With the election this Thursday, finally all the parties in Northern Ireland have their manifestos available for you to read and to win your vote. What do their manifestos have on offer for disabled voters?

DPAC NI are not endorsing any parties running for election, but are merely giving you all the information they have provided in their manifestos, so you can make an informed choice as a deaf and disabled people when voting.

The core demands from DPAC NI are:

Legislate to fully incorporate the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) into UK law

• A “triple lock” on annual benefit rate increases
• Legal Right to Independent Living with a National Independent Living Service
• Introduce a national requirement for all new build homes to be accessible and 10% to be wheelchair accessible
• A right to mainstream education and to education in fluent British Sign Language / Irish Sign Language for Deaf and Disabled students
• A fully integrated, fully accessible, affordable publicly owned transport system for all
• A right of disabled access to built and natural environments
• Introduce mandatory two-week timeframe for reasonable adjustments and an enforcement framework which does not fully depend on an individual.
• An independent public inquiry into the deaths and maltreatment of disabled children and adults incarcerated in mental health institutions
• Legislate to abolish forced detention and treatment of people on mental health grounds
• No Assisted Dying
• Adequate provision of technical aids and equipment, eg wheelchairs, and adaptive communication aides for people who are nonverbal

Lets look at each party and pick out what they have to say and what core demands they are going to deliver for our community

Sinn Féin sinnfein.ie

Building a Society for All

“There can be no place for sectarianism, racism, misogyny, homophobia, age or disability discrimination in our society.” – Page 9

“We want a society that values and celebrates the diversity of our identities, religious or none, sexual orientation, gender, disability, age, or ethnic origin.” – Page 9

Full Sinn Fein manifesto: Click Here

DUP mydup.com

Down’s Syndrome given Minority Status

“DUP Parliamentarians have been a committed and consistent voice for people with disabilities. One of our MPs co-sponsored the Down Syndrome Act 2022, the world’s first piece of legislation recognising people with Down’s syndrome as a specific minority group.” – Page 10

Department for Communities Outcomes Delivered

“Progress on a Disability and Work Strategy, ensuring no one who wants to work is prohibited from doing so because of their disability” – Page 12

Defending Our Most Vulnerable

“supported legal action by disability campaigner Heidi Crowter against legislation allowing the abortion of babies with Down’s Syndrome up until birth” – Page 39

Disabilities

“The DUP is committed to ensuring those with disabilities can live full and active lives. We will continue to advocate for better access to, and provision of, vital services that can help ensure they can play a stronger role in their local communities and the labour market.” – Page 39

“support a wide-ranging audit of central and local government facilities to ensure they are accessible to those with disabilities” – Page 39

“work with the Inclusive Mobility and Transport Advisory Committee (IMTAC) in future transport projects” – Page 39

“promote close collaboration between IMTAC, the Disabled Persons Transport Advisory Committee (DPTAC) in England and Wales and Mobility and Access Committee for Scotland” – Page 39

“support the introduction of further resident parking zone schemes” Page 39

“encourage government departments, public bodies and local authorities across the UK to join Access Able or require them to provide comparable information on disability access and services” – Page 39

“invest more in community transport, including services that provide a lifeline to older people” – Page 39 

Full DUP manifesto: Click Here

Alliance Party allianceparty.org

Victim and Survivors

“We have long supported the introduction of a pension for victims and survivors of the Troubles, and Justice Minister Naomi Long MLA took the lead in implementing the Troubles Permanent Disablement Pension Scheme when other executive ministers refused” – Page 13

Levelling Up and Shared Prosperity

“There has been a significant reduction in funding to Northern Ireland, coupled with the imposition of unnecessary and costly bidding competitions, short-termism, uncertainty as to the areas of activity that will be supported, plus duplication in some areas and gaps in others. Many core services, including apprenticeship, labour market inclusion measures, disability employment, regeneration and economic development measures are in jeopardy.” – Page 23

Equality and Justice

“The domestic incorporation of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD).” – Page 34

“The delivery of a Northern Ireland Bill of Rights to supplement the ECHR and Human Rights Act.” – Page 34

Global Justice and International Development

“We want to build a fair, sustainable world: reducing poverty and inequality, addressing the climate crisis, and ensuring that the most marginalised groups, such as women, girls, people with disabilities and the LGBT+ community, are at the forefront of international development and humanitarian assistance policy.” – Page 43

Full Alliance Party Manifesto: Click Here

SDLP sdlp.ie

Disability Rights

“The SDLP believes in a society where disabled people have full and equal access to public services, including through the full implementation of the UN Convention on the Right of Persons with Disabilities.” – Page 40

“In a myriad of ways, disabled people have been hit hardest by the cost-of-living crisis and the impact of the pandemic and require intervention and investment to address that impact. Robust action is required at all levels of government to tackle the inequalities faced by people with disabilities, including by closing the disability employment gap. We must also invest in public services and the built environment of our local communities to ensure that homes, schools, leisure and sporting facilities and public transportation are fully accessible to disabled people. We believe in a welfare system that upholds the rights of all disabled people, treating them with dignity and compassion.” – Page 40

“Alongside these important reforms, the SDLP will continue to campaign for a society that breaks down the negative attitudes and discrimination that affect disabled people, including through addressing disability hate crime. Public policy must be co-designed with disabled people and the organisations that represent them to ensure that it fully accounts for the needs of disabled people” – Page 40

Human Rights

“The SDLP remains unwavering in its commitment to advancing and upholding human rights. We believe that every individual, regardless of their nationality, ethnicity, disability, gender, sexual orientation or belief, are entitled to the same fundamental rights which are enshrined in international law.” – Page 43

Full SDLP manifesto: Click Here

Ulster Unionist Party uup.org

Disabilities

“Across the UK, around 16 million people have a recognised disability, which constitutes about 24% of the total population. This includes 11% of children, 23% of working-age adults, and 45% of pension-age adults (Disability, accessibility and blue badge statistics, England, 2022 to 2023 – GOV—UK; Disability facts and figures | Disability charity Scope UK.) “ – Page 16

“In Northern Ireland, approximately 21% of the population reported having a disability according to the most recent surveys, a figure that mirrors trends across other regions of the UK, indicating a rise in the proportion of people living with disabilities.” – Page 16

“These statistics emphasise the significant portion of the population living with a disability, highlighting the crucial need for policies and initiatives aimed at enhancing their quality of life.” – Page 16

“Ulster Unionist Party MPs will advocate for the next Government to not only acknowledge the high proportion of the population living with disabilities but also to proactively develop policy interventions that improve services and the overall quality of life for these citizens.” – Page 16

“We firmly believe that the most effective way to ensure these policies is by ensuring that individuals with lived experience are not just included, but are at the forefront of creating these policy interventions. Their unique perspectives and challenges are invaluable in shaping policies that truly meet their needs”. -Page 16

“Additionally, your Ulster Unionist Party MPs will work to hold the next Government to account if they fail in their duty to support our citizens living with disabilities in having active and fulfilling lives. This support must include recognising that Personal Independence Payment and other social security payments are crucial in this regard, and any attempt to scale back this support will have a far-reaching and devastating impact.” – Page 16

“We will advocate for the next Government to acknowledge the high proportion of the population living with disabilities and to proactively develop policy interventions that improve services and the overall quality of life for these citizens. This will include pressing for the incorporation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities into UK law, ensuring that the rights of individuals with disabilities are fully protected and promoted.” – Page 16

Supporting Young People with Disabilities

“We are committed to creating equal opportunities for young people with disabilities. To achieve this, we will:

Secure funding and resources for post-secondary education and training for young people with disabilities or learning disabilities.

Develop pathways to further learning and employment opportunities that are on par with those available to mainstream school leavers.

Ensure that all young people in Northern Ireland have access to the support and opportunities they need to succeed, regardless of their abilities.” – Page 18

People Before Profit pbp.ie

Full 5 page policy available on disability. Mostly Republic of Ireland related

Legislative Changes

“People Before Profit stands in solidarity with disability rights activists, and calls for the complete ratification of the UNCRPD, along with all other relevant legislation – a process that should include as a rule the full and decisive oversight of people with a lived experience of disability. As a matter of urgency, the government must:

Ensure that the ratification of the UNCRPD and all other relevant legislation, involving oversight by persons with a lived experience of disability.” – Page 3

Full People Before Profits manifesto: Click Here

Green Party Northern Ireland greenpartyni.org

Fund Reforms By Taxing the Wealthy

“Make pension tax relief equal to the basic rate of income tax – helping to fund adequate social care which centres the dignity of all elderly and disabled people regardless of income.” – Page 14

Make Government More Representative and More Local

“To enable diversity across politics, we will implement measures that support the candidacy of underrepresented groups, including women, ethnic minorities, and people with disabilities. Diverse political representation leads to policies that better reflect the needs of all citizens. We will also continue to advocate for devolution of powers to local levels, including reform of the Barnett formula and the funding package to Northern Ireland and the extension of powers and resources to Local Authorities.” – Page 15

Enhance Work Life

“Address pay gaps for all people from protected groups, including those with a disability or chronic health condition, those from racialised or religious minorities, women and carers, and LGBTQ+ people.” – Page 19

Full Green Party Northern Ireland manifesto: Click Here

Contents

Election hustings candidates invent disability policies, days before general election 1

DPOs pledge to continue with election hustings, despite controversies, conspiracy theories and no-shows 3

‘Shocking’ failure of election candidates asked about accessible housing 7

Some parties still failing on accessible manifestos 9

Almost no councils now employ access officers, new research shows 11

Disabled election candidates: Labour’s Marsha de Cordova 13

Disabled election candidates: Liberal Democrat Katharine Macy 16

Other disability-related stories covered by mainstream media this week 18

Election hustings candidates invent disability policies, days before general election

A series of election candidates have been caught inventing party policy in front of an audience of disabled people, at a disability hustings event held just days before the general election.

The event in Bristol was organised by five disabled people’s organisations* who wanted disabled people to be able to question candidates standing in various Bristol seats at next week’s election.

The Conservatives, Greens, Liberal Democrats and Reform UK sent candidates from one of the five Bristol constituencies, but Labour only offered a city councillor, Kelvin Blake.

Blake explained to the audience of voters that none of Labour’s five election candidates were able to attend because they were “obviously very busy on the stump, trying to get people’s votes”.

There was frustration and concern after the event that each of the five representatives had made statements that were not in their parties’ manifestos and were not party policy.

Blake twice stated that a Labour government would implement the right to independent living into law, telling the audience that “we’ll change the law, and enshrine independent living”, later saying Labour would “basically enshrine in law independent living”.

That is not a policy that appears in Labour’s manifesto, which only promises that, under a new National Care Service, “services will be locally delivered, with a principle of ‘home first’ that supports people to live independently for as long as possible”.

Labour has in fact dropped its previous commitment to implementing the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) – which includes a right to independent living – into UK law.

The Conservative candidate, Rose Hulse, who is standing in Bristol North-East, said she wanted to implement the whole of the convention into UK law, a policy her party is opposed to.

