies that disabled people support, that disabled people endorse and ultimately vote for, then there must be an ongoing dialogue. So here’s our contact details not just GMCDP but our sister organisations, Not Dead Yet UK, the Alliance for Inclusive Education and the other organisations I have already mentioned. Work with us. You provide the tea and coffee and we’ll bring the biscuits.

Thank you.

Important UN inquiry into care and support provision – respond by October 21st

Access to Work, Action, Disability Rights, ILF, News, UNCRPD 3 Responses »

Sep 272016

Please submit evidence to this enquiry by October 21^st if you use care and support or Personal Assistants or are a parent of someone who uses these services. It is important that individuals let the rapporteur know what has happened since the closure of the ILF both to new applicants in 2010 and to all in 2015 and due to the cuts to Local Authority funding.

https://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Disability/SRDisabilities/Pages/Provisionofsupporttopersonswithdisabilities.aspx

Questionnaire on the “provision of support to persons with disabilities” – Call for submissions

The Special Rapporteur on the rights of persons with disabilities, Ms. Catalina Devandas-Aguilar, is currently preparing a study, to be presented at the 34th session of the Human Rights Council in March 2017, on the provision of support to persons with disabilities.

The Special Rapporteur welcomes inputs, in accessible formats (Word), in English, French, Russian or Spanish, from Member States, international and regional organizations, UN agencies, funds and programmes, organizations of and for persons with disabilities, civil society, national human rights institutions and other national independent mechanisms designated or established to monitor the implementation of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, disability or equality Ombudspersons, scholars, research institutions and policy think tanks, private sector businesses and networks, community movements, and private individuals, to provide information on the provision of support to persons with disabilities.

Submissions should be sent by e-mail to the address sr.disability@ohchr.org no later than 21 October 2016. Concise responses are encouraged, inclusive of relevant attachments where available.

Kindly indicate if you have any objections with regard to your reply being posted on this website.

Questionnaire on the provision of support to persons with disabilities

Please provide information on the following services that are available for persons with disabilities in your country, including data on their coverage, geographic distribution and delivery arrangements, funding and sustainability, challenges and shortcoming in their implementation:
Personal assistance;
In-home, residential and community support;
Support in decision-making, including peer support; and
Communication support, including support for augmentative and alternative communication.

Please explain how persons with disabilities can access information about the existing services referred to in question one, including referral procedures, eligibility criteria and application requirements.

Please elaborate on how these services respond to the specific needs of persons with disabilities throughout their life cycle (infancy, childhood, adolescence, adulthood and older age) and how is service delivery ensured in the transition periods between life cycle stages.

Please provide information on the number of certified sign language interpreters and deafblind interpreters available in your country.

Please provide information on the existence of any partnership between State institutions and private service providers (e.g., non-governmental organizations, for-profit service providers) for the provision of support to persons with disabilities.

Please describe to what extent and how are persons with disabilities and their representative organizations involved in the design, planning, implementation and evaluation of support services.

Please provide any other relevant information and statistics (including surveys, censuses, administrative data, reports, and studies) related to the provision of support to persons with disabilities in your country.

Have you been discriminated against at work?

Access to Work, Action, All Posts, Disability Rights, News, Politics 1 Response »

Dec 032015

DPAC/Public Interest Research Unit study on work-place discrimination: request for information on your experiences.

Do you think that you might have experienced disability discrimination at work?

Did the new £1,250 fee (introduced in July 2013), to take your case to an employment tribunal, put you off making a discrimination claim against the employer?

If so, and you think that you might be prepared to provide more details for DPAC/PIRU’s study, please email rgbharwood@hotmail.com or mail@dpac.uk.net.

Any information you provide will be anonymised, so as to hide your identity.

Join the campaign to stop the changes to Access to Work!

Access to Work, Action, All Posts No Responses »

Aug 282015

Since the publication of the Sayce Report (2011), employment support for Deaf and Disabled people and in particular, Access to Work, has been under attack. The last coalition government and the current Tory government, seem determined to change Access to Work from being one of this countries “best kept secret”, to a scheme that no longer meets need, is discriminatory to those with high support needs and causes misery to Deaf and disabled people’s lives. Our lives. Rather than support us into work, the scheme has become a barrier and has resulted in both job losses and demotion.

Iain Duncan Smith recently announced that he wants to “get disabled people back into work”, yet the support that we need is being cut.

Just last week yet another person was forced out of work by the changes to the Access to Work programme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxtYrCB7OJc

We’ve had enough!

Join us on Saturday the 26th September and march for Access to Work. We will be meeting at Old Palace Yard at 12pm and marching to Number 10 Downing Street, where we will deliver our petition. Please help us by signing and sharing this as widely as possible.

https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/stop-changes-to-access-to-work

For more information about the march see: https://stopchanges2atw.com/march-with-us/

The brilliant Liz Carr& John Kelly at June 20th anti-austerity march

Access to Work, Action, All Posts, Assisted Dying Bill, Disability Activism, ILF, Independent Living, Independent Living Fund ILF No Responses »

Jun 232015

Liz Carr speaking at the anti austerity march 20th June

John Kelly singing Which Side are you On at the anti-austerity march June 20th

Response to article in Daily Mail “£1million sign language fraudsters guilty of scamming taxpayer to fund luxury holidays including claims to work 21-hours-day”.

Access to Work, All Posts, DWP, welfare cuts No Responses »

Jun 092015

In an article published on 5^th June the Daily Mail reported that two sign language interpreters had defrauded the Department of Work and Pensions

(DWP) via the Access to Work scheme.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3112470/1million-sign-language-fraudsters-guilty-scamming-taxpayer-pay-luxury-holidays-claiming-work-21-hours-day.html

The story misrepresents the hundreds of professionals who provide an essential service and take an average of seven years to train.

