Contents

McFadden brags about cutting disability benefits, just as his own strategy warns of ‘deep material poverty’ 1

Minister misleads MPs as mystery deepens over new £2 billion cuts to disability benefits 3

Duty to disabled passengers in railways bill is ‘too vague’ and must be strengthened, MPs are told 5

Peers urged to ‘err on the side of caution’ and raise minimum age limit in assisted suicide bill 7

Scottish and UK governments are failing to uphold disability rights, says watchdog 9

Thousands of disabled people in one county should benefit from care charging legal case victory 11

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

McFadden brags about cutting disability benefits, just as his own strategy warns of ‘deep material poverty’

The work and pensions secretary has bragged about cutting disabled people’s support, three days after launching a child poverty strategy which warned that more than a million children in families where someone was disabled were living in “deep material poverty”.

Pat McFadden told the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg on Sunday that his government had halved the health element for new claimants of universal credit because “under the Tory system we inherited, people got double the money for declaring themselves unfit for work”.

And he said he did not rule out further cuts to benefits.

But his comments on Sunday morning came three days after his Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), alongside the Department for Education and the prime minister, had launched Labour’s new Child Poverty Strategy.

The strategy’s evidence pack states that “single parent families and families where someone has a disability (are) particularly overrepresented in deep material poverty”.

In 2023-24, according to the strategy, there were 1.3 million children in a family where someone is disabled (22 per cent of those children) who were in “deep material poverty”.

The evidence pack points to disabled people’s “high additional living expenses such as transport, home adaptations, or specialist equipment”, while “caring responsibilities or accessibility issues can mean that it is difficult or not possible to find work that suits [those families’] requirements”.

The report itself says that “deep material poverty is especially pronounced for children in single parent families and children in families with disability”.

And it adds: “There are parents who may not be able to work, for example due to severe disability, or who fall on difficult times outside of their control.

“It is not right that we have a system where children are penalised through no fault of their own.”

Three days later, McFadden boasted to Kuenssberg about doing exactly that by slashing the health element of universal credit for most new claimants by about £50 a week from next April.

Announcing the Child Poverty Strategy, the government said it would lift about 550,000 children out of poverty by 2030 and tackle the “root causes of poverty by cutting the cost of essentials, boosting family incomes, and improving local services”.

Measures include making it easier for new parents who receive universal credit to return to work by extending eligibility for upfront childcare costs to those returning from parental leave; ending the unlawful placement of families in bed and breakfasts beyond the six-week limit; introducing a new legal duty for councils to notify schools, health visitors, and GPs when a child is placed in temporary accommodation; and taking measures to help families buy more affordable infant formula.

The government had already announced at last month’s budget that it was removing the universal credit two-child limit that was imposed by the last government in 2017.

Asked by Disability News Service (DNS) to respond to McFadden’s comments, and to say whether he would apologise for his misleading statement about claimants “declaring themselves unfit for work” – when there is a lengthy and harsh “fitness for work” assessment process – a government spokesperson said: “We are reforming the broken system we inherited by tackling perverse incentives around sickness claims, increasing face-to-face assessments, and investing £1 billion to help sick and disabled people into good, secure jobs.

“We want a welfare state that supports those who need it while helping people into work and delivering fairness to the taxpayer.

“That’s why we’ve launched the Timms Review to make PIP fair and fit for the future, while Alan Milburn’s investigation into young people and inactivity will help us tackle the key barriers behind youth unemployment.

“Thanks to our decision to scrap the two-child limit and introduce a wider package of measures for families we will lift 550,000 children out of poverty by the end of this parliament.”

This week, McFadden also released a written statement updating MPs on his department’s plans to improve its record on safeguarding benefit claimants.

It details a series of actions taken since a report on “safeguarding vulnerable claimants” was published by the Commons work and pensions committee in May.

Much of the statement had already been included in a letter he wrote to the committee on 18 November, on which he was questioned by the committee the following day.

McFadden admitted in this week’s statement that an assessment of DWP’s safeguarding approach had found “some good practice, but also variation in awareness, skills, and accountability”.