She was responding to a question about a report in April from the UN committee on the rights of disabled people that found the Conservative government had made “no significant progress” in the seven years since being found guilty of “grave and systematic” violations of the convention.

But Hulse told the audience that the “UN policies… currently are not part of law. They should be part of law. They need to be written into the law.”

This is not Conservative party policy and does not appear in the Conservative manifesto.

For the Liberal Democrats, Tony Sutcliffe, who is standing in Bristol East, called for the part-nationalising of care homes, as he discussed his experience of working in a residential setting.

He told the audience: “It is absolutely vital that we try and bring all of these things back into some sort of ownership, possibly public ownership, possibly a public private ownership model.

“But it needs to be done in such a way that we can get the profit motive out of the business and actually have homes that people would live in, that they can work in, that they can have a life that is worth living.”

There is no mention of such a policy in the Liberal Democrat manifesto.

Reform UK’s Robert Clarke, who is standing in Bristol Central, told the audience that he believed disabled people should not have to “jump over hurdles” to get benefits, and that the current system was a “very Kafkaesque nightmare, and we know that the authorities and the governments love this because it means they pay out as little as possible”.

But his own party’s manifesto says that all assessments should take place face-to-face and that a Reform government would “require independent medical assessments to prove eligibility for payments” as well as saving £15 billion a year by forcing “1 million plus back to work”.

The Green candidate Jai Breitnauer, who was the best-briefed of the five panellists, still appeared to over-state her party’s manifesto promise on accessible housing.

She told the audience that her party wanted to see 150,000 new social homes a year being built.

She said: “They would be affordable homes. They would be accessible, and they’d be on good transport routes.”

But the Green manifesto does not promise that all these new homes would be accessible, pledging only that the party would “ensure that the needs of the elderly, families with children, people living with a disability or requiring support through sheltered housing are adequately catered for”.

Rick Burgess, from Greater Manchester Coalition of Disabled People (GMCDP), said after the event that much of the information from the panellists had not reflected the parties’ manifestos.

He said: “No-one was happy with the level of information that the candidates generally gave out.

“I don’t think any of them reflected their national manifesto fully.

“The political system let us down. If it wasn’t great, it was because of the candidates who turned up.”

GMCDP is also supporting the national disability hustings event in Manchester next week, two days before the general election.

One disabled campaigner who attended the event, but asked to remain anonymous, said: “It was not informative – candidates were allowed to make up anything they felt the audience might like, without being called out for the lack of facts or the lack of semblance to their party manifesto.

“It was not a means of holding anyone to account (which I would say is anyway an extremely naive objective for a hustings) because nobody that came has any chance of being elected.”

Alex Johnston, from West of England Centre for Inclusive Living (WECIL), who chaired the event, said he had been “hoping for more from the audience” and wished they had asked questions that were “a little bit more testing”.

He also criticised his own chairing of the event.

He said that “with hindsight I could have done better, I could have had more of a depth of understanding of each party’s manifesto” to try to “hold the candidates’ toes to the fire around policy”.

But he added: “The takeaway for me was that all of those parties could do well to read the Disabled People’s Manifesto.”

*Bristol Reclaiming Independent Living, West of England Centre for Inclusive Living, Disability Rights UK, Inclusion London and Greater Manchester Coalition of Disabled People

27 June 2024

DPOs pledge to continue with election hustings, despite controversies, conspiracy theories and no-shows

Disabled people’s organisations (DPOs) have pledged to continue hosting election hustings, despite organisers this week having to cope with an anti-trans rights activist, a conspiracy theory-spouting Reform UK politician, and no-show party candidates.

The event in Bristol was organised by DPOs* who originally wanted disabled people to be able to question candidates standing in the Bristol Central seat at next week’s election.

But both Labour’s Thangam Debbonaire and the Green Party’s co-leader Carla Denyer turned down invitations to attend.

Even though the event then had to be extended to all of Bristol’s five general election constituencies, Labour still failed to provide a candidate from any of them.

The event organisers also had to tell anti-trans activist Kellie-Jay Keen, who is standing in Bristol Central, that she could not join the panel of candidates, because her Party of Women has no MPs.

Keen, who has a vocal social media following, then booked a ticket to attend the event in Bristol.

She was initially prevented from entering the venue by security guards because of concerns that she would disrupt the event and distract from its aim of allowing disabled people to question candidates on disability rights issues.

There was also a police presence outside the venue, although it is not clear who asked them to attend.

The incident, and the refusal to allow her to speak, led to Keen posting a series of angry videos on her social media accounts, and her supporters swamping the comments section of the YouTube live-stream of the hustings with demands for her to be allowed to join the panel.

There was also anger and frustration that Robert Clarke, from the right-wing Reform UK, who is standing in Bristol Central and was on the panel, was able to deliver a stream of conspiracy theories and allegations relating to the United Nations, vaccine damage and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, without challenge.

He repeatedly accused the other parties of being “globalist”, a term often used by right-wing parties and conspiracy theorists.

He echoed the controversial comments of his party leader Nigel Farage, who said that the EU and NATO had “provoked” Russia’s invasion of Ukraine by expanding eastwards.

Clarke told the audience that the main political parties were “interested in globalist wars like they are pushing in the Ukraine”, which he said had “very little to do with us” and was “a provocation of Russia”, and he accused the United Nations of doing “a lot of very bad stuff”.

He also repeatedly attacked the use of vaccines, claiming it was “extremely unwise to think that a so-called vaccination programme is going to help us or help disabled people” and referencing the discredited theory linking autism to the MMR vaccination.

After the event, Rick Burgess, from Greater Manchester Coalition of Disabled People, one of the DPOs that supported the event, said it had been obvious that Keen had arrived intending to create content for her huge social media following and “advance her personal campaign”.

He said she was eventually allowed to enter the event on the understanding that she did not disrupt the event and “other than handing out leaflets, she wasn’t disruptive”.

Burgess said there had been frustration at the failure of key candidates to attend the hustings, and with the quality of those who did attend.

He said that “the political class didn’t deliver, so it left us dealing with that failure”.

He added: “If at national general elections [political parties] are not going to engage, we will not do [hustings] anymore, but I think we need to give it a try, learn and do better.”

Alex Johnston, from West of England Centre for Inclusive Living (WECIL), who chaired the event, said they had been forced to restrict the number of candidates they invited to make the event manageable, and so only invited candidates from parties with at least one MP.

He said they had originally prevented Keen from entering the event because of the risk that she would “disrupt and sidetrack the event, which we know they have form for, undermining the real purpose of the event, which was disabled people hearing direct from politicians”.

He added: “Then the police got involved and security got involved and as a result they did come in.

“There was some disruption to the event but not that it took away from the main purpose of the event.”

Jon Abrams, campaigns and justice coordinator for Inclusion London, which also supported the hustings, said there had been security and stewards present because people often attend such events who are “very angry and emotional”, but he stressed that it was not the DPO organisers who had called the police.

He said it was challenging organising such events when public figures such as Keen attend “to get media attention”.

He said Inclusion London had approached a number of DPOs to offer its support and in some cases funding to organise hustings events during the election campaign.

He said: “Clearly there is learning for us as well. People may come along to disrupt it for their own agenda.

“This is what is happening now. Do we not organise hustings? I imagine some people have that view.

“So how should disabled people in the run-up to elections who are already disadvantaged by barriers, how should they engage politically? What are the alternatives? Not to do anything?

“There may well be better ways of doing it. It would be great if people had constructive ideas for future elections.”

He said it was the first election campaign (along with the London mayoral election in May) at which politicians were not turning up to hustings without apparently valid excuses, which he said was “very disappointing”.

Among others who have failed to turn up to disability hustings events in their local areas are Labour’s shadow health secretary Wes Streeting – who instead sent written responses to be read out at last week’s event – and Labour candidates in the two Richmond constituencies, earlier this week (see separate story).

Some disabled campaigners criticised the DPOs for going ahead with the hustings when it was clear that the two leading candidates for Bristol Central, Labour’s Thangam Debbonaire and the Green Party’s co-leader Carla Denyer, were not going to attend.

All three campaigners asked to remain anonymous.

One said: “It is unclear what the event was designed to achieve.

“It was not informative – candidates were allowed to make up anything they felt the audience might like, without being called out for the lack of facts or the lack of semblance to their party manifesto (see separate story).

“It was not a means of holding anyone to account (which I would say is anyway an extremely naive objective for a hustings) because nobody that came has any chance of being elected.

“It was not a means of asserting disabled people’s voting power and there was not even any debate.”

She said such events play a “central role” in mainstreaming right-wing parties like Reform, while the Bristol event had used voluntary sector “time and money”, with each candidate given “equal time to put forward their ideas without interruption”.

The money could have been used instead for a “facilitated discussion about what we want from a future government and how we could get it”, she said, and DPOs could also then have publicised “the fact that the candidates couldn’t be bothered to come, so we have to organise without them”.

Another disabled campaigner said that “only allowing speakers to expound their views unquestioned was not a hustings, it was purely a platform” which “failed to either hold anyone to account or challenge the rubbish that was being said”.

A third disabled activist said: “The whole sorry incident hasn’t helped disabled people, caused division, and wasted £1000s that could have been used usefully.”

But Kamran Mallick, chief executive of Disability Rights UK (DR UK), said DR UK had wanted to support hustings organised by DPOs, including offering financial support, at “what is a really important moment”, and was also supporting next Tuesday’s national disability hustings in Manchester.

He said: “As with the Manchester national hustings, it was decided that parties represented in parliament should be invited to these sessions.

“We cannot and would never try to control what candidates say, but hustings are an excellent way for local disabled people to meet and engage with candidates and hear what they say on important key issues.

“This gives individuals the information and knowledge they need when it comes to casting their vote.

“It is important that DR UK, working with other organisations, supports accessible hustings where disabled people feel they can go and ask the questions most important to them.

“We do not condone harmful and hate speech about disabled people or members of our society.” 

*Bristol Reclaiming Independent Living, West of England Centre for Inclusive Living, Disability Rights UK, Inclusion London and Greater Manchester Coalition of Disabled People

27 June 2024

‘Shocking’ failure of election candidates asked about accessible housing

Politicians attending an election disability hustings event showed a “shocking and disappointing” lack of knowledge and commitment to addressing the accessible housing crisis, when they were asked about the issue.

None of the major parties have engaged within their manifestos with the critical shortage of accessible housing, despite several parties issuing significant house-building pledges.

Representatives of Labour, the Conservatives, the Liberal Democrats and the Green Party were asked about the issue at the hustings event in Richmond, south-west London, on Monday.

But none of the four appeared to recognise the scale of the problem, while two of the quartet misled the audience – and those watching online – about their party’s policies.

The hustings was organised by the disabled people’s organisation Ruils Independent Living, and covered the two constituencies within Richmond borough, focusing on issues around education, health, social care and housing.

Those taking part were Jonathan Hulley, who is standing for the Conservatives in Twickenham; Munira Wilson, for the Liberal Democrats, who was elected as the MP for Twickenham in 2019; and Chas Warlow, the Green candidate in Richmond Park.

Labour did not send either of its Richmond candidates, instead offering the local campaigns coordinator for Twickenham Labour, Philip Moshi.