The National Union of British Sign Language Interpreters (NUBSLI) have checked the names of the individuals involved and can confirm that neither of the two individuals being charged were members. Whilst we believe Angela Poole may have been registered as a British Sign Language (BSL)/English interpreter, George Taylor was not.

Prior to any allegations of fraud being made, BSL/English Interpreters/translators have been calling for Access to Work to improve their processes and communicate how both professionals and Deaf people could safeguard against fraud. These concerns were raised due to the large numbers of unregulated agencies being used by the DWP. The DWPs failure to monitor agencies is clear. Whilst NUBSLI remain outraged by the behaviour of the two individuals involved, important questions need to be asked of the DWP.

The #ScrapTheFramework campaign (https://www.nubsli.com/our-work/scrap-the-framework.php) was recently established to oppose the governments bid to establish a national framework for interpreting and translating. The initial drafts of the framework did not provide adequate safeguarding or a requirement for interpreters to be registered. Agencies have the potential to use unqualified people and charge extortionate amounts whilst driving down the fees paid to properly regulated qualified interpreters and translators.

The article in the Daily Mail was a direct attack on both BSL/English interpreters/translators and members of the Deaf community. With the government pushing ahead with caps and changes to the Access to Work scheme that will see Deaf and disabled people struggle to keep their jobs (for more information go to: https://stopchanges2atw.wordpress.com), and the Crown Commercial Services are trying to establish a framework to drive down interpreters fees, the timing of this article is no coincidence.

NUBSLI will be meeting the new Minister in July to explain more about the BSL/English interpreting profession and the importance of only using registered fully qualified or trainee interpreters. They will also take the opportunity to remind government rely on BSL interpreters to fulfil their basic statutory duties to Deaf BSL users.

AccessToWork: Please read this if you have complained to PHSO or you know someone who has #AtW

Access to Work, All Posts No Responses »

May 072015

DeafATW has just been told that AtW are contacting people who have complained the the PHSO, and we thought it important we share this information with you quickly.

When you complain to PHSO, they tell AtW what you are complaining about and ask for information about your case.

Some Deaf people have said that after the PHSO contacted AtW, AtW contacted them offering to resolve their complaint by paying money that is owed and saying sorry.

If this happens to you, and you accept AtW’s offer to resolve your complaint, AtW may tell the PHSO that they should stop their investigation.

AtW may want to stop the PHSO investigating your complaint, because the PHSO will make public thethings that AtW have done wrong, and will tell them what they need to do to put it right.

If the PHSO don’t finish investigating your complaint, AtW might not make changes to stop these problems happening to you, or other people, again.

Of course, it is up to you what you want to do if AtW contact you, but DeafATW’s suggestion is:

1) If AtW contact you offering to investigate and resolve your complaint, reply to AtW saying that you want PHSO to finish their investigation.

2) If AtW offer to pay back money they owe you, then you can say “yes please, pay back money that is owed”, but that you consider the complaint unresolved until the PHSO have finished their investigation.

3) Send AtW’s email and your reply to the PHSO.

If you have any questions, contact DeafATW.com

Campaign to reverse the changes to Motability’s eligibility criteria for the Special Vehicles Fund

Access to Work, Action, All Posts, Benefits, Disability Rights, DLA, Events, Independent Living, Politics 2 Responses »

Mar 312015

Sign in support of the campaign now!

Email Henrietta.doyle@inclusionlondon.co.uk with the name of your organisation or as an individual.

Ultimate aim of the campaign

Motability agrees to reverse the changes to eligibility criteria for Motability’s Special Vehicles Fund for Drive-from-Wheelchair/Internal Transfer (DFW/IT) vehicles used by disabled people with complex needs.

Other aims:

· Motability agrees to conduct a formal public consultation on the changes, including a face to face meeting with current grant users. Until this consultation is concluded and a consultation response report publicly published the changes should be immediately reversed.

· Motability agrees to publishes their equality impact assessment of the changes

· Motability agrees to publish clear and full information about the changes on their website.

Why the need for the campaign?

Motability has changed the eligibility criteria for their Special Vehicles Fund (SVF) for Drive-from-Wheelchair/Internal Transfer (DFW/IT) vehicles used by disabled people with complex needs. We believe these changes could destroy the ability to live independently and be included in the community of those affected.

What are the changes?

From June 2014 ‘a usage test’ was introduced by Motability regarding DFW/IT vehicles. This test applies to those applying to the SVF first time and current users when renewing their contract (see statement provided by Motability attached). Below is information on how the changes are being implemented in practice.

Current users are telephoned some months in advance of the renewal date of their contract and asked if the vehicle is to support ‘substantive employment, education, volunteer working or to enable the disabled driver to provide vital and sole care to another, for example, a school-age child or children or a disabled loved one who resides with the disabled person.’ About 12 hours a week seems to be considered ‘substantive’. It appears that those that do not fulfil this criterion are no longer eligible for a vehicle.

We are very concerned that disabled people who rely on access to such vehicles will no longer be eligible for grants from the scheme and therefore unable to replace vehicles, which are essential to their independence. These vehicles are often used by disabled people with the highest support needs, who for a range of reasons relating to their impairments, are unable to access public transport because it unavailable or not possible because of pain levels or the need to carry equipment such as hoists or oxygen or a particularly large vehicle as illustrated in the case study below:

Case study

Because of the specialised seating on my wheelchair, it is too large to travel on bus. Only 3 weeks ago I couldn’t go to hospital Emergency A&E because the ambulances can’t take me! I was severely dehydrated, they ended up sending a doctor to my home and doing 48-hour IV just because I couldn’t go to hospital.

There is NO way I am every going to be employed which is depressing enough, I can’t get voluntary work because I can’t even go and see anyone to consider it (no transport!). I really am so depressed over these changes.