He said the first year of a new five-year DWP strategy would focus on “raising staff awareness of safeguarding responsibilities, building capability through training, and strengthening relationships with local authorities, health services, and voluntary organisations”.

He will publish a DWP safeguarding policy framework next year, setting out the department’s “comprehensive approach”.

McFadden said DWP “remains open to adopting a statutory duty” to safeguard claimants, one of the key recommendations in the committee’s report.

But there was no mention in his statement of the committee’s call for a new independent body to investigate cases where claimants have been seriously harmed by DWP’s actions.

DNS has previously shown how senior civil servants and ministers spent more than a decade covering up evidence that linked DWP’s actions with hundreds, and probably thousands, of deaths of disabled people who relied on the social security system*.

Documents secured through freedom of information requests, inquest reports, and investigations by bereaved family members show how DWP destroyed incriminating records, failed to share crucial evidence with its own independent reviewers and grieving relatives, and even lied to a coroner.

*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

11 December 2025

Minister misleads MPs as mystery deepens over new £2 billion cuts to disability benefits

The disability minister has refused to apologise after misleading MPs about concerns over nearly £2 billion in new cuts to disability benefits.

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has added to these transparency concerns by itself providing misleading information about the cuts, and again refusing to clarify how many disabled claimants will be affected, and how much they will lose.

Two weeks on from the budget, it is still unclear how DWP and its ministers intend to cut £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, from spending on disability benefits.

Treasury documents, published on the day of the budget, show the cuts are connected with increasing DWP’s “capacity” to carry out reassessments of claimants through the work capability assessment (WCA), increasing the number of face-to-face benefit assessments, and “extending Personal Independence Payment [PIP] award reviews periods”.

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

But it is unclear from budget documents exactly how these changes will cut spending on disability benefits, and how any cuts will be split between disabled claimants of PIP and universal credit.

Last week, Disability News Service (DNS) reported the government’s refusal to explain how it will cut spending through these measures, despite repeated requests for clarity.

Following the DNS story, the Liberal Democrat work and pensions spokesperson, Steve Darling, asked in Commons work and pensions questions for an explanation of how disabled people would be impacted by the cuts, which he said had been “quietly sneaked into the budget the other week”.

DNS has been seeking clarification on the cuts from DWP and the Treasury since 26 November, the day of the budget.

And on 1 December, DNS copied in Sir Stephen Timms – the minister for social security and disability – to an email to DWP’s press office, highlighting concerns that he was breaching the post-election pledge he made 14 months ago to improve transparency within DWP.

The email asked for an explanation of how the £1.95 billion in cuts would be achieved.

But responding in parliament on Monday (8 December) to Darling’s question about the DNS report, Sir Stephen told him: “I do not know what the honourable gentleman is referring to.

“I will happily look into the report he has spoken of.”

When DNS then asked if Sir Stephen would apologise for misleading Darling and fellow MPs, the DWP press office itself produced a misleading statement.

It said: “The £1.9 billion in welfare savings were announced by the chancellor at the budget and set out in full in the budget document.

“This will be delivered through measures such as tightening eligibility for overseas pension accrual, reforming Motability, and reducing duplication in benefit administration.”

This is not correct.

The budget costings document makes no mention of the Motability tax changes or pensions in its brief section on the £1.95 billion cuts to “health and disability benefits”.

Instead, the document refers to “operational improvements to health assessments”, including the WCA, “changing the frequency of Personal Independence Payment (PIP) award reviews”, and plans to “increase the number of face-to-face health assessments conducted across both PIP and the WCA”.

Asked why it had provided further misleading information on top of Sir Stephen’s misleading answer to Darling, DWP had not responded by 11.30am today (Thursday).

Meanwhile, Liberal Democrat MP John Milne asked Sir Stephen on Monday if he agreed that the widely-ridiculed claim by Tory shadow work and pensions secretary Helen Whately that “millions are getting benefits for anxiety or ADHD along with a free Motability car” was “clearly nonsense” and “one of the least accurate claims ever made by a politician”.