Towards the end of the hustings, Svetlana Kotova, director of campaigns and justice for Inclusion London, told the panel that all the parties were pledging to build more homes.

But she pointed out that the Conservative government had failed to fulfil its promise to raise standards so that all new homes had to reach a higher standard of accessibility.

Only last month, a committee of MPs concluded that the shortage of accessible housing in England posed a “clear and direct risk” to disabled people across the country, with many of them living in unsuitable accommodation for years “without hope”.

The committee was highly critical of the government for failing to implement its “headline” policy to address the shortage of accessible housing: increasing the minimum accessibility level of all new-build homes to the M4(2) standard*.

This would mean nearly all new homes would need step-free access to all entrance-level rooms, as well as facilities and other features to make the homes more easily adaptable over time.

But it is now almost two years since the policy was first announced, and almost four years since it was first consulted on.

And there was no mention of accessible housing in the Conservative manifesto.

Despite these delays, Hulley, the Conservative candidate in Twickenham, told the audience that the new regulations had already been introduced.

He said: “It is frustrating to me to hear what you have said, and it is also frustrating it has taken longer than I would like to see these new rules and this new legislation on the statute book, but it is here now, underpinned by rules and regulations, enforceable by the social housing regulator.

“If housing associations fall short on accessible requirements we must hold them to account. That is what I will do as your MP.”

But Hulley, a social housing lawyer, later clarified his comments to Disability News Service, and said he had “confused” the call for stricter accessible housing standards with new social housing regulations that were introduced by the government in April.

He said he would “like to see the next government mandate M4(2)”.

He accepted that this commitment was not included in the Conservative manifesto, but he claimed the party was “committed to bringing in M4(2)” and that it was “just a question of finding the time to get it done”.

Moshi, speaking for Labour, which also ignored accessible housing in its manifesto, said: “We will always ensure that a significant proportion of housing was accessible, was disability accessible.

“What is the point … this is the social model of disability? Why would you build a house that is not disability accessible? We would not do it.”

Warlow, the Green candidate in Richmond Park, said only: “Universal design is the basic principle so that you are always going to have accessible housing. That’s it.”

On accessible housing, the Green Party’s manifesto promised only to “champion the right to… housing under the principles of universal design”.

Wilson did not address the issue of new national accessible housing standards, an issue which her party also ignored in its manifesto.

Instead, she focused on London, where at least 10 per cent of housing already has to be suitable for wheelchair-users* through the London Plan.

She said: “That needs to be enforced and also we have got to hold developers to account.”

She added: “I had somebody in my surgery who bought an accessible flat with accompanying parking space, but the developers sold the space to somebody else further up the building who wasn’t disabled.”

Wilson said there was “no planning enforcement mechanism” to deal with such situations, and she suggested that the law needed to be strengthened to address that.

After the hustings, Kotova said it was “disappointing and shocking to see how little political parties know and care about accessible housing”. 

She said: “For far too long there has been a game of passing the buck from national to local decision-makers, instead of everyone working jointly to ensure new homes are good for everyone. 

“It is shocking that with the ageing population and with so many disabled people living in unsuitable homes, the current government failed to set accessibility standards for new-built homes. 

“Next month it will be two years since they promised to do this.

“Whoever forms our new government needs to take an urgent action on this, and all elected politicians, from MPs to councillors, need to ensure new accessible homes are being built.”

*Homes built to the M4(2) standard have 16 accessible or adaptable features, similar to the Lifetime Homes standard developed in the early 1990s, to make homes more easily adaptable for lifetime use, while M4(3) homes are those that are supposed to be fully wheelchair-accessible

27 June 2024

Some parties still failing on accessible manifestos

Some of the main political parties fighting the general election have still not published accessible versions of their manifestos, with just a week to polling day.

The worst offender is the right-wing Reform UK, which has so far failed to provide any accessible versions of its manifesto, preventing many disabled people from viewing its policies.

But some of the other smaller parties had also failed by 10am today (Thursday) to produce manifestos in some of the formats, including large print, easy read, Braille, British Sign Language (BSL) and audio.

The Greens, despite offering several disability-friendly policies in their manifesto, have so far only produced an easy read version of their manifesto, with no Braille, BSL, audio or large print versions.

The SNP has released a large print version, and it asks visitors to its website to email for a Braille copy of the manifesto, while there is a BSL version available on its website.

It originally said on the site that audio and easy read versions were “coming soon”, but that message has now been removed.

Until this week, the Conservatives – who pledge in their manifesto that they will make Britain “the most accessible place in the world for people with disabilities to live, work and thrive” – had not published any accessible versions, but they finally added audio, BSL, large print, easy read and Braille versions on Tuesday, just nine days before the election.

Labour has produced large print, easy read, Braille, digital Braille and BSL versions of its manifesto.

It has yet to publish an audio version of its manifesto, although it has released a “synthetic audio” version, which uses artificial intelligence and is less easy to understand than a human reading the document.

The Liberal Democrats have published easy read, Braille, BSL and audio versions.

Although there is no large print manifesto, the party has released plain text and clear print versions, which allow the text size to be easily enlarged.

Plaid Cymru has published easy read, large print, audio and BSL versions of its manifesto but does not mention Braille.

Deborah King, co-founder of Disability Politics UK, said: “Disability Politics UK would like political parties to tell the truth to disabled people about what plans they have for social security, work, transport, health and social care.

“It is the responsibility of the communicator to communicate in a way that people can understand.

“Parties who fail to provide accessible Information are unlikely to get disabled people’s votes.”

She said she was pleased that some parties had made more of an effort at this election to produce accessible manifestos.

She added: “The parties underestimate the audience for accessible information.

“Disabled people want accurate information in plain language about what the various political parties are going to do if they vote for them.  

“The parties could be marketing their ‘offer’ to the voting public in different ways, for example, by encouraging people to read or listen to manifestos on the way to work, to listen to the audio versions while doing housework or while running.

“I hope that members of the public will make the effort to post the various accessible versions in their own social media.”

The Electoral Commission stressed this week that accessible formats should be released at the same time as the manifesto is published.

A spokesperson for the commission said: “Political parties are responsible for the production of their own manifestos but we have recommended that, when they publish manifestos, they should make sure accessible formats are available at the same time, so that disabled people have just as much time as anyone else to understand what parties stand for.”

But she added: “We don’t have any powers to investigate or take action around how parties publish their manifestos.”

Disability News Service approached Reform, the SNP, the Green Party and Plaid Cymru, but none of them had commented on their accessible manifestos by 11am today.

27 June 2024

Almost no councils now employ access officers, new research shows

Only a tiny minority of local authorities now employ a member of staff dedicated to improving access for disabled people in their area, new research has found.

Disability Rights UK (DR UK) has found just 15 of 222 English councils that responded to a freedom of information request said they employed a dedicated access officer, or a staff member with a similar job.

Access officers have duties such as responding to complaints and questions about disability access; providing advice on access design issues, for example with road crossings, traffic calming and street furniture; supporting local access groups; and providing technical advice on planning applications.

Many of the councils that told DR UK they did not employ an access officer said all their officers were expected to have knowledge of access and equality issues, while others said the duties mentioned by DR UK were spread among several of their officers.

But some were blunter in their responses.

One said: “The council can confirm that we do not hold such a position or commission an access officer.”

Another council said: “The Borough does not employ an access officer and has not done so [for] some years.”

A third council told DR UK it did not employ an access officer, but it added: “All staff are aware of the above mentioned duties and responsibilities under the DDA*.”

And a fourth local authority replied: “We do not employ an access officer. We would seek expert advice as and when required.”

Some of the councils that said they did employ an access officer – although sometimes giving the role a different title, such as inclusive design officer, or access and inclusion adviser – include Brighton and Hove City Council, Buckinghamshire Council, Liverpool City Council and Norfolk County Council.

Mikey Erhardt, DR UK’s policy and campaigns officer, who carried out the research, said: “Creating accessible communities and spaces requires local authority officers and planners’ skill, care and dedication.

“This research shows that the years of austerity and underinvestment in our local councils have had a clear loser: disabled people and those with long-term health conditions.

“If we continue to see fewer and fewer skilled access officers or equivalents, then we will continue to be excluded by local authorities, being unable to undertake the important work of co-production and co-design needed to create truly accessible spaces.”

He added: “The evidence shows that local authorities are not prioritising planning with our needs and desires in mind.

“We cannot be surprised that in this context, with so few skilled access officers, many disabled people feel ignored, excluded, and unsupported.”

Erhardt said: “Being active and navigating our neighbourhood in a way that suits us and is fun is not a luxury; it should be a core part of our lives, regardless of background.

“Being an active part of the community requires safe, accessible community infrastructure, from safe road crossings to high-quality pavements to accessible mobility lane options.

“But the current lack of these options speaks to our wider exclusion from society.

“We all have a right to live free, independent, and healthy lives.

“To do this, we need more than transport options; we need safe and accessible walking, wheeling, cycling, and driving environments, and clean air to breathe.”

Disability News Service approached the Local Government Association for a comment on the research, but a spokesperson said her colleagues “don’t feel they know enough about the issue to provide valuable input”.

But Glyn Hayes, parliamentary and public affairs coordinator for Spinal Injuries Association, said access officers play “a crucial role in ensuring that individuals with spinal cord injuries receive the support they need”.

He said: “When someone sustains a spinal cord injury, their life can change dramatically, and their familiar home environment may no longer be safe or suitable.

“Navigating the complexities of finding a new home or updating an existing one can be overwhelming, especially when it involves council support or funding.

“Unfortunately, we often hear of cases where people with spinal cord injuries end up in hospitals or inappropriate settings due to decision-makers’ lack of awareness about their unique needs.

“With local government budget cuts and overwhelmed departments, staff may struggle to allocate the necessary time and effort to ensure true equality in accessing services.

“Access officers bridge this gap by advocating for those with protected characteristics, ensuring not only recognition but also a deep understanding of their requirements.

“Their role is vital in promoting equality and accessibility.”

*The DDA (Disability Discrimination Act) was replaced by the Equality Act 14 years ago

27 June 2024

Disabled election candidates: Labour’s Marsha de Cordova

Despite her party’s decision to drop its pledge to implement the UN’s disability convention into UK law, disabled Labour candidate Marsha de Cordova has this week confirmed her own long-standing commitment to the policy.

She describes herself as a “lifelong campaigner for disability rights” and has made it her “mission” to campaign for the rights of disabled people since first being elected to parliament in 2017.

She says it was injustice in education and the labour market that first politicised her as a disabled person.

One of the policies she believes would improve the lives of disabled people would be to incorporate the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) into UK law, a policy she has backed for many years.

She repeated that backing this week, despite her party dropping its pledge to implement the convention last year, and failing to include any mention of the UNCRPD in its election manifesto.

De Cordova says she would also like to see more accessible and inclusive public spaces, services and transport, and improve funding for health and social care.

She says she has always been determined to help create a “fairer and more equal society”, with her own lived experience guiding the “two central pillars of my life… making a difference and being a voice for the voiceless”.

She says that “representation matters”, but not just in politics.