These new changes mean I am confined to the distance of my own wheelchair with no access to public transport, and no access to Motability.

The impact

The independence given to disabled people to drive their own vehicle often means they can become involved in their community and do voluntary activities. Without a DFW/IT vehicle many disabled people will be excluded from visits to families and friends and will be unable to take part in any aspects of social, religious, community, wellbeing activities and political life. In addition these changes will prevent disabled people getting into education, obtaining employment or volunteering unless already involved in these activities and therefore will never fulfil the new criteria for a DFW/IT vehicle.

Motability did not conduct a consultation before implementing these changes and as far as we are aware they did not carry out an Equality Impact Assessment regarding the impact of the change, also there was no public announcement or any information published concerning the changes. Disabled people only become aware when asked the questions on the telephone. There is still only limited information given by Motability at: https://www.motability.co.uk/understanding-the-scheme/financial-help/eligibility-for-financial-help

Motability administers government funds, yet they seem to be ignoring the Equality act and the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with disabilities, which states the duty to facilitate:

· ‘the personal mobility of persons with disabilities in the manner and at the time of their choice’

· access to ‘quality mobility aids’

· disabled people’s right to ‘full inclusion and participation in the community’.

Disabled people’s organisations are acting together with other voluntary sector organisations to ask Motability to reverses the changes to the eligibility criteria for the SVF for DFW/IT vehicles.

What can you do?

· Sign in support of the campaign by emailing Henrietta.doyle@inclusionlondon.co.uk

· Sign the petition at: https://www.change.org/p/stop-unfair-and-secret-changes-to-motability-grants#petition-letter 2,500 people signed in the first 3 weeks!

· Promote petition, email, Facebook, Twitter etc.

· Send letter of protest and case examples to Motability.

· Survey members on their experiences of Motability reviews

· Contact your local MP, and relevant Ministers

Join the coalition of disabled people’s organisations and voluntary sector organisations supporting the aims of the campaign above, to do this please email Henrietta.doyle@inclusionlondon.co.uk with the name of your organisation.

Please forward this email to your contacts.

Many thanks,

Henrietta

Henrietta Doyle

Policy Officer

Mobile: 07703 715091

Direct line (Wednesday’s only) 020 7036 6033

Office Tel: 020 7237 3181, SMS: 0771 839 4687

www: https://www.inclusionlondon.co.uk/

Open letter calling for National Framework for interpreting and translation to be scrapped

Access to Work, Action, All Posts, welfare cuts No Responses »

Mar 042015

Dear Francis Maude MP,

The new national framework for interpreting and translation will affect interpreters (spoken language, Deafblind and British Sign Language), translators (foreign language, British Sign Language, Deaf translators) speech-to-text reporters, lip speakers, and note takers.

In the interpreting community we have already experienced privatisation in the courts with the Ministry of Justice framework being run by Capita. Despite this being a failure and criticised heavily in an independent review, Crown Commercial Services look set on widening privatisation of interpreting to cover every publicly funded service in the UK. The intended outcomes of the framework agreement – both to save money and ensure quality provision – cannot possibly be achieved.

Following on from the disastrous consequences of changes made to Access to Work, the employment support programme for Deaf and disabled people, as well as issues of unqualified people being used as interpreters, the BSL interpreting profession is in a state of decline. Almost half of all NRCPD registered interpreters responded to a survey by he National Union of British Sign Language Interpreters (NUBSLI) recently. The results showed that 48% of respondents are thinking about leaving the profession. A considerably depleted workforce would, as in any market, drive fees upwards.

To de-professionalise the industry would have detrimental effect on the Deaf community and set access levels back to those last seen twenty plus years ago. The consequences of a framework which covers areas such as health, mental health, social services including child protection and other safeguarding areas could be catastrophic. Without qualified interpreters, clinicians and other professionals cannot complete their work safely. The risks to the Deaf community are unimaginable. We could, without exaggeration, be talking about loss of life and liberty.

We therefore request that this work ceases and alternative solutions a sought with the full consultation of the experts in this sector: the Deaf community and BSL interpreters.

Signed by:

Len McCluskey – General Secretary, Unite the Union

Teresa Pearce MP
Jennifer Smith – Chair, National Union of British Sign Language Interpreters (NUBSLI)

Linda Burnip – Co-Founder, Disabled People Against Cuts

Dr Terry Riley OBE – Chair, British Deaf Association (BDA)

Jenny Sealey MBE – CEO/Artistic Director Graeae Theatre Company

Nicky Evans – Stop Changes To Access To Work Campaign

Geraldine O’Halloran – Inclusion London

John McDonnell MP

Ronnie Draper – General Secretary, Bakers’ Food and Allied Workers Union

Grahame Morris MP

Michael Meacher MP

Sir Gerald Kaufman MP

Rosie Cooper MP

Richard Wilson OBE – Graeae Patron

Dame Harriet Walter DBE – Actor/Graeae Patron

Ian Hodson – National President, Bakers’, Food and Allied Workers Union

Jane Aitchison – Joint National Secretary, Unite the Resistance

Mandy Brown – UCU NEC, Branch Secretary Lambeth College

Helen Davies – Branch Chair Barnet UNISON and Social Worker

Sean Vernell – UCU

Roger Lewis – Lambeth Unison Equalities Officer (PC)

Tim O’Dell – UNISON
Mark Dunk – Unite the Resistance

Lesley Weatherson – Association of Lipspeakers

Vikki Bridson-Vice – Steering Committee, Visual Language Professionals

Alison Bryan – Chair, Deaf Access Cymru

Georgina Sullivan – Association of Notetaking Professionals

Julia Jacobie – AVSTTR

Eileen R. Ford and Amelia Naranjo – National Union of Professional Interpreters and Translators (NUPIT)