Sir Stephen said he agreed, although he said that “choosing the most misleading claim is a tough contest”.

Another minister was asked by Liberal Democrat MP Caroline Voaden why one of her constituents in South Devon had spent “nearly two weeks calling the DWP every day to find out why his employment and support allowance had been stopped without warning”, but “each time he called, he waited for over an hour, only for the line to be cut off with no reply”.

DWP minister Andrew Western said such service was “unacceptable” and he promised to “look into it on her behalf”.

The SNP’s Chris Law asked Sir Stephen what action he was taking after nearly 1,000 new and existing claimants had a work capability assessment cancelled by private sector contractor Maximus since 9 September 2024.

He said a whistleblower had told him cancellations were “a regular occurrence, largely because of IT services provided by the DWP”, with one of his Dundee constituents having their WCA cancelled five times.

Sir Stephen said he would be “happy to look into the details”.

11 December 2025

Duty to disabled passengers in railways bill is ‘too vague’ and must be strengthened, MPs are told

A statutory duty in the new railways bill to ensure ministers and public bodies promote the needs of disabled passengers is “too vague” and must be strengthened as the legislation passes through parliament, MPs were told yesterday (Wednesday).

The transport select committee was hearing evidence from experts a day after the government’s railways bill passed its second reading in the House of Commons.

Emma Vogelmann, co-chief executive of the disabled people’s organisation Transport for All (TfA), welcomed the inclusion in the bill of a statutory duty that will force those in charge of the railways to take account of “the needs of disabled persons”.

Labour had previously dropped plans to ensure there was a statutory duty on accessibility in the bill.

But Vogelmann told MPs on the committee that the duty’s wording was “very vague” and “too unenforceable” and “doesn’t guarantee improvements for disabled passengers”, despite the “desperate change that is needed in terms of accessibility”.

She said TfA wanted the bill strengthened so there was a duty to “actively and continuously improve accessibility across the rail network” and ensure there are “measurable outcomes” that show what progress is being made every year.

The bill currently says that ministers, Great British Railways (GBR) and the Office of Rail and Road will have a duty to carry out their roles – alongside other statutory duties – in “the manner best calculated to promote the interests of users and potential users of railway passenger services including, in particular, the needs of disabled persons”.

But Vogelmann told the MPs the legislation should be strengthened to “make sure that accessibility is enforceable and that it is an over-riding, consistent priority for Great British Railways as opposed to at the moment where we feel it is potentially not given enough enforcement power and it is subject to political will in some instances”.

She said the current wording of the duty was “almost purposefully vague”, which risked perpetuating the “tick box” culture and lack of meaningful action on accessibility across the rail system.

She added: “The lack of enforceable standards, the lack of enforceable actions, is really why disabled people feel excluded from the rail network at the moment and why many of us face so many barriers.”

The previous day, a string of MPs had highlighted the need for meaningful improvements to accessibility on the railways, during the bill’s second reading.

The bill will create GBR, a new publicly-owned company that will bring together management of passenger services and rail infrastructure.

The government also plans to use the bill to introduce a stronger passenger watchdog and to simplify fares and tickets.

Transport secretary Heidi Alexander told MPs the bill would “sweep away the fragmentation and dysfunction that have plagued the railway for too long and will bring the 17 organisations involved in running the railway together into one public body, Great British Railways, which is the directing mind that this industry has long called for”.

Many MPs in the debate called for improvements to the government’s Access for All programme, which funds access improvements at rail stations.

Conservative MP Mark Pritchard said “more needs to be done on step-free access” because there was “currently very little in the bill that suggests that more will be done, particularly for rural stations such as Cosford, Shifnal or Albrighton in Shropshire.

“If it cannot be done at every station, and there is no money for that, there at least needs to be step-free access and improved disability access somewhere along inter-county railway lines.”

Adam Dance, the Liberal Democrat MP for Yeovil, said: “Too many rural railway stations are not accessible for disabled people.