“Being who you are should never hold you back,” she says. “I am standing again for re-election as it is important that all people have a voice.

“Our motto is ‘nothing about us without us’ and we can only do that if we are represented in parliament.”

She says there are still “shockingly” few disabled MPs, possibly as few as five in the last parliament, which would have meant disabled people making up less than one per cent of the total number of MPs.

She points out that successive Conservative-led governments set up and then scrapped two schemes that were supposed to help candidates for elected office with their extra disability-related costs.

This, she says, “demonstrates their disdain for our participation in politics”.

De Cordova grew up in Bristol and then moved to London to study and work.

“My career and purpose in life have been interlinked,” she says. “I have always been a lifelong campaigner for disability rights and issues affecting blind and partially-sighted people.”

She worked in the charity sector for more than two decades, including setting up a small charity, South East London Vision, which supported blind and partially-sighted people across south-east London, and as a director at the Thomas Pocklington Trust.

She says: “While the work done by charities is essential, my decision to pursue elected office was informed by the increasing realisation that this work requires representatives in the central institutions of power – whether on a local or national level – to truly realise lasting change.”

She was elected as a Labour councillor in Lambeth in 2014, and then stood as a general election candidate in Battersea in 2017 and overturned a Conservative majority of nearly 8,000, defeating a government minister.

She has served as shadow women and equalities secretary, and as shadow minister for disabled people, where she helped draw up the party’s Breaking Down Barriers disability manifesto for the 2019 general election, which she says would have “delivered transformative change for disabled people in education, employment and health”.

De Cordova says the current government’s record on disability is “woeful” and that the Conservatives have “waged a full-on assault on disabled people”.

She points to the government’s green paper on further cuts and reforms to personal independence payment (PIP), which was published shortly before the election was called, and the “cruel” decision to change the criteria for qualifying for the Warm Home Discount.

But she also highlights how the government downgraded the role of the minister for disabled people from minister of state to a junior ministerial position in October 2022, a move that was only reversed in April this year.

She says Labour “is and has always been the party of equality”.

She highlights its decision to replace the National Disability Council with the much stronger Disability Rights Commission in 1999, the Labour government’s ratification of UNCRPD in 2009, and the passing of the Equality Act, shortly before the 2010 general election, which “enforces, protects and promotes the rights of disabled people”.

Asked why disabled people should vote for her party, she says Labour is “committed to championing the rights of disabled people and to the principle of working with them, so that their views and voices will be at the heart of all we do”.

She points to its manifesto commitments to a new right to equal pay for disabled people, disability and ethnicity pay gap reporting for large employers, improved employment support and access to reasonable adjustments, and reducing the Access to Work backlog.

De Cordova says there is no question that life is far worse for disabled people than when the Conservatives first won power as part of the coalition with the Liberal Democrats in 2010.

“Successive Tory-led governments have implemented an austerity regime which has caused needless suffering to so many, but has disproportionately affected disabled people,” she says.

This regime has included their “cruel and inhumane” benefit sanctions regime, abolishing working-age disability living allowance and replacing it with personal independence payment, cuts to employment and support allowance, the scrapping of the Independent Living Fund, and cutting funding to Deaf and disabled people’s organisations.

She says the post-2010 programme of austerity “has demonised disabled people, harmed our livelihoods, and in some cases resulted in death”, as well as creating a “hostile environment” for disabled people over the last 14 years.

This led to the UK becoming the first country to be investigated for breaches of UNCRPD by the UN’s committee on the rights of disabled people, and being found guilty in 2016 of grave and systematic violations of disabled people’s rights.

She says this was a “stark illustration of the Tory government’s contempt for disabled people”, while a follow-up report by the committee earlier this year found no significant progress and even “signs of regression”.

But still the Conservative government “committed to further entrenchment of their disastrous austerity regime” in this year’s spring budget, she says, while the party has now pledged further social security cuts in its manifesto.

“A further Tory term will be disastrous for disabled people,” says de Cordova.

*This is part of a pre-election series of articles that will give some of the disabled people standing as candidates at the general election a chance to describe why they wanted to stand, how they became politicised, and the kind of barriers they have faced as disabled people. The aim is to raise the profile of some of the disabled people seeking elected office. Disability News Service has analysed party manifesto commitments separately. It has asked two disabled Conservative candidates to take part, but neither of them has responded

27 June 2024

Disabled election candidates: Liberal Democrat Katharine Macy

Katharine Macy grew up “hearing about people faking disabilities to lounge around on benefits”, but they knew the truth, because they had a mother who struggled to leave the house and desperately wanted to return to work.

“I remember her crying many times over our situation, and thinking how angry it made me that people saw her as a layabout,” says Macy, who is standing in Colne Valley.

“She was a teacher and a councillor, she gave herself to so many people, and was abandoned, written off, then accused of being lazy.

“She, and so many other disabled people, deserve better.”

Macy says that just “existing” as a member of a minority is politicising, but it is also “exhausting”.

Every year their family’s struggles have increased, and their mother has become more disabled, “but every time we ask for help, it’s a battle”.

Asked to choose three polices that would improve the lives of disabled people, they pick accessible transport, inclusive education and reform of personal independence payment (PIP).

They would like to see a focus on accessibility for all new public transport, including making it “completely wheelchair-accessible”, and cutting the distance that those with mobility impairments need to walk around stations.

They also want to see as many disabled pupils taught in mainstream schools as possible, because “separation is not the answer, but currently very few comprehensive schools are set up to provide disabled children the support they need”.

And they point to their party’s manifesto promise to reform PIP assessments to make the process more transparent, stop unnecessary reassessments, and end informal assessments.

Macy, who was consulted on the party’s manifesto as chair of the Liberal Democrat Disability Association, says their party has taken the rare step of putting disabled people “front and centre” of its campaign.

And they say the Liberal Democrats will fight to speak up for disabled people and have a manifesto “that promises to fix so many issues with the NHS, education and the welfare system”.

They say they wanted to be an MP to “change many lives in lots of little ways”.

“Disabled people especially need this. I want to go down the path and widen it, strengthen it.

“Others before me mean I have to fight a little less. I want to do the same. Reduce barriers as much as I can, so someone in 20 years has less to reduce.

“Disabled people deserve representation and I want to try and be that.”

“Everyone deserves dignity and a good life,” they say, “and everyone includes disabled people.

“Disabled people deserve better, we deserve respect, we deserve opportunities, and we deserve support.

“None of these have been provided under the last few governments.”

From the age of about 10, Macy grew up with an undiagnosed neurodivergent mother who was unable to work.

They have “countless memories of watching other children do things I couldn’t”, either because their mother could not do it or because they could not afford it.

They relied on free school meals and their friends had to pitch in to buy Macy a scientific calculator because their mother was unable to afford one.

Growing up as autistic was also “a challenge” and “exhausting”, leading to depression, anxiety, and teenage anger.

They say: “Even now, sometimes I come away cringing at myself, wishing I could be ‘normal’, but I know from my research that autism is natural – and I work hard to accept myself.”

In the last two years, a mobility impairment has opened their eyes “even wider” to the barriers facing disabled people.

They say: “I am not disabled enough to get any government support, because usually I can walk more than 200 metres, but I spend so much more on bus fares and Ubers.

“I have to give myself significantly more time to get to places, and be willing to miss things.

“I am still learning that I cannot do what I once could – in politics, it can be difficult.

“Lib Dems win and campaign by being incredibly active. We deliver leaflet after leaflet, and canvass over and over.

“When you cannot stand or walk for more than 20 minutes on a good day, this makes proving my worth in politics difficult.”

But, they say, they know they play a valuable role in their party.

“I wrote the 2019 Young Carers motion that kickstarted Ed Davey’s focus on care and is the cornerstone of our manifesto.

“I put hours of work into both paid and voluntary support for the party.

“I will sit and write letters, fold leaflets or bundle tabloids for hours at a time, but proving I am still worthy feels exhausting sometimes.”

They added: “Being unable to show my pain, I have to rely on people believing me, accepting and understanding that I have good days and bad.

“This makes me afraid of work environments, and scared of moving jobs. But I will keep fighting, because I can.

“Not everyone has this energy – that’s okay – but it means I need to use the energy I have on making sure I keep speaking up for not just myself, but those who cannot.”

*This is part of a pre-election series of articles that will give some of the disabled people standing as candidates at the general election a chance to describe why they wanted to stand, how they became politicised, and the kind of barriers they have faced as disabled people. The aim is to raise the profile of some of the disabled people seeking elected office. Disability News Service has analysed party manifesto commitments separately. It has asked two disabled Conservative candidates to take part, but neither of them has responded

27 June 2024

Other disability-related stories covered by mainstream media this week

More than 200,000 people have wrongly faced investigation for housing benefit fraud and error after the performance of a government algorithm fell far short of expectations, the Guardian can reveal. Two-thirds of claims flagged as potentially high risk by a Department for Work and Pensions automated system over the last three years were in fact legitimate, official figures released under freedom of information laws show: https://www.theguardian.com/society/article/2024/jun/23/dwp-algorithm-wrongly-flags-200000-people-possible-fraud-error

Keir Starmer has said benefits offer people less “dignity” than work, prompting fears that Labour may take a tough approach to social security in the UK. Outlining his plans for “wealth creation” in the Telegraph, the Labour leader said “handouts from the state do not nurture the same sense of self-reliant dignity as a fair wage”. But charities have said the “real indignity” is in the UK’s “broken benefits system” which is leaving millions of people in poverty and struggling to afford the essentials they need to survive: https://www.bigissue.com/news/social-justice/keir-starmer-benefits-work-labour-general-election/

Bob Williams-Findlay has spent a lifetime fighting the system to ensure disabled people get a fair crack at the opportunities available to others. And he’s angry as hell over plans by Birmingham City Council to dramatically cut the budgets for services used by disabled people and the families of children and young people with special educational needs as part of their “recovery budget”: https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/midlands-news/we-not-numbers-real-people-29379650

Tens of thousands of people with sight loss will be denied their right to a secret ballot at next week’s general election, campaigners have warned, prompting calls to make it the last inaccessible election. The Royal National Institute of Blind People is calling on all political parties to commit to remove barriers that prevent blind people voting on their own and without help in future elections. It estimates that 160,000 people in the UK of voting age with severe sight loss will struggle to vote independently because of the lack of adjustments made at polling stations: https://www.theguardian.com/society/article/2024/jun/26/rnib-blind-people-vote-independently-elections-uk

27 June 2024

News provided by John Pring at www.disabilitynewsservice.com

The main parties’ Election Manifestos 2024

Key points for disabled voters

DPAC are not aligned to any political party nor do we endorse or support any party, leaving us free to criticise (or praise, where it’s due) all parties.

But here is a run down of the manifesto offerings related to disabled people, provided by Merry Cross, with additional information links from Disability News Service articles on each manifesto.

Parties in alphabetical order:

CONSERVATIVES

They would

• Reform disability benefits so they are better targeted and reflect people’s genuine needs, while delivering a step-change in mental health provision.

• We will improve PIP assessments to provide a more objective consideration of people’s needs and stop the number of claims from rising unsustainably.