Debbie Jolly – Co-Founder, Disabled People Against Cuts

Paula Peters – Chair, Bromley Disabled People against Cuts

Ellen Clifford – Lewisham Disabled People Against Cuts

Bob Ellard – National Steering Committee, Disabled People Against Cuts

Roger Lewis, National Steering Committee, Disabled People Against Cuts

Anita Bellows – National Steering committee, Disabled People Against Cuts

Peter Llewellyn-Jones Programme Director, postgraduate programmes in Interpreting and Translation Studies

Wes Mehaffy                          BSL/English Interpreter
Martin Fox-Roberts                 BSL/English Interpreter
Jennifer Smith                        BSL/English Interpreter
Mariella Reina                         BSL/English Interpreter
Susan Billam
Gary Northfield
Clare Vinton                            BSL/English Interpreter
Roma Parrick                         BSL/English Interpreter
Maria Munro                           BSL/English Interpreter
Adele Ward                             BSL/English Interpreter
Bridget Bree                            BSL/English Interpreter
Philip Bird
Rachel O’Neill                         Lecturer
Gloria Ogborn                         BSL/English Interpreter
Donna West                            Trainee BSL/English Interpreter
Ali Hetherington                      BSL/English Interpreter
Paula Fye                                BSL and Deafblind Manual Interpreter
Adama Fye
Jenny North
Mike North                             Deafblind Manual Interpreter
Ron Langridge
Cathy Davey                           Clinical Supervisor MBACP SEN Accredited
Alison Gilchrist                        BSL/English Interpreter
Jennifer Dodds                       BSL/English Interpreter (Deaf)
Gráinne Sheehan                    BSL/English Interpreter and Deafblind Manual Interpreter
James Banks                          BSL/English Interpreter
Van Holtom                             BSL/English Interpreter
Simon Bristoll                          BSL/English Interpreter
Nicky Glegg
Louise Bodycombe                 BSL/English Interpreter
Ivan Osborne                          BSL/English Interpreter
Veronica Nanson                    BSL/English Interpreter
Claire Dodds                           BSL/English interpreter
Elizabeth Mercer                     BSL/English Interpreter
Diana Coada                           Court interpreter (DPSI)
Louise Gough                          Translator (MITI)
Dr Zuzana Windle                   Legal interpreter
Hannah Watson                      BSL/English Interpreter
Dr Dimitra Kalantzi                  Translator (AITI)
Philippe Muriel (MCIL)            French Interpreter (DPSI) & Translator (Dip Trans) – Interpreter Trainer
Christopher Windle
Sarah Powell                           Clinical Psychologist
Elvire Roberts                         BSL/English Interpreter
Sue Leschen                           Legal and commercial French Interpreter
Ségolène Neilson                    Legal (DPSI), medical and business interpreter and translator
Rami Kohli                             Legal (DPSI) Interpreter
Parvin Lackschewitz-Martin   Legal interpreter NRPSI (BA Honours in languages)
Mihaela Patrascu                    Legal interpreter DPSI DPI RPSI MCIL
Emma Lipton                          Trainee BSL/English Interpreter
Laura Orsini                            Interpreter (NRPSI) and translator
Irina Norton                             Conference and Public Service Interpreter/translator
Sarah Martin                           Trainee interpreter
Eileen Ford
Yasemin Kafali                        Legal interpreter (NRPSI)
Mark West                              BSL/English Interpreter
Rebecca Hinks                       BSL/English interpreter
Forrai Éva                               Legal Interpreter, Hungarian, NRPSI, Met Police
Dione Deans                           BSL/English Interpreter

Sami Thorpe Trainee BSL/English Interpreter

Manzoor Ahmed Khan Legal interpreter

Rita Layden BSL/English Interpreter

Daniel Alun Roberts BSL/English Interpreter

Celia Hulme Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) Associate

Benjamin Silifant

Gillian Laird

Hazel Flynn Clinical Management Lead – Snr Accred BACP

Bibi Lacey-Davidson BSL/English Interpreter

Tom Mould BSL/English Interpreter

Kate Outhwaite BSL/English Interpreter

Barbara Coll

Bryony Coombe Medical Underwriter

Cathryn McShane BSL/English Interpreter

Tawatchai Brome Brito Interpreter Coordinator

David Phippard BSL/English Interpreter

Colette Phippard BSL/English Interpreter

Craig Brown BSL/Auslan/English Interpreter

Heidi K. Robertson Creative Freelancer

Anne-Françoise Boreland French Interpreter (DPSI) and Translator

Ann Devaney BSL/English Interpreter

Emma De Casse Trainee BSL/English Interpreter

Jackie Dennis BSL/English Interpreter

Anthony Evans BSL/English Interpreter

Caroline Ridley Community Occupational Therapist working in Deafness/Mental Health

Mimi McQuaid Legal Interpreter (NRPSI)