“Without support staff, constituents in Yeovil have had serious accidents at railway stations.

“Although the government’s accessibility priorities, which we are debating today, are welcome, does my honourable friend agree that we need a strengthened Access for All programme?”

Keir Mather, a junior transport minister, told MPs he had “heard the calls from colleagues across the house about the importance of the Access for All scheme”, and that the government was continuing to fund the scheme.

Disability News Service reported last month that the government’s new “roadmap to an accessible railway” – covering England, Scotland and Wales – appeared to suggest a reduction in real spending on the Access for All programme, with the roadmap promising a future commitment to only spend “up to” £70 million a year.

Conservative and Liberal Democrat MPs voted against the bill receiving a second reading, but it was easily passed by 329 votes in favour to 173 votes against.

11 December 2025

Peers urged to ‘err on the side of caution’ and raise minimum age limit in assisted suicide bill

Peers have been urged to “err on the side of caution” and raise the minimum age limit for an assisted death from 18 to 25, as part of a controversial bill that aims to legalise the practice.

As the House of Lords again debated some of the hundreds of amendments proposed to the terminally ill adults (end of life) bill, peers were told that a minimum age of 18 was “contrary to the mounting evidence of when the brain is fully formed”.

Labour peer Baroness [Luciana] Berger told fellow peers last Friday (5 December) that social media had become “a powerful driver of harm” and that research showed young people in vulnerable situations were “disproportionately exposed to posts that glamorise suicide or present suicidal thoughts as normal, appealing or even fashionable”.

She said she was “haunted” by the words of a young disabled woman who had said in evidence at an earlier stage of the bill: “I’m in care. I’ve got disabilities. The government will pay for me to die under this bill, but it won’t pay for me to live.”

Baroness Berger reminded peers that the children’s commissioner, Dame Rachel de Souza, had said she would “far rather that we erred on the side of caution, protecting those who have had terrible lives, terrible experiences, have been abused, have had their families turn them out, protecting those [with] extreme mental illness, protecting those with special educational needs and disabilities, protecting anorexic children who are heading into adulthood”.

Baroness Berger said: “I am clear that we must continue to say to children and young people: ‘Yes, your life matters. Even if it will be a short life, it matters.’”

Labour peer Lord Falconer, who is sponsoring the bill in the Lords, said he believed 18 was still the right age, but that “maybe the answer is some assurance that there is a more intense assessment for people aged between 18 and 25”.

The issue is likely to be debated again at the bill’s report stage.

Meanwhile, the disabled Conservative peer Lord [Kevin] Shinkwin warned of a further attempt to “weaken” the bill’s protections after Lord Falconer proposed an amendment that would affect the adjustments that must be made for those with language and literacy barriers, including people with learning difficulties.

The bill currently states that doctors assessing someone for an assisted suicide “must first ensure the provision of adjustments for language and literacy barriers”.

But Lord Falconer suggested in his amendment that doctors should instead “take all reasonable steps to ensure… effective communication”.

Lord Shinkwin said he failed to see how the change would “do anything other than weaken this bill” and would “fundamentally weaken one of the bill’s safeguards, such as they are”.

He said the bill “makes a mockery” of the Labour party’s “fine, noble and honourable tradition” of “advancing disability rights”.

He said: “It shreds a tradition that deserves to be preserved, not sacrificed in such a profoundly cynical and misleading way as to make out, as the amendment does, that this is somehow only a drafting change.

“There is a reason why not one organisation of or for disabled people supports the bill; they know that disabled people need the bill like a hole in the head.

“I marvel that the noble and learned lord does not seem to realise that the bill is dangerous enough already without the removal of provisions that would at least acknowledge the obligation to first ensure that communication adjustments were made; for example, for people with learning disabilities or users of British Sign Language.”

There was also criticism of Lord Falconer’s proposed amendment by Baroness [Nuala] O’Loan, the human rights expert and former police ombudsman for Northern Ireland, who said his amendment would introduce “a far less specific test, and consideration must be given to setting standards for the level of communication which is required”.