• Continue the present trajectory of making it harder to get benefits and push more people into work.

• Build 15 new free schools for children with special educational needs.

• [Under the heading of Health and Social Care, there’s no mention whatsoever of Social Care]

• No mention of implementing the UNCRPD into law.

Read more: Conservative manifesto is empty of new policies aimed at improving lives of disabled voters

GREEN PARTY

They would

• Make it mandatory for councils to provide free transport for 16–18-year-old pupils with special educational needs and disabilities.

• They say they will restore the value of disability benefits, with an immediate uplift of 5%.

• Reform intrusive eligibility tests for PIP and the unfair targeting of carers and disabled people on benefits.
• Introduce free personal care along the lines successfully brought in by the Scottish Government, to ensure dignity in old age and for Disabled people.
• An Increase in pay rates and the introduction of a career structure, to rebuild the care workforce.
• An increase to Universal Credit and legacy benefits by £40 a week.
• No mention of implementing the UNCRPD into law.
• They say they will support Assisted Dying.

Read more: Greens’ manifesto offers rise in disability benefits, free personal care and cash for inclusive education

LABOUR

They would

• Improve inclusivity in mainstream schools and increase provision in ‘special’ schools.

• Protect LGBT+ and disabled people by making all existing strands of hate crime an aggravated offence.

• The emphasis remains on getting disabled people into work, but improving their pay.
• Explore how to improve Social Care.
• They will have a free vote on Assisted Dying.
• No mention of increases to carers allowance or Disability related benefits.
• No mention of implementing the UNCRPD into law.

Read more: Labour manifesto drops key disability rights pledges

LIBERAL DEMOCRATS

They would

• Give every child the specialist support they need and have a mental health professional in every school.
• Give local authorities extra funding to reduce the amount that schools pay towards the cost of a child’s Education, Health and Care Plan.
• Establish a new National Body for SEND to fund support for children with very high needs.
• Make the benefits system work better for disabled people by:
  • Giving disabled people and organisations representing them a stronger voice in the design of benefits policies and processes.
  • Bringing Work Capability Assessments in-house.
  • Reforming Personal Independence Payment assessments to make the process more transparent and stop unnecessary reassessments, and end the use of informal assessments
• Improve accessibility at stations through the Access for All programme.
• Make it easier for disabled people to access public life, including the world of work, by [amongst a list of measures]
• Incorporating the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities into UK law.
• Building on the British Sign Language Act by increasing the use of BSL in government communications and working collaboratively with the BSL Alliance to promote and facilitate the use of BSL.

• They would give Parliament time to debate and a free vote on Assisted Dying

Read more: Lib Dem manifesto targets care charges, and promises to implement UN disability convention

PLAID CYMRU

They would

• Work to deliver a National Care Service, combining health and social care and make it free at the point of delivery.
• Consult on eliminating profit from children’s services.
• Pay care workers at least £1 above the National Living Wage
• Ensure people who present with neurodiversity, whether self-referred or referred by a professional are supported as soon as possible.
• Press for the full transfer of powers to Wales in the Mental Health Act
• No mention of education at all, let alone for disabled children.
• No mention of Assisted Dying

Read more: Plaid Cymru calls for implementation of UN disability convention into UK law

REFORM

They would

• Withdraw job-seekers’ benefits after either 4 months of unemployment or 2 refused job offers
• Only have face-to-face PIP assessments with emphasis on coaching people back to work
• Reduce or remove a wide range of benefits
• Create a royal commission to tackle social care.
• Leave the European Commission on Human Rights.
• There’s no mention of incorporating the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities into UK law.
• No mention of Assisted Dying

Read more: Reform UK manifesto suggests huge cuts, threats to disability rights, and risks to safety of benefit claimants

SNP

They would

• Scrap proposed punitive welfare reforms (but no mention of changing existing welfare policies)
• Scrap bedroom tax
• No mention of education at all, let alone for disabled children.
• No mention of UNCRPD
• No mention of Assisted Dying

Read more: SNP mentions disabled people just twice in general election manifesto

Caxton House cover-up: How DWP destroyed files and prevented investigation into claimant’s suicide

Official documents link two former Conservative work and pensions ministers – including would-be party leader Penny Mordaunt – to a government cover-up of how a disabled man took his own life after being wrongly found fit for work.

The email and letter are part of a huge quantity of documents relating to the death of Michael O’Sullivan that have been drawn together over the last decade by his family.

They show that senior civil servants at the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) destroyed vital documents about his case – in breach of the department’s own rules – months after a coroner linked his death with DWP’s “fitness for work” test.

The decision, taken some time in 2014 – probably 14 months after his suicide in September 2013 – meant DWP was not able to carry out an in-depth investigation into the circumstances around his death, known at the time as a peer review.

Most of his records were destroyed even though a coroner had concluded earlier that year – in a ground-breaking ruling that later received significant media coverage – that the “intense anxiety” that triggered his suicide had been caused by his being found fit for work by DWP following a work capability assessment (WCA).

The coroner, Mary Hassell, had sent a prevention of future deaths (PFD) report (PDF) to the department on 13 January 2014, warning that “action should be taken to prevent future deaths” following his suicide.

DWP guidance at the time said that all records relating to a claimant suicide should be kept for six years, but the department later told the family that most of the paperwork connected to his various benefit claims was instead destroyed in 2014.

Disability News Service (DNS) has established through freedom of information requests to the department that this guidance was in place from April 2013 all the way through until at least December 2016.

An internal DWP email obtained by the O’Sullivan family, which was sent on 5 February 2014, shows that the minister for disabled people at the time, Mike Penning, was told about the coroner’s PFD report.

This email was sent by DWP’s then head of assessment policy to Penning, as well as to two DWP press officers and two DWP lawyers.

But despite DWP being sent the coroner’s PFD report, and Penning being informed about the inquest’s findings, civil servants later claimed they had destroyed many of the records relating to Michael O’Sullivan’s case at some point in 2014.

This would have been a clear breach of the department’s guidance on retaining records relating to a claimant who had taken their own life.

Penning has told DNS he knew nothing about the records being destroyed. DWP has refused to comment.

Three years after the internal email was sent, in March 2017, the then minister for disabled people, Penny Mordaunt – now leader of the House of Commons – told the O’Sullivan family in a letter that a peer review into the death had not been carried out because “much of the documentation” had “been destroyed” in accordance with DWP’s “records management policy”.

She said that this policy stated that “most benefit records are destroyed fourteen months after a claimant’s death”.

But Mordaunt failed to tell the family that DWP’s Benefits Document and Data Retention Guide, in place at the time Michael O’Sullivan died, stated that documents relating to claimant suicides should be kept for at least six years.

A copy of this guidance was provided to the family the following year by Mordaunt’s successor as minister for disabled people, Sarah Newton.

The guidance stated: “All documents relating to suicide and self-harm should be retained for 6 years following the date on which the incident occurred or the declaration of intention was made.”

Peer reviews – later renamed internal process reviews – were internal investigations into deaths and other serious cases linked to DWP’s actions, and were never published or even shared with families, but departmental guidance stated at the time: “Where suicide is associated with DWP activity, a Peer Review must be undertaken.”

Mordaunt, a leading contender to be the next leader of the Conservative party, told the family that the team that “prepared the Department’s response to the Coroner” had been “unaware” of the peer review procedure.

She wrote in the letter: “By the time the relevant team was made aware, much of the documentation relating to your father’s claim had been destroyed in accordance with the Department’s records management policy…

“As a result, the Department was therefore unable to carry out [a peer review].”

But the internal DWP email that was sent on 5 February 2014 shows that the response to the coroner’s PFD report was prepared by DWP’s work capability assessment policy team.

This key policy team should have been aware of the peer review procedure because previous DNS investigations have shown that at least seven peer reviews that mentioned the WCA were carried out during 2012 and there were certain to have been others during 2013 and 2014.

Mordaunt has so far failed to comment on the letter and the destruction of Michael O’Sullivan’s records.

DNS has previously established that DWP failed to pass the PFD report to Paul Litchfield, who in 2014 was carrying out the fifth and final independent review of the WCA for the department.

DWP published Litchfield’s review in November 2014, but it made no mention of the coroner’s letter, or the peer reviews into claimant deaths that had mentioned the WCA.

Following intervention from the Information Commissioner’s Office, DWP finally admitted in 2019 that the peer reviews and two PFDs written by coroners, including the report written following Michael O’Sullivan’s death, were not shared with Litchfield.

DNS has also established that the other PFD, and the earlier peer reviews, were not shared with Professor Malcolm Harrington, who carried out the first three reviews of the WCA in 2010, 2011 and 2012.

DNS has approached Penning, Mordaunt and DWP about the department’s claims that the records were destroyed, although the O’Sullivan family still believes DWP has kept copies of all the documents.

In a letter sent to DNS, Penning, who is standing down as an MP at this election, said: “You are asking about the destruction of records relating to a Mr Michael O’Sullivan which, apparently, happened when I was a Minister at the Department for Work and Pensions.

“As you will appreciate, I do not know anything about this as Ministers are not involved in the day-to-day operational running of their Department or individual case management.

“I have passed your message to the Permanent Secretary of the Department for Works and Pensions.”

DNS asked Penning if he remembered the Michael O’Sullivan case, the inquest and the PFD report, but he had not responded further by 11am today (Thursday).

DNS first approached Mordaunt’s office about the allegations late last month.

For nearly two weeks, Mordaunt’s spokesperson – former Conservative councillor Alistair Thompson, who runs PR company Team Britannia PR – repeatedly told DNS that he would speak to her about the claims, but then failed to produce a comment.

He eventually claimed on Tuesday this week that he had “been unable to speak to Penny about this matter”.

DWP has been shown the email that was sent to Penning in 2014 and the letter from Mordaunt in 2017, and copies of its own guidance on destroying records.

After six days, a spokesperson replied: “Thanks for giving us the opportunity for right of reply. We won’t be commenting on this at this time.”

It declined to explain why the records were destroyed in breach of its own guidance, why the WCA policy team was – according to Penny Mordaunt – not aware of the existence of the peer review process in early 2014, and why Mordaunt told the O’Sullivan family that the records had been destroyed in line with departmental guidance, when that was not correct.

DWP also declined to comment on Penning’s actions.

DNS reported earlier this year how the O’Sullivans had concluded beyond any doubt – following their decade-long investigation – that DWP was responsible for their father’s death.

They told the Commons work and pensions committee – which had to abandon its inquiry into how DWP safeguards “vulnerable” benefit claimants when the general election was called by Rishi Sunak – that the government must impose a “clear and defined” statutory duty of care on the department.

They believe this is the only way to protect the lives of claimants in vulnerable situations, such as their father.

But they also want to see an independent inquiry into how the actions and failings of DWP can be linked to Michael O’Sullivan’s suicide and countless other deaths of disabled people.

They believe that their evidence of how DWP breached its own guidance by destroying their father’s documents – if that is what happened – adds significant weight to calls for an inquiry.