Philip Wyatt Psychologist Therapist

Karen Parker Teacher/Trainer Freelancer

Liz Wyatt BSL/English Interpreter

Freya Hill Communications Assistant
Yvonne MacAnara BSL/English Interpreter

Jenny Guppy Teacher of the Deaf

Julia Lord CPsychol Chartered Counselling Psychologist

Julie Whitaker Speech-to-Text Reporter

Rob Troy BSL/English Interpreter

Sahara DeVille Counsellor

Mary Altabev Interpreter/Translator NRPSI

Mark Oulton

Stephen Menton BSL/English Interpreter

Beverley Haslam BSL/English Interpreter

Stephen Hudson BSL/English Interpreter

Josie Fray Trainee BSL / English Interpreter, Social Worker

Caroline Corrigan BSL/English Interpreter

Parminder Kaur Legal interpreter NRPSI

Agata McCrindle Legal Interpreter NRPSI MITI MCIL APCI

John Donald Senior Psychological Wellbeing Practitioner

Amanda Bavin STT Reporter

Cristina Santos RPSI 13999

Norah Griffiths Trainee BSL/English Interpreter

Eszter Fejes RPSI 15008

Mary Brumby BSL/English Interpreter

Rachael Veazey BSL/English Interpreter

Valerie Hall Registered BSL/English Interpreter

Karla Hannigan BSL/English Interpreter

Vikki Bridson-Vice BSL/English Interpreter

Carol Spencer BSL/English Interpreter

Sarah Spencer

Emma Phillips BSL/English Interpreter

Jason Sharpe

Nicola Williams BSL/English Interpreter

Norman Thompson Retired

Laura Davies BSL/English Interpreter

Lynn Shannon Service Manager

Dr Nadia Hussein Arabic Language Legal Interpreter

Annie Brotherton BSL/English Interpreter

Thomas Giddens Freelancer

Kate Adams Trainee Sign Language Interpreter

Diana Hubbard Legal Interpreter (NRPSI)

Omoyele Thomas Registered BSL/English Interpreter

Paul Bargery BSL/English Interpreter

Vicky Pannell BSL/English Interpreter

Deborah Haly

Louise Tingay BSL/English Interpreter

Catherine Hare-Cockburn Deaf employee

Ian Cockburn Deaf BSL user

Tracey Hurrell BSL/English Interpreter

Jude Mahon BSL/English interpreter

Lucy Slater BSL/English Interpreter

Lee Douthwaite

Jayne Cooke BSL/English Interpreter

Barry Davey

Jason Bell BSL/English Interpreter

Isobel Higgins BSL/English Interpreter

Tracey M Robinson Registered Manager

Philip Cowood Legal interpreter

Elizabeth Smith BSL/English Interpreter

Alison Green BSL/English Interpreter

Anne Richardson BSL/ English Interpreter

Rosanna Harrison BSL/English Interpreter

Tina Holmes BSL/English Interpreter

Rose Nest BSL/English interpreter

Heidi Watson BSL/English Interpreter

Jo Haywood Communications Manager

Tracey Strathdee BSL/English Interpreter

Edward Richards Deaf person and Managing Director CED

Natalya Dell Deaf person and Disabled Students’ Adviser

Naomi Bottrill

Rezene Woldeyesus

Andrea Spoczynski BSL/English Interpreter

Debra Robins BSL/English Interpreter

Susan Prosser Trainee BSL/English Interpreter

Averil Dobson BSL/English Interpreter

Kerry Bromley

Jean Smith Deaf BSL User

Robert Smith Deaf BSL User

Darren Smith

Beatrice Goutfer, MA Legal translator and interpreter

Eva Gil English Translator

Judith Hillary Trainee Sign Language Interpreter

Holly Davies Freelance Translator and Interpreter (ES-EN)

Kate Boddy BSL / English Interpreter

Linda Day BSL/ASL Interpreter

Emily Davenport

Kerry Lover BSL/English Interpreter

Yve Coffey BSL/English Interpreter

Clare Nelder Deaf Teacher of the Deaf

Klasiena Slaney Legal Interpreter (NRPSI)