She asked Lord Falconer whether his amendment would “inadvertently disadvantage those with specific learning difficulties and similar vulnerable groups”.

Lord Falconer insisted that the amendment was “not a watering down at all” but he said he would discuss Lord Shinkwin’s concerns with him before the next stage of the bill, although “at the moment, it looks to me to offer just as good, if not better, protection”.

Peers have now dealt with only six groups of amendments, out of the – currently – 84 they will need to get through to move onto the next stage of the bill in the Lords, with further debate planned tomorrow (Friday).

The Hansard Society said this week that if the Lords continued at its current pace it would “far fall short of what is needed to complete the remaining groups in time”, with parliament’s current session due to end in the spring, probably in May.

11 December 2025

Scottish and UK governments are failing to uphold disability rights, says watchdog

The Scottish and UK governments are both failing to uphold the rights of disabled people in key areas, according to an annual report by Scotland’s human rights watchdog.

Two of the 10 areas of “urgent concern” highlighted by the Scottish Human Rights Commission in its State of the Nation 2025 report focus on continued breaches of disabled people’s rights.

The report – presented this week to the Scottish parliament – says the support for people with learning difficulties and autistic people to live in their own homes is “inadequate”, with many forced to live in accommodation that is “institutional, inappropriate, and not in the area that they would call home”.

The Scottish government has failed to put in place the necessary community-based support to deliver the right to independent living, it says.

It also points to the lack of “transparency and monitoring” to ensure action in this area meets human rights requirements.

The report also warns that disability benefits fail to provide a “decent standard of living” and are at risk of being cut, even though disabled people are more likely to live in poverty than people living in households where no-one is disabled.

Disabled people and disabled people’s organisations told the commission last year that social security payments that are meant to cover additional disability-related costs for daily living “are in fact being used to cover basic household expenses such as food”.

Disabled people are “going without enough income to meet costs” and facing rising debt, and are often unable to pay for fuel, including the cost of charging their medical equipment.

The report adds: “Despite these impossible choices, UK politicians have been actively considering further cuts and changes to disability support.”

And, it says, some of the proposed policy choices “actively undermine the rights of disabled people”.

It particularly highlights the £50-a-week cut to the health element of universal credit for most new claimants, from next April, which is happening at a time when disabled people “are struggling to make ends meet”.

The cut, it says, “is particularly inconsistent” with the UK government’s obligation to realise rights progressively under the UN International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

Despite the UK government failing to rule out future cuts to spending on personal independence payment (PIP), the Scottish government – which is now responsible for its own version of the extra costs benefit, adult disability payment (ADP) – has “indicated that it does not intend to change ADP to reduce spending”, the report says.

But it says that the Scottish government has still not demonstrated that it has taken a human rights approach to budgeting “that both aims to ensure there is no worsening of disability-related poverty” and, where there is such poverty, to reduce it.

It adds: “Devolution is no excuse for failing to respect, protect and fulfil human rights.”

Derek, a disabled person interviewed for the report, says: “It feels like a lot of the human rights are being chipped away.

“We keep working away to make sure disabled people’s voices are being heard, but sometimes it can be disheartening, and I feel like I don’t have the energy.”

He has been supported by Glasgow Disability Alliance, and he told the commission: “My confidence came, not as an individual but from being involved in and as an ally to a movement.

“The barriers affect so many areas of life. It took me 20 years of fighting my local housing authority to get information in an accessible format, never mind accessible housing.”

Among the report’s calls for action from the Scottish government, it says the necessary housing and social care support must be in place to ensure a right to independent living.

And it says ADP and “other forms of social security and financial support to cover the costs of disability” must “meet those specific needs”, in line with the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

Other areas of concern highlighted by the report include healthcare provision; the housing crisis that is denying people across Scotland access to “safe, affordable and adequate housing”; high levels of food insecurity and unaffordability; and changes to the UK social security system that “disadvantage the most marginalised people and families”.