The proof that DWP admitted destroying vital documents relating to Michael O’Sullivan’s death, despite this breaching its own guidance, adds to years of evidence of systemic negligence by the department, a culture of cover-up and denial, and a refusal to accept that it has a duty of care to those disabled people claiming support through the social security system.

The abandoned inquiry by the Commons work and pensions select committee into DWP safeguarding had been examining whether there should be such a duty of care.

It is now more than 10 years since Mary Hassell concluded that the “intense anxiety” that triggered Michael O’Sullivan’s suicide had been caused by his being found fit for work by DWP following a WCA.

She found that both DWP and its private sector contractor Atos had failed to seek medical evidence about his mental health from his doctor, his psychiatrist and his clinical psychologist.

He was found fit for work, despite a suicide attempt months earlier when he had been forced into work-related activity after an earlier WCA that lasted just 12 minutes.

His case was twice mentioned at prime minister’s questions in 2015, after the PFD report was unearthed by DNS.

The family have now spent more than a decade fighting for justice and to discover the truth about Michael O’Sullivan’s death.

A spokesperson for the family said: “Ten years ago, the O’Sullivan family decided to bring about a forensic and detailed complaint to the DWP to demonstrate what had gone so tragically wrong in their father’s case so real lessons could be learned.

“They did this to prevent future harm and to prevent other families having to endure the severe trauma they have sadly experienced.

“Their complaint was originally delivered to then prime minister Theresa May, who assigned the DWP with responding on her behalf to the significant grounds of complaint.

“Ten years on, many of the issues raised with the DWP go unanswered.

“The family has faced hostility and obfuscation, yet they remain resolute in their determination to get the department to accept their wrongs, which has come at great expense to the family in every respect.

“It is devastating for the O’Sullivan family to conclude that the DWP have always known exactly what their systemic failures were in regard to their assessment process but rather than engaging with the family in safely evaluating the WCA it appears those in authority have engaged in a cover up which has caused great harm to the most vulnerable in our society and to their father, who paid the ultimate price.”

*The Department, DNS editor John Pring’s book on DWP and how its actions led to countless deaths of disabled people in the post-2010 era, will be published by Pluto Press on 20 August. Visit the DNS website before publication for a 50 per cent discount 

13 June 2024

Statements by Sunak and Stride on disability benefits were potentially misleading, says stats regulator

Three statements made by government ministers on disability benefits – including one by Rishi Sunak – have been found to be potentially misleading by the UK statistics regulator.

Of the three misleading statements, one of them was made by the prime minister, while the other two were made by work and pensions secretary Mel Stride.

Just days after the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) delivered its findings, the Conservatives repeated Sunak’s misleading statement – although slightly altering the wording – in its general election manifesto.

The first of the three complaints dealt with by OSR was lodged in March by Disability News Service (DNS) about Sunak’s repeated claims that the number of disabled people being found not fit for work had trebled since 2011.

OSR has also responded to complaints (not made by DNS) about two comments made by Stride in the last few months.

The first of Stride’s comments was that 94 per cent of people who report feeling “down and bluesy” to their doctor are being signed off as not fit to work, and the second was that recipients of personal independence payment (PIP) receive thousands of pounds a month.

OSR told DNS this week that it had concluded that “all three statements had the potential to mislead”.

The Conservative manifesto this week ignored the OSR ruling and used one of the misleading statements to justify its claim that there had been an “unsustainable rise in benefit claims” by working-age disabled people.

It also ignored repeated statements by health experts that a key reason for an increase in claimants was a significant increase in ill-health, and in NHS waiting-lists.

Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, said this week – in response to the party’s manifesto – that “people are sicker than they were, with more complex healthcare needs”.

The Conservative party had not commented on the OSR rulings by 11am today (Thursday).

Those rulings came just a day after the regulator made a similar ruling on misleading Conservative claims about Labour’s tax plans.

The prime minister first used the fitness for work figures in his main Conservative party conference speech last October.

He repeated them in March in an interview with the Sunday Times.

And he repeated them again in a major speech on social security at the Centre for Social Justice in April.

Sunak said in April: “In 2011, 20 per cent of those doing a work capability assessment were deemed unfit to work.

“But the latest figure now stands at 65 per cent. That’s wrong.

“People are not three times sicker than they were a decade ago.”

DNS has repeatedly pointed out that the 2011 figures reflected the particular harshness of the work capability assessment in its early years, before its most serious flaws were exposed.

It took years of research and activism by disabled people and allies to reveal the links between the WCA and hundreds, and probably thousands, of deaths of claimants, and to force DWP ministers to ease the harshness of the assessment.

There were also five independent reviews of the WCA commissioned by DWP, which led to multiple improvements to the assessment.

These factors eventually made it less arduous to qualify for the employment and support allowance support group and avoid work-related conditions for those not fit for work, although the assessment process is still deeply-flawed and continues to be linked to serious harm and deaths of claimants.

OSR has now concluded that Sunak’s comparison “does not reflect the complexities of the data or take account of any changes to the benefit system or the criteria for allocating to this group”.

The second complaint related to comments made by Stride in an interview with the Telegraph in March.

In the interview, he said some people were now “convincing themselves they have some kind of serious mental health condition as opposed to the normal anxieties of life”.

Stride added: “If they go to the doctor and say ‘I’m feeling rather down and bluesy’, the doctor will give them on average about seven minutes and then, on 94 per cent of occasions, they will be signed off as not fit to carry out any work whatsoever.”

But OSR said: “The reasons for granting fit notes are varied.

“While there are no statistics specifically on those who report feeling down and bluesy, nor those struggling with poor mental health, the NHS England’s statistics between October 2022 and September 2023 show that 37 per cent of fit notes with a valid diagnosis recorded were issued for closest available category of ‘mental and behavioral disorders’.”

It also pointed out that 74 per cent of fit notes issued between October 2022 and September 2023 “do not have a diagnosis recorded in the data so we can’t tell why they were issued”, while only electronic fit notes are included within the data.

And it added: “There is also no data available on occasions when patients may request a fit note and are not issued with one.”

The third complaint related to Stride claiming in a BBC interview – on the day he launched a new green paper that described plans to reform PIP to ensure it is “targeted at those most in need” – that PIP claimants received “thousands of pounds a month”.

OSR said the maximum a PIP claimant could receive was actually £184.30 a week, or an average of just under £800 a month.

The regulator concluded: “Those who receive PIP do not receive thousands of pounds a month.”

13 June 2024

Conservative manifesto is empty of new policies aimed at improving lives of disabled voters

The Conservative party has published a general election manifesto without a single new policy aimed at improving the lives of disabled people.

Analysis by Disability News Service of the manifesto shows that the few policies targeted at disabled voters are existing government pledges, or extensions of current schemes.

The manifesto also includes a statement – in a section that targets disabled benefit claimants – that was found, in a slightly different form, to be potentially misleading by the UK statistics watchdog just days earlier.

The party had not said by 11am today (Thursday) why it ignored the ruling by the Office for Statistics Regulation.

A significant chunk of the manifesto is devoted to explaining how a Conservative government would cut spending on disability benefits to put it “on a sustainable footing”, as part of £12 billion a year in cuts to spending on social security by 2029-30 (PDF).

These benefit-related policies have all previously been announced over the last year.

A key policy would cut spending on personal independence payment (PIP), although there is no suggestion of which measures in April’s PIP green paper the party would introduce, as a public consultation is ongoing.

The Conservatives also promise to tighten the work capability assessment, “overhaul the fit note process” and accelerate the universal credit rollout, all of which ministers have previously announced.

The manifesto says: “People are now three times more likely to be assessed as not fit for any work and put on the highest tier of sickness benefits than they were a decade ago.”

Four days before the manifesto was published, the Office for Statistics Regulation concluded that a similarly-worded statement was potentially misleading (see separate story), but the party appears to have ignored the regulator, other than slightly tweaking the wording.

A day after its publication, the Public and Commercial Services Union warned in its own general election charter that universal credit was “a dangerously flawed system, the most vulnerable continue to slip through its cracks and our members are the scapegoats for over a decade of social security failures”.

Ther is no mention in the manifesto of how a Conservative government would address these flaws, or the wider safeguarding issues within DWP that have led to hundreds, and probably thousands, of deaths being linked to its actions over the last 14 years.

The manifesto also promises “tougher sanctions rules” and a fraud bill that will give DWP fraud investigators new powers.

DWP has previously said it wants its investigators to be able to make arrests, conduct searches and seize possessions, allowing the department “to control the end-to-end investigation in the most serious criminal cases, applying for the warrants, leading the operation and searching and seizing evidence”.

The manifesto also refers to the party’s pledge to create 60,000 more places in special schools, a promise referred to earlier this year by education secretary Gillian Keegan and also mentioned by the government in March.

Disabled activists warned last month that the government’s policy of opening more and more segregated special schools was stripping funding from mainstream settings and handing it to profit-making bodies.

On social care, the party promises only a “multi-year funding settlement to support social care” at the next spending review, and it repeats its delayed pledge to implement a cap on care charging costs from October 2025.

On disability employment, there is a promise to increase the capacity of the existing individual placement and support programme – which provides intensive, individual support in the workplace for people with “severe mental health conditions” – by 140,000 places.

The Conservatives also promise to pass a new law “to provide better treatment and support for severe mental health needs in the first session of the next parliament”, which appears to refer to the draft mental health bill the government dropped from its legislative programme last year.

Many of the other disability policies in the manifesto are either too vague to analyse or refer to measures already introduced, such as a pledge to “continue to modernise autism and learning disability services”, and to “improve accessibility at 100 train stations, starting with the 50 stations announced in May”, which refers to the long-standing Access for All station improvement programme.

And there is nothing in the manifesto about how a Conservative government would address the accessible housing crisis, even though the government consulted on raising accessibility standards of new homes four years ago.

The absence of any policy on accessible housing suggests the party has been pressured by the housebuilding lobby to drop its long-delayed plans.

One of the few potentially positive disability-related policies in the manifesto is to “give councils the power to ban pavement parking, provided they engage with businesses and residents to ensure they are not adversely affected”.

But this comes four years after the government consulted on such a ban, with the last update issued 12 months ago, when the Department for Transport said it was “evaluating the feedback we received and will provide further information in due course”.

There are also two other disability-related measures that were included in the government’s much-criticised Disability Action Plan, which was published in February.

One is to improve support for disabled people who use guide or assistance dogs, and the other is to “explore” whether it could bid to host the 2031 Special Olympics.

Despite the absence of new policies in the manifesto to address the barriers faced by disabled people, the party insists in the document that its ambition “is to make this country the most accessible place in the world for people with disabilities to live, work and thrive”.

13 June 2024

Lib Dem manifesto targets care charges, and promises to implement UN disability convention

The Liberal Democrats have devoted a significant part of their manifesto to reforming adult social care and supporting independent living, but they have also pledged to implement the UN disability convention into law if they win power at the election.

The pledge to implement the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) into UK law could potentially see them challenging Labour for the votes of some disabled activists, after Labour admitted last year it had dropped its own promise to implement the treaty.

The Liberal Democrats have also promised to scrap the bedroom tax, replace benefit sanctions with an “incentive-based scheme” to help people into work, and end the outsourcing of work capability assessments, as well as give disabled people “a stronger voice in the design of benefits policies and processes”.

But there are gaps in the manifesto, with no measures on disability hate crime, nothing to tackle the accessible housing crisis, and nothing on accessible public transport other than continuing to fund the Access for All station improvement programme.

There is also no mention of the continuing safeguarding concerns about the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), particularly relating to universal credit, and no mention of calls from disabled people and bereaved relatives for an independent inquiry into the years of deaths linked to DWP’s actions.

A day after its publication, the Public and Commercial Services Union warned in its own general election charter that universal credit was “a dangerously flawed system, the most vulnerable continue to slip through its cracks and our members are the scapegoats for over a decade of social security failures”.

Another policy likely to concern many disabled activists sees the party signalling its continuing support for legalising assisted suicide – party policy since 2004 – by giving parliament time to debate and vote on legislation, with a free vote for its MPs.

On social care, the Liberal Democrats say they would “forge a new consensus” on funding by setting up a “cross-party commission” to develop “a long-term agreement on sustainable funding for social care”.

As announced last week, the party would offer free personal care to all adults whose needs are seen as eligible for council-funded support.

It also plans to trial “personal health and social care budgets so that individuals are in control of what care they receive”, although it had not clarified by 11am today (Thursday) what this would mean.

It promises to set up an Independent Living Taskforce that would “help people live independently in their own homes”, although again it has provided no further details.

And it says it would enable disabled people to transfer their care package to another local authority “so they don’t feel stuck in their current locality due to their care needs”.

Among its measures on social security, the party would “repair the broken benefits safety net” by scrapping sanctions and the bedroom tax and reducing the wait for the first payment of universal credit from five weeks to five days.

It plans to replace benefit sanctions with a new “incentive-based” scheme, although it has yet to provide any further information on how this might work.

It also promises to reform the personal independence payment (PIP) system, making assessments “more transparent” and stopping “unnecessary reassessments”, but it stopped short of calling for an end to the outsourcing of PIP assessments to companies like Maximus, Serco and Capita.

The manifesto includes a series of policies aimed at making it easier for disabled people to access public life.

As well as implementing UNCRPD, a Liberal Democrat government would bring in new accessibility standards for public spaces, although it has yet to explain how this would work.

It would also introduce “a targeted strategy to support disabled people into work”; raise awareness of, and improve, the Access to Work scheme; and increase the use of British Sign Language in government communications.

And there would be a new right to flexible working, with every disabled person having the right to work from home “unless there are significant business reasons why it is not possible”.

There are a series of policies aimed at improving the rights around mental health, autism and people with learning difficulties.

A Liberal Democrat government would end “inappropriate and costly inpatient placements” for people with learning difficulties and autistic people.

It would also modernise the Mental Health Act – to “strengthen people’s rights, give them more choice and control over their treatment and prevent inappropriate detentions” – which suggests it would take on much of the present government’s discarded draft mental health bill.

It also promises to widen the current safety investigation into mental health hospitals to examine “the whole patient experience, including ward design and treatment options”.

The manifesto says: “In decades past, the UK has led the world in advancing human rights, civil liberties and equality for women, LGBT+ people and disabled people.

“But under the Conservatives, progress has stalled. They are failing to stand up to hatred and prejudice, or tackle entrenched inequalities.”

13 June 2024

Greens’ manifesto offers rise in disability benefits, free personal care and cash for inclusive education

The Green party has promised that its MPs will push for 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 party’s manifesto, published yesterday (Wednesday), promises that any elected Green MPs will push for policies that ensure disabled people can live “full, meaningful lives, can work if they choose, and access the help and support they need”.

But despite a series of promises across social care – including an investment of £20 billion a year in new funding – social security, education and democracy, there is almost no detail on how the party wants these pledges to be fulfilled.

And the manifesto also makes it clear that the party continues to support legalising assisted suicide.

Only last month, disabled actor and activist Liz Carr told Disability News Service (DNS) that legalisation would be particularly dangerous for disabled people at a time when “we are absolutely removing our welfare state, and we are dismantling our incredible NHS”.

On social care, the party’s promise matches that of the Liberal Democrats by calling for an end to charges for personal care, although not for other support such as housework, shopping, laundry and engaging with the local community.

But it goes further than the Liberal Democrats by also promising “investment of £20 billion per year” in adult social care.

As spending by local authorities in England in 2022-23 was already £20.5 billion, this means Green MPs would be pushing for that to be nearly doubled.

On social security, Green MPs would push for an “immediate increase” of five per cent in disability benefits such as personal independence payment (PIP), an increase of £40 a week in universal credit and legacy benefits such as employment and support allowance, and an end to the bedroom tax.

The manifesto also calls for an end to “the unfair targeting of carers and disabled people on benefits”, as well as an end to benefit sanctions, and it says its MPs would “challenge the punitive approach to welfare claimants”.

A day after the manifesto’s publication, the Public and Commercial Services Union warned in its own general election charter that universal credit was “a dangerously flawed system, the most vulnerable continue to slip through its cracks and our members are the scapegoats for over a decade of social security failures”.

In the long term, the party says, Green MPs would push for the introduction of a universal basic income.

The party also calls for an end to “intrusive” disability benefit assessments, and says it opposes at least some of the government’s proposals for reforming PIP, particularly plans to replace cash payments with vouchers*.

On education, it would push for £5 billion to be invested in special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) provision within mainstream schools, and for free transport for all 16-18-year-old students with SEND.

It says this would mean “all schools will have fully accessible buildings and specially trained teachers, and local councils will have the funds to properly support SEND students at school and in getting to school”.

Although the manifesto says its MPs would push for a “fully inclusive” education system, it told DNS that this did not mean an end to segregated special schools, but instead it would ensure that “either option is available” as they “want to give all children the education that is right for them”.

On both housing and transport, there is almost no detail on how the party would like to address the huge barriers disabled people face in securing accessible housing and dealing with barriers to public transport.

The manifesto promises only to “champion the right to… housing under the principles of universal design”, and to push for annual public subsidies for rail and bus travel to be increased to £10 billion to make public transport “reliable, frequent, accessible [to disabled people] and affordable”.

A party spokesperson told DNS: “We are allocating large sums of money for new electric buses and investment in railway stations and other transport infrastructure. This will enable accessibility.”

The Greens say they would fund many of their policies by taxing the wealth of individuals with assets above £10 million at one per cent a year, and those with assets above £1 billion at two per cent annually.

The party says its MPs would campaign for measures “to make parliament more representative, particularly of women, people of colour and disabled people”, which could include backing job-sharing for MPs and a permanent access to elected office fund to help with the extra disability-related costs of standing for election.

The manifesto also promises that Green MPs would push for sport “to be more diverse and representative, especially for women and girls and disabled people”, and for police forces to “acknowledge the institutional racism, misogyny, homophobia and disablism that have dominated policing for so long” and “root out any officers who hold views incompatible with serving as a police officer”.

The manifesto accuses successive Conservative governments of having “undermined the limited progress made by disabled people to live dignified lives as valued members of society.

“Benefits have been cut, and access to education, work and parliamentary access schemes designed to improve the inclusion of disabled people have been decimated.”

It adds: “We need to ensure that everybody can lead full, meaningful lives, can work if they choose, and access the help and support they need.

“Disabled people have as much of a right to control their day-to-day lives and their long-term futures as non-disabled people.”

*This is one of a number of suggestions for possible changes to PIP mentioned in a DWP consultation document

13 June 2024

DWP quietly starts early rollout of universal credit to some ESA claimants, without telling MPs

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has started telling 500 disabled people on out-of-work benefits that they must move onto universal credit, just days after a Conservative minister assured MPs no claimants would face such a move until September.

DWP has previously announced that it would begin its rollout of universal credit to the remaining claimants of employment and support allowance (ESA) and ESA with housing benefit in September.

That date was confirmed by employment minister Jo Churchill last month, when she told MPs in a written statement that this extension would not begin until September.

Churchill, who is not standing for re-election as an MP, wrote on 21 May: “Our current planning assumption is that we would begin notifying this group in September 2024, with the aim of notifying everyone to make the move by December 2025.”

But less than two weeks later, on 3 June, DWP began sending out so-called “migration notices” to about 500 ESA claimants in Wolverhampton and East Suffolk.

This was reported by the social welfare charity rightsnet.

DWP said in an email to “stakeholders”: “The purpose of this activity is to gather more learning to inform our planning for migrating these cohorts at scale in due course, with one of the key learnings we are keen to understand being what proportion of households will require support through the enhanced support journey.”

DWP had asked welfare rights advisers not to share this “operational update” publicly because it was “keen to manage any anxiety for people on ESA and don’t want to give the mistaken impression to people on ESA that we have shifted from our publicly-stated plan to start migrating people from September”.

Disabled activist Gail Ward, a long-standing member of grassroots groups Disabled People Against Cuts and Black Triangle Campaign, and founder of the Hand2MouthProject, which helps and trains those claiming universal credit on how the system works, said Churchill’s written statement had been “absolutely misleading”.

She added: “I am concerned for claimants because they are being used as guinea pigs, as usual.”

Ward said Churchill had also misled MPs by telling them DWP had “developed and tested a new ‘enhanced support’ journey for income support and employment and support allowance customers who require additional assistance”, when the email suggested this had not been completed and was still being tested.

She said: “It seems the DWP is in a shambles and needs reform, as staff are unsure of the rules as much as claimants a lot of the time.

“Claimants are telling me when they ring [DWP] they get told one thing, and when the claimant questions it at a later date they get told something different by another customer service agent.”

Disability News Service (DNS) has asked Churchill to explain why DWP misled MPs about the department’s migration plans, and when it made the decision to send out the June migration notices.

She had not responded by 11am today (Thursday).

DWP was unable to comment in detail because of the rules that civil servants must follow once a general election has been called.

But it said: “We regularly undertake small scale learning activity to develop our approach ahead of plans to move large numbers of legacy benefits customers later this year.

“This activity does not change or alter any previous statements on universal credit migration.”

DWP has been faced with two coroners’ reports and concerns raised by its own staff about its failure to ensure the working-age benefit system is safe for claimants in vulnerable situations.

Only last week, DNS reported how DWP and the Cabinet Office had both been unable to find a report that was supposed to describe how DWP supported “vulnerable” people who rely on universal credit.

13 June 2024

Disabled election candidates: The Green Party’s Sara Nicola Ruth

The accessible housing crisis is a key issue for Green candidate Sara Nicola Ruth* in the general election campaign, particularly as she is herself “stuck in an inaccessible home”.

Her experience with inaccessible housing convinced her that she needed to use the campaign – she is standing in Colchester, Essex – to speak out about how disabled people are often trapped in their own homes.

In her case, when she had to move home, she had little choice about where she would move.

She is now living on a narrow street that has no parking restrictions, with cars – including huge SUVs** – parked on both pavements.

She said: “Sometimes they are parked right in front of the door so there’s no way for me to leave the house with my walking frame, and when I can get out of the door, I have to walk down the middle of the street.

“Life shouldn’t be like this.”

Asked to choose three policies that would improve life for disabled people in the UK, she picks three housing policies from the Disabled People’s Manifesto, drawn up by DPO Forum England.

She would like to see a requirement for all new homes to be accessible, and for 10 per cent of them to be suitable for wheelchair-users; enforceable standards to ensure good quality, well-insulated housing in the private and social rented sectors; and new rent caps, so no-one pays more than one third of their income on rent.

She characterises the current Conservative government’s record on disability as “persecution, stigmatisation, and scapegoating”.

She said: “I hear horror stories daily about how people in need are being denied essential benefits and the terrible consequences of this.

“Austerity policies are a political choice and the impacts would have been well known in advance.

“It’s difficult to conceptualise the scale of the cruelty with which the government has treated disabled people.”

She added: “I was a single mother in the early 1990s at a time when the Tory government was heavily scapegoating single mothers.

“I would say the current stigmatising of disabled people feels very similar.”

She says the Green Party is the only party that prioritises climate justice and social justice and sees them as “going hand-in-hand” and is “genuinely concerned about inclusivity and advocating for marginalised people”.

She said: “I definitely think the Green Party are most open to advocating for disability rights of all the parties as they include strategies to promote quality of life and wellness for everyone in their policies and acknowledge that disabled people are particularly vulnerable.

“If elected I will fight for a properly-funded NHS and social care sector, rent controls and accessible social housing, and an end to no-fault evictions.

“I will speak for disabled people and advocate for their rights, and for the rights of all marginalised people within the bigger picture of the multiple crises we face as a society.”

Asked why, as a disabled person, she wanted to stand at the election, she said: “For me the personal is political.

“My elderly mother can’t get a GP appointment, my grown-up daughters are unable to buy homes and their rents are sky-high, and I am a disabled person stuck in an inaccessible home. 

“I’m also a full-time student living on a low income and struggling with the cost of living. 

“And I know that nothing will improve for me unless it improves for everyone.

“The cost-of-living crisis, housing crisis and the NHS are my priorities, and within this the terrible impacts of austerity policies upon disabled people and the constant marginalisation of disabled voices.”

Ruth is a poet and visual artist and began studying for a BA after being made redundant. After graduating last year, she began studying for an MA in environment, society and culture at the University of Essex.

For many years, she worked from home because of her impairment, but it became increasingly difficult to find work.

Before the pandemic, she had to hide the extent of her mobility impairment from prospective employers because she knew she would not otherwise be taken on.

The impairment means she cannot drive, so she was restricted to administrative positions where she could commute by bus and a short walk.

But she was made redundant from her last job in 2020 due to post-Covid fatigue, which had made it difficult to leave the house on her own, “particularly as I can’t use a wheelchair because my home is completely inaccessible”.

*This is part of a pre-election series of articles that will give some of the disabled people standing as candidates at the general election a chance to describe why they wanted to stand, how they became politicised, and the kind of barriers they have faced as disabled people. The aim is to raise the profile of some of the disabled people seeking elected office. DNS will analyse party manifesto commitments separately

**Sports utility vehicles

13 June 2024

Disabled election candidates: Independent John Urquhart

As – probably – the only disabled person to have founded a UK political party, John Urquhart* can speak from a position of strength when it comes to the disability policies they would prioritise if their party came to power.

Their Harmony Party UK’s disability policies are entirely decided by disabled party members.

Thanks to complex problems with a former officer, Harmony has had to de-register and register again as a political party, but this has not come in time for candidates to stand at next month’s general election.

Instead, Urquhart, the radical socialist party’s founder and general secretary, will be standing as an independent socialist in Cardiff West on 4 July.

Their party, which probably has about 200 members and makes decisions and policy through a series of democratic assemblies, would introduce this structure across the country if it won power.

This would include an assembly of disabled people, which would be able to demand policy changes from the government if its members believed disabled people were being unfairly disadvantaged.

Their party would also set up a disability justice court to enforce those demands if they were ignored by the government.

Urquhart said: “No other active party that I’m aware of was founded by a disabled person.

“I know for a fact no other political party can even claim to be entirely led on disability issues by disabled people, but that’s true for us.”

Another key policy would be the introduction of a National Care Service that would be integrated with the National Health Service (NHS), but – they said – with “no private services sapping off resources” from the NHS.

Urquhart describes the current government’s record on disability as “diabolical”, with a series of “seamlessly spiteful” policies over the last 14 years of Conservative-led governments.

They believe that disabled people “represent a potentially dangerous political bloc” but have been deliberately marginalised by successive governments.

They insist they have “no interest personally” in standing at the election, but they have done so “because someone from my constituency needs to stand up for the people here”.

Urquhart grew up on a council estate, and lives with chronic pain, chronic fatigue and complex post-traumatic stress disorder (cPTSD).

Asked for an incident that politicised them as a disabled person, they said: “When I was a kid, a teacher said I was not allowed to go to the toilet to take painkillers because other kids would ‘take advantage’ and go to the toilet more often. I was about 11.

“I was already politicised but honestly this infuriated me and I still think about it regularly even now, aged 40.”

They said: “I worked a variety of jobs as a young adult; all of them incredibly painful.

“I worked because I was told to and thought people would hate me if I didn’t.

“Eventually, I learned how ridiculous that was, but only after my cPTSD made absolutely definitely sure I didn’t have a choice about the ‘not working’ thing.

“Much of my life I’ve been gainfully unemployed, donating labour to other people’s projects in various ways, and sometimes my own.

“Often, that was online, because a big chunk of the middle part of my life was housebound.”

As for the access barriers they have faced, they said: “I’m not even sure I know where to begin on those barriers; just imagine fences around everything and a twisted fate of being unable to jump them and you’ve got the idea.”

Asked how they would appeal to other disabled people to vote for them, they said: “Harmony was founded by disabled people. No other party was.

“Our entire ethos – nothing about you without you – is rooted in disability activism.”

Comparing today with 2010, when the Conservatives came to power, they said the last 14 years had seen “a decline in quality of provision of almost all services for disabled people”.

And, they said, there had been an increase in the “targeting of disabled people with hatred and abuse in the streets – and discrimination everywhere else”.

They said: “At the same time, thanks to Covid, the number of disabled people is steadily increasing.

“It’s not hard to see why we’re hearing the word ‘euthanasia’ so much more often, and it’s not difficult to understand why people are being left on benefits, languishing until death in far too many cases.

“We are a growing bloc in this country – and we could be a powerful one, if we can only find our way to understanding that each of us can only find liberation in liberating other people.”

*This is part of a pre-election series of articles that will give some of the disabled people standing as candidates at the general election a chance to describe why they wanted to stand, how they became politicised, and the kind of barriers they have faced as disabled people. The aim is to raise the profile of some of those disabled people seeking elected office. DNS will analyse party manifesto commitments separately

13 June 2024

Other disability-related stories covered by mainstream media this week

On the last few occasions Alphonsine Djiako Leuga was seen in her neighbourhood, she is said to have told shopkeepers that she could not afford to heat her home or buy food for her disabled daughter. Months later, Leuga and her teenage daughter were found dead inside their Nottingham home. Police said the pair had “lain undiscovered for some time” but they were “satisfied” no crime had occurred. Nottingham City Council has now announced a review to look at the involvement agencies had with the family, whom neighbours said they had not seen for months: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/article/2024/jun/07/nottingham-city-council-review-women-found-dead

Vulnerable children with complex needs are being locked away in unregulated placements and are being “gravely damaged by the state” while their parents are driven to despair, according to England and Wales’s former top family judge. Sir James Munby terms the lack of provision of safe and therapeutic homes “a shocking moral failure”: https://www.theguardian.com/society/article/2024/jun/09/locking-vulnerable-children-up-moral-failure-says-england-top-family-judge-james-munby

13 June 2024

News provided by John Pring at www.disabilitynewsservice.com

Core Demands

(Taken from DDPO Forum Disabled People’s Manifesto 2024)

(Full Document link: https://www.disabledpeoplesmanifesto.com/_files/ugd/794e19_8222e858807f4d63b3736ab74db87bdb.pdf)

Representation & Voice

We want Disabled people to participate across all political and public roles, with the required adjustments put in place, so we can achieve real justice and equality. Disabled people’s led organisations (“Disabled People’s Organisations”) are accountable to our community and must be viewed as primary advocates for us and be funded accordingly. Disabled People’s Organisations (DPOs) must have a seat at national and local decision-making tables and all Disabled people to fully participate in democratic processes.

Asks –

An election fund to support reasonable adjustments for Disabled candidates at local and national elections.

Strategic funding to support the network of DPOs across England to advocate for the rights of Disabled People.

Accessibility standards for elections including removal of voter ID.

Accessibility standards for all public consultation.

Co-produce policies and programmes at national and local level with Disabled people and our organisations.

Rights

We want to fully enjoy all rights guaranteed by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD). Discrimination we face in all areas of life must stop. We want financial and legal support to enforce our rights and all public bodies to have a duty to advance and enforce our rights actively. We want greater accountability for when our rights have been breached.

Asks –

Legislate to fully incorporate the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) into UK law.

Bring into force all provisions of the Equality Act, including socio-economic duty. Communication access to include languages and disability access.

Strengthen the Public Sector Equality Duty and ensure the Public Sector Equality Duty and the Socio-Economic duties are fully embedded in all public bodies’ decision-making processes.

Ensure parity in law for victims of Disability Hate Crime.

Legislate to ensure Disabled people who are abused by workers and professionals have the same protection and support as victims of domestic abuse, and that workers have proper pay and conditions to promote respectful relationships.

Introduce non-means tested legal aid for all discrimination cases.

End discrimination against Disabled parents, primarily mothers, including by providing social care, financial and other support to parents, making family court proceedings open to the public and fully accessible and ensuring Disabled parents have adequate income.

Establish an inquiry into benefits-related deaths.

Legislate to abolish forced detention and treatment of people on mental health grounds.

Independence

We want the right to live independently with choice and control over the support we get. We want the right to live in our own fully accessible homes connected to our family, friends and community. We want major reform and investment across social security, social care, education, housing and employment, to provide Disabled people of all ages, genders, backgrounds or immigration status with a decent level of income and free at the point of use additional support that we need to fully enjoy our rights and to lead full and connected lives. We should not be forced to live in institutions or accept medical treatment we don’t want.

Asks –

Finances:

Increase disability benefits to meet true extra costs.

Increase means tested benefits to adequately reflect the cost of living and extra disability related costs.

Stop sanctioning Disabled people.

Stop cutting off Disabled people’s benefits for failure to attend assessments.

Co-produce the benefits system that recognises everyone’s right to an adequate standard of living.

Abolish No Recourse to Public Funds – benefit and healthcare rights for all.

Independent Living:

Legislate for the right to independent living and a taskforce to develop independent living we can all be proud of.

Commit extra 8 billion funding for social care and ensure funding is prioritised for community-based support.

Stop social care charging.

Housing:

Introduce a national requirement for all new build homes to be accessible and 10% to be wheelchair accessible.

Increase funding for Disabled Facilities Grant, remove the means-test and increase the grant amount.

Implement all recommendations of