Tracey Cade BSL/English Interpreter

Rebekah Reynolds HR & Payroll Coordinator

Michelle Barnes BSL/English Interpreter

Melanie Pendrick-Wright BSL/English Interpreter

Zakir Hossain Bengali & Sylheti interpreter

Ahmad Abed Interpreter

Nicole Gelister French Legal Interpreter NR 11393

Alena Linhartova Czech/Slovak/English Interpreter

Daniel Pageon Fellow of the ITI and CIoL

Callie Tremlett BSL Interpreter

Jasmine Killen Interpreter

Cath Whitehead Director Co.Sign Partners in Communication Ltd

Lucy Cotton BSL/English interpreter

Nobuko Primarolo

Carol Kyle BSL/English Interpreter

Aisha Maniar Freelance Translator

Kay McCrea BSL/English Interpreter

Aurora Matilde Humarán / Legal Translator

Jurate Clarke Lithuanian/English interpreter

Vera Tymchyshyn Teacher/Interpreter

Ray Williams BSL/English Interpreter

Jana Kohl German Legal Translator and Interpreter

Linda Staines BSL/English Interpreter

Philippa Merricks Deafway Animateur

Emma McGowan Deaf person

Peter Mackriell Counsellor working with Deaf people

Linda Duncan BSL/English Interpreter

Danny Stubbs

Shwan Hawrami NRPSI

Kathryn Sykes Speech to Text Reporter

Paula Cox BSL/English Interpreter

Samantha Kenward Communications Researcher

Ligia Xavier Legal Interpreter

Liz Macartney BSL/English Interpreter

Jana Sefcikova Czech & Slovak Interpreter

Chris Bojas Psychological Wellbeing Practitioner

Sally Reynolds

Elizabeth Bojas

Peter Horvath Slovak Czech to English Interpreter

Alison Miller

Oliver Westbury Deaf, Web Developer

Hamid Alemi English Interpreter

Quoc Lu Deaf worker

Minna Saari

Hamid Alemi English Interpreter

Andrew Jordan BSL User

Redmond Kaye

Siobhan Hutton BSL/English Interpreter

MartIn Glover Architect

Andrew Hesselwood BSL/English Interpreter

Jean Pateras Spanish interpreter

Lisa Godden BSL/English Interpreter

Nikki Champagnie-Harris BSL/English Interpreter

Sarah Lucas BSL/English Interpreter

Jody Weaver BSL interpreter

Elizabeth Thomas BSL/English Interpreter

Colin Ayres BSL and Deaf Awareness Tutor

Michael Wells French/English Interpreter

Mohammed Akbar Khan Interpreter

Linda Ofori

Michaela Gomolova Czech Interpreter

Claude Salam French legal interpreter translator

Wendy Callaghan Counsellor

Monia D’Agostino Trainee Sign Language Interpreter

Ben LeGrys Registered BSL/English Interpreter

Brigitte Berkaine

Tessa Longbottom Communication Support Worker

Stuart Wilson BSL/Highways Engineer

Debbie John BSL/English Interpreter

Mark Hetherington BSL/English Interpreter

Doris Moreton BSL/Interpreter

Jenny Moreton Grandparents Deaf

Tina Davies

Rianne Eimers Manager Healthwatch Kingston upon Thames

Therese Lane

Robert Foulkes BSL/English

Caroline Alexander

Katrina Foulkes

George McGowan BSL Tutor

Julie Lenton BSL/English Interpreter

Christine Rowlands Spanish interpreter

Brett Best BSL/English Interpreter

Yvonne Carolan Psychological Therapist

Karamyar Public service interpreter

Robert Gould

Kate Menzies

Asher Woodman-Worrell

Marie Dimond BSL/English Interpreter

William Towning Communications Manager, Leeds Society for Deaf and Blind People

Craig Bartlett

Ian Macdonald Legal interpreter MA FCIL NRPSI

Katalin Galuska Hungarian interpreter

Alison Barker-Mears

Samantha Riddle BSL/English Interpreter

Vicki Wan Slattery BSL/English Interpreter

Carl Slattery

Rosa Slater

Jordan Smith

Sophie Bailey French interpreter

Natalie Day

Michael Rudd BSL/English Interpreter

Maureen Hetherington Human Rights

Dayna Winer

Emma Llewellyn BSL/ English Interpreter

Jo Cumberlidge BSL/English interpreter

Debbie Snodgrass BSL/English Interpreter

Elizabeth Oliver BSL/English Interpreter

Marie Vickers

Pamela Byles BSL/English Interpreter

Tina Little BSL/English Interpreter

Sue Goman BSL/English Interpreter

Angela Walker BSL/English Interpreter

C M Roughley BSL/English Interpreter

Edith Garraway Interpreter

Leah Jewiss BSL/English Interpreter

Linda Slater BSL/English Interpreter

Jane Allighan BSL/English Interpreter

Lorraine Elliott BSL/English Interpreter and A1 assessor

Joseph Taylor BSL/English Interpreter

Kevin Smith BSL Interpreter

Karl Appleton College Lecturer

Judith Renshaw BSL/English Interpreter

Abigail Phillis Teacher

Elaine Wooding Deaf employee

Scott Wooding Deaf employee

Thomas Wooding Deaf employee

Paul Wooding Deaf person

Zoe Bevans BSL/English Interpreter

Clare Cotton BSL/English Interpreter

Nadine Taylor BSL/English Interpreter

Selina Rehman Deaf BSL User

Clare Chilton

Louise McDermott SignHealth Coordinator

Lizzie Wharton BSL Interpreter Lipspeaker

Jane Allighan BSL/English Interpreter

Anne Rudkin BSL/English Interpreter

Linzi Weatherson Lipspeaker

Rachel Tipping BSL/English Interpreter

Paul Doddridge Principal

Diana A Barimore Lipspeaker

Alexandra Calce BSL/ English interpreter

Paul Arnold Registered BSL interpreter

Timothy Hanley Deaf Graphic Designer

Elizabeth Oliver BSL/English Interpreter

Caroline Ryan BSL/English Interpreter

Emma Ferguson-Coleman Alzheimer’s Society Doctoral Research Fellow

Paul Ntulila Administrator and Trainee Trainer

Lina Kankeviciute Interpreter Services Coordinator

Bogumila Kolbus LLB RPSI Polish Interpreter

Victoria Kolbus Polish interpreter

Elizabeth Watson

Clare Cotton BSL/English Interpreter

Julie Hornsby BSL interpreter

Karen Houlihan BSL/English Interpreter

Neziha Kaya NRPSI

Theresa McWhirter BSL/English Interpreter

Karen Whitehouse BSL/English interpreter

Daryl Jackson Relay Interpreter/Translator

Melanie Barr Support worker for the Deafblind

Alan Craggs

Paul O’Donoghue Deaf Person

Margaret Gray BSL / English interpreter

Richard Harrington

Lauren Harris BSL student (Level 6)

Debora Chobanian Portuguese Interpreter

Kate Collier BSL/English Interpreter

Louise Polo BSL Student

Elzbieta Okurowska RPSI Polish Interpreter

Helen Coleman University Lecturer

Rob Bethel Reception Extraordinaire

Robert Arthur NHS

John Clawson NHS

Andrei Yellisiev Healthcare

Sarah Keeley Nurse

J Barnes-Jones BSL Teacher

Ian Bradley

Carol Dalchow BSL/English Interpreter

Jo Cumberlidge BSL/English interpreter

Paula Peters Disabled People Against Cuts

Judith Thompson BSL/English Interpreter

Tracey Tyer BSL/English Interpreter

Ian Bradley

Daryl McMullan Trainee BSL/English interpreter

Sophie Bailey Legal interpreter

Kevin Walsh

Geraldine O’Halloran

Philip Ardagh Children’s author

Richard Burke Civil Engineer

Kristiaan Dekesel Principal Lecturer Interpreting (BSL/English)