Professor Angela O’Hagan, chair of the Scottish Human Rights Commission, said: “People are struggling to heat their homes, feed their families, or access basic services, and this is fuelling real frustration and tension across our communities.

“At times like these, human rights matter more than ever. They provide the framework that requires public bodies to act fairly, protect people’s dignity, and direct resources to those who need them most.

“The most effective way to rebuild trust and reduce anger is to make these rights a lived reality for everyone.”

She added: “This report is a clear call to action.

“We urge the Scottish parliament and all public bodies to use its findings to make better decisions about legislation, budgeting and service delivery.

“Human rights set the minimum standards that people in Scotland should be able to depend on, especially during tough times.”

Meanwhile, the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) has warned the UK government it is failing to uphold “fundamental” human rights, including access to healthcare for disabled people, the right to peaceful protest, and freedom from exploitation for migrant workers.  

In a new report, published on Human Rights Day, the commission assessed progress on some of the 302 recommendations (PDF) made by other UN member states at the UK’s Universal Periodic Review in November 2022.

The EHRC report says successive government disability strategies and action plans have failed to focus on improving health services for disabled people, despite data showing disabled people in England face greater barriers to healthcare and are more often on NHS hospital waiting-lists than non-disabled people.  

11 December 2025

Thousands of disabled people in one county should benefit from care charging legal case victory

Hundreds, or even thousands, of service-users in Kent should benefit from a legal case taken by a disabled woman who spent years over-paying care charges because the county council failed to tell her about crucial rules.

Kent County Council – which is now run by the right-wing Reform UK party after a landslide election victory earlier this year – has now backed down and agreed to do more to tell disabled people in the county how calculating their disability-related spending could reduce their care charges.

A disabled woman known as PXA had been forced to cancel her council-funded support because she could not afford the higher charges imposed in September 2024 when the council changed its charging policy, leading to her and thousands more disabled people in the county seeing sharp increases in their weekly care charges.

After seeking legal advice, she learned that she had been overpaying her care charges for years because her disability-related expenses had never been assessed.

PXA won permission for a judicial review of the council’s actions, but the local authority backed down and settled the case, days before a trial was due to begin last week.

The case revolved around the council’s failure to do enough to tell disabled people about the disability-related expenditure (DRE) system.

When calculating a person’s social care charges, a local authority must – if it treats their disability benefits as income – deduct what that person spends in DRE.

But Kent County Council’s policy since 2003 had been to deduct a standard amount for DRE and only to carry out an assessment of their actual spending if the disabled person asked for one.

The council set this standard amount at £21 in 2003, and reduced it to £17 in 2011, failing to increase it to allow for inflation for the next 14 years.

Legal firm Gold Jennings, which represents PXA and three other claimants, found that between them they had overpaid tens of thousands of pounds in care charges.

The firm believes there are “hundreds if not thousands” of other disabled people in Kent who were unaware that they should request an assessment of DRE to try to reduce their care charges.

The council’s own statistics show that, of about 16,000 individuals paying for their care in the county, only a few hundred had requested a DRE assessment.

Gold Jennings said PXA’s case was assisted by “compelling” evidence from the disabled people’s organisation Inclusion London, which used its virtual DRE assistant to highlight how disability-related spending for many people was likely to be significantly more than the £17 per week used by Kent County Council.

Even the council’s own figures – using individual assessments carried out in the 11 months after the September 2024 policy change – put average DRE at £55.46 per week.

Disabled people with this average level of DRE would have been overpaying care charges by nearly £2,000 per year.

PXA provided evidence that she had “never properly been told about DRE or that she could request an assessment”, said Gold Jennings.

The council has now agreed to make significant changes to its policy, including referring to DRE in its annual charging letters; providing clearer guidance in its DRE factsheet; and changing guidance to ensure council staff tell claimants about DRE and its importance in cutting charges.

It has also agreed to credit a “goodwill” amount to PXA to reduce her future care charges.

Svetlana Kotova, director of campaigns and justice at Inclusion London, said: “We are pleased with the outcome of this legal challenge and sincerely hope the changes that Kent agreed to make will enable many disabled people who use social care to keep more of their money.