Yvonne Barrett Art Therapist

Wayne Goertzen Level 6 BSL CSW

Alan.L.Hale BSL Teacher

Michelle Teasdale BSL Coordinator

Dr Annabella Dyer Clinical Psychologist

Layne Whittaker

David Whittaker

Sean McCafferty Business Development Manager

Paul Hollingdrake Trainee Sign Language Interpreter

Kath Keogan BSL/English Interpreter

Linda McCanna Communication support worker

Helen Jackson                        BSL/English Interpreter
Linda English
l Westley BSL
Evelyn Davenport                   BSL/English Interpreter
Mike Reed Trainee                 BSL/English Interpreter
John McDonnell MP
Joanna Wanmer                     Community Involvement Officer working with Sensory Impaired People
Samir Dawlatly GP
Hester MacAnara                   Director of Business Development
Wan Yeung
Jason Vessey                         Deaf BSL User
Ann Cashmore
Dean Granger
Lauren Kelly
Milly Kan                                 Tax Consultant
Erica Tyler-Chamberlain        Teacher
Karen Reissmann
Karyn Yeomans                      Asda Manager
Gloria Ogborn
John Ogborn
Kevin Ogborn

Grahame Morris MP
Maria Beswick
Debra Keyser
Jayne Skidmore Teacher
Antonia Ryan Trade Unionist

Elizabeth Hansford                 BSL/English Interpreter
Dr David Morrison                  Editor
W Leung Msc                          Occupational Health and Safety
Marie Simpson
Rachael Hayes                       Deaf Service Consultant
Darren Smith

Kay Davies
Zoe Davies
Mark Davies
Michael Hughes

Miranda Ross

Jane Rycroft BSL Interpreter

Ian Smith
Susan Davison
Alan Davison BSL Lecturer
Alexandra Sanderson

Helen Dunipace BA PG Dip

David Clifford                          BSL/English Interpreter
Tracey Pycroft                        BSL/English Interpreter
Amanda Kirk                           Communication Support Worker

Sue Herring BSL/English Interpreter

Rosemary Pell BSL/English Interpreter

Lisa Brailsford BSL/ENGLISH interpreter

Linda Doddridge Retired Deaf training manager

Ian Gouldstone

Karen Williams Company Director

Anna Baker BSL/English Interpreter

Barbara Smith
John Dunipace                        BSL/English Interpreter
Alice Elliott                              Eye Clinic Liaison Officer
Maureen Saville                      Registered Qualified BSL/English Interpreter
Rekha NARULA                     Interpreter & Translator
Adrian Jegeni                          NRPSI Albanian Interpreter
Aqil Minhas                             APCI/Urdu Interpreter
Maria Bartosova
Ian McGarr
V.G. Hine                                Russian interpreter
Renata Littlehales                   Pol-Eng Interpreter
Gunita King                             Latvian interpreter
John Newton                           Czech-English interpreter

Patrick Schunemann              NRPSI Interpreter
Michael Holland                      Primary school teacher
Yvonne Freiherr-Fenton         BSL/English Interpreter
Richard McEwan                    UCU FE Vice Chair/ Teacher
Stanley Beecham                   Legal Interpreter

Jonathan Slack
Nicola Rothwell Trainee Interpreter
M Miah Lecturer

Angela Heffernan ESOL teacher
Tony Barlow BSL/English Employment Advisor

Billie Loebner                         Teacher/UCU member
Kamal Omer                           Arabic/English Interpreter/Translator
Joy Tucker                              BSL communication support
Mairead McKenna
Ian Crosson                             Lecturer

Susan Bloomfield                    Deaf BSL user
Sara Tomlinson
Ruth Peaker                            BSL/English Interpreter
Mike Christie                           Director

Katrina Mayfield Interpreter

Maria Parker BSL/English Interpreter

Meera Modi
Jai Jobanputra

Iain Case BSL/English Interpreter

Louise Culver BSL/English Interpreter

Rachel Evans Student Interpreter

Jaishree Gohil                         RPSI/Gujarati Interpreter
María López García                Certified Translator, AITI
Charlene Spires
Mary Bennion                         Electronic notetaker for Deaf/disabled people

Mirela Watson                         Freelance Conference and PSI Interpreter
Liz Stott                                   Speech and Language Therapist
Moira Hall                                Administrator

Janice Connolly Deaf health champions volunteer coordinator

Steven Delaney-Cain BSL/English Interpreter

Kathleen Hoare

Sarah Hannett                         BSL user/ advocate
Sam                                        Taxi Driver
Ann McKenna                         Tutor BSL
Edward Melvin                        CAD
Lisa Kelly                                 Notetaker
Samantha Allen                      BSL Project Worker

Liviu Coroianu DPI DPSI Criminal Justice Language Practitioner

Karen Lawson BSL/English Interpreter

Anne Coghlan Support worker with deaf/blind people

Joan Minett
Naomi Sanders Community Service team manager from Merseyside Society for Deaf People

Ian Maguire
Jonathon Jay Financial Paraplanner (son of deaf mother)
Nicola Fitzpatrick Trainee BSL/English interpreter
Abi Delaney

Michae Sadowski BSL user and BSL tutor

Haydon Littlewood Firefighter

Denise Griffiths
Amy Hyland                            Engagement worker
Danielle Russell                      Psychological Therapist
Sophie Gee                             Nurse
Christopher Russell                 Support Worker
Peter Martin                            Project Manager
Rebecca Griffiths
Kirsty Delaney-Cain
Jenna Johnson
Amie Johnson                         Outreach Worker
Kenneth Delaney                    Shop Manager Retired
Daniela Richards
Samantha scarr
Ruth Turner                             Advocate for Deaf people
Jamie little                               Support worker
Jocelyn Wilson
Sarah Guinness
Kevin Guinness
Rhiannon Quayle
Jessica Latham
Melanie Leece
Helen Delaney                        Mother of deaf daughter
Terry Delaney
Miss Dawn Dignam                Community services team manager for deaf/Deafblind
Joanna Endersby                    CSW
Joanne Burns                          BSL/English Interpreter
Lindsey Ryman

Margaret Williams                   Retired
Ann Potterton                          Management Consultant
Jacqueline Scott
Liam Poland
Susan Johnson
Chris Pang
Connie McCalla
Matthew McCalla
Inese Vimere                           Latvian Interpreter
Solah Bowden
Mike Delaney
Gemma Brodrick
Lindsey Tarry
Ann Ewart
Lynne O’Brien
Patricia O’Brien
Patrick O’Brien
siobhan keeble
Leonie grey

Patricia Clarke Support worker

Nick Beese Senior User Experience Designer
Lilli Beese Deaf Interpreter and Student Penny Clark

Samantha Clare
Heather Andrews
Lyn Ealey                                Community Support Worker/Deaf Employee
Gertrude Robinson                 Community Support Worker/Deaf Employee
Chris Curran                           BSL Interpreter

Sally Clelland BSL

Vikki Heywood CBE
Dayna Winer
Amelia Naranjo                      Interpreter/Translator (NRPSI)
Dionne Thomas                      BSL/English Interpreter
Caroline Barnes                      BSL/English interpreter
Sally Gillespie                         BSL/English interpreter
Frances Lewin                        BSL/English interpreter
Audrey Simmons                    Sign language interpreter
Steven Barrell
Meg Minion                             Trainee BSL/English Interpreter
Gail Carter                              Advisor
David Bradshaw                     BSL interpreter
Leo John
Dominic John
Penny Celiz
Julie Doyle                              BSL/English interpreter RSLI
Jenny Pestell                          Freelance BSL/Eng interpreter
Lynne Bateman                      Registered Sign Language Interpreter
Joanna McCaul

DWP forced to publish Access to Work Guidance #StopChanges2ATW

Access to Work, DWP, legal challenges No Responses »

Jan 242015

From the Leigh Day Website

The Department of Work and Pensions has agreed to publish their guidance on the Access to Work Scheme (AtW) after receiving a letter before claim from the law firm Leigh Day. The DWP have also confirmed that revised guidance is being produced and published, which they hope to commence by 30 March 2015.Lawyers acting on behalf of the campaign group ‘Stop Changes to Access to Work’, highlighted in a letter before claim that the DWP had acted unlawfully in having no officially published guidance for the scheme, thus meaning that potential claimants did not know the criteria for eligibility or the rules that would be applied to their claims, claimants were also unaware when changes were made to the guidance and the nature of those changes.

The Access to Work Scheme is delivered by the DWP through Jobcentre Plus and is designed to help people with disabilities to overcome work related obstacles. This includes the provision of grants that fund practical support for people with a disability to start working, to stay in work, to start a business, or to become self-employed.

Within their letter before claim Leigh Day also addressed issues relating to the ‘30 hour rule’, which they described as an example of the ‘apparently inconsistent, unlawful and opaque’ way the AtW scheme has been applied by the DWP.

In June 2011, the guidance of AtW was changed so that those receiving over 30 hours of assistance from a support worker could only claim for this on the basis of an annual salary of up to £30,000, rather than for an hourly rate of an agency worker.

The ’30 hour rule’ was suspended in May 2014 as the AtW underwent review over a three month period.

As there was previously no published guidance any updates made to the 30-hour rule were unknown, leaving the public unaware of the current and future status of the ruling.

Lawyers at Leigh Day requested in their letter that the DWP revisited the AtW grants of all those affected by the ’30 hour rule’ and reinstated the funding that they were entitled to prior to its implementation.

However, the DWP responded by saying that they felt it was not appropriate to review every case which was subject to the 30 hour rule.

Ugo Hayter, a solicitor in the Human Rights department at Leigh Day who is representing the ‘Stop Changes to Access to Work’ group, said: “We welcome the Department of Work and Pension’s decision to publish their current guidance as well as their revised guidance in March 2015.

“Their previous failure to publish this vital information meant that public access to this was denied, which we believe was unlawful.

“We now urge for the issues raised in relation to the ‘30 hour rule’ to be re-considered as many people had their support by the Access to Work scheme arbitrarily cut or suspended through this rule, which put their employment and businesses at risk. We believe that this requires a full investigation and for action to be taken to reverse any outstanding cases where the 30 hour rule is still being applied.”

Ellen Clifford, on behalf of Stop Changes to Access to Work, said: “We are pleased by this victory and welcome the DWP announcing that they will publish guidance. This is a first step in the right direction in solving the numerous issues with the Access to Work scheme.

“However, the weaknesses in DWP’s administration of the programme are still prevalent, this is putting AtW users’ employment and their businesses at serious risk.

“We hope that the DWP will consult and communicate with AtW users; make consistent and lawful decisions and take urgent steps to reinstate the funding to which users were entitled prior to the imposition of the 30-rule.”

Older Entries

We are disappointed with the TUC statement on PIP today calling for reform on PIP by linking PIP with work.

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Manifesto calls on next Welsh government to enable disabled people to ‘flourish and thrive’

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20 Nov 2025, 1.30pm

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Committee calls cuts bill ‘discriminatory’, even though all its Labour MPs voted for it

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Contents

Chancellor’s reported plans to impose VAT on Motability could add £3,000 to even the cheapest cars

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Timms goes back on his word by refusing to provide crucial evidence of Access to Work cuts

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Ministers finally announce progress on ‘liberty safeguards’, but also challenge vital definition

Other disability-related stories covered by mainstream media this week

Contents

Tory trio mislead party conference on disability benefits as they stir up hostility towards disabled claimants

Government ‘has lost its way’ on accessible housing, after new towns report ignores disabled people

Alarm over government’s choices to lead ‘over-diagnosis’ review that could help ministers cut benefits

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Access to Work dossier of evidence shows ‘real harm’ and job losses caused by DWP cuts and failings

Greens show contrast with other major parties on disability cuts and refusal to stir up hostility to claimants

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Other disability-related stories covered by mainstream media this week

We the undersigned demand that:

GMCDP uninvited

Questionnaire on the “provision of support to persons with disabilities” – Call for submissions