“This case shows very powerfully the problems in practice with the DRE assessment process, which in theory allows disabled people to prove their extra disability costs so that they can keep more of their disability benefits, but is often unworkable.

“People don’t know about DRE and the process of claiming it is very complicated and often demeaning.

“It is wrong that people with very high support needs end up being overcharged for the essential care they need.

“This just pushes disabled people into deeper poverty.

“This is why Inclusion London have been campaigning to scrap care charging altogether.”

Clare Jennings, head of public law at Gold Jennings, said the consequences of the council’s actions were that her clients had been overpaying by thousands of pounds a year for their care, for many years.

She said: “I am deeply concerned that my clients’ situation is not unique and that there will be hundreds, if not thousands, of others like them in Kent, and thousands more in other local authority areas who operate similar policies, who have overpaid for their care, enriching local authorities by tens of millions of pounds.”

A council spokesperson said: “Faced with increasing demands for complex care, rising costs of care and a lack of adequate funding from central government, we are having to take tough decisions to make sure future essential services are sustainable.

“Unlike a number of other UK councils, Kent County Council delayed using powers given to local authorities under 2014’s Care Act to take into account higher, or enhanced, rates of disability benefits when assessing how much people should contribute to the cost of their care.

“Following public consultation in 2024, the decision to change this policy and increase the amount some people contribute to the cost of their care was not taken lightly and we included a £900,000 contingency in the budget to help with increased disability-related expenses.”

11 December 2025

Other disability-related stories covered by mainstream media this week

Health secretary Wes Streeting is launching an independent review into rising demand for mental health, ADHD and autism services in England. It will look at both whether there is evidence of over-diagnosis and what gaps in support exist: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ce8q26q2r75o (this confirms the launch of a review that DNS first reported on two months ago: https://www.disabilitynewsservice.com/alarm-over-governments-choices-to-lead-over-diagnosis-review-that-could-help-ministers-cut-benefits/)

The Conservatives have begun a policy review to slash the scope and cost of the benefits system, with Kemi Badenoch saying an “age of diagnosis” for “low-level mental conditions” was fast making it unaffordable. While it is up to the review to come up with specific policies, the Conservative leader hinted that some payments could become time-limited, saying one element would examine “at what stage support should come in, and how long it should last”: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/dec/09/badenoch-announces-tory-review-of-which-conditions-qualify-for-benefits

Senior Scottish politicians fear there could be a risk of “death tourism” from terminally-ill people travelling from other parts of the UK to end their lives in Scotland. A cross-party group of MSPs, including deputy first minister Kate Forbes, said the looser controls on eligibility written into an assisted dying bill for Scotland could attract people who are unhappy with stricter rules planned for England and Wales. The Scottish bill is expected to have its final vote in February: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/dec/10/scotlands-looser-rules-on-assisted-dying-could-lead-to-death-tourism-say-senior-politicians

A new strategy focusing on disabled people in Northern Ireland will go out for public consultation. Communities minister Gordon Lyons outlined details of the draft plan on Tuesday in the assembly. Disabled People Against Cuts has already issued a briefing paper spelling out the draft strategy’s “failures”: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cm21zg3jlxdo

One of the most senior civil servants in the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has placed the blame for the carer’s allowance benefits crisis on victims, many of whom have been left with life-changing debts. In an internal blogpost written for Whitehall colleagues, Neil Couling, director general of DWP services, said individual failings by carers were “at the heart” of the issue that has been likened to the Post Office Horizon scandal: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/dec/06/senior-dwp-civil-servant-blames-victims-for-carers-allowance-scandal

Scottish Labour’s education spokesperson has quit over her friendship with a convicted sex offender. Disabled MSP Pam Duncan-Glancy resigned after the Daily Record approached her and her party about her links to disgraced former councillor Sean Morton: https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics/scottish-labour-education-spokeswoman-quits-36358285

11 December 2025

News provided by John Pring at www.disabilitynewsservice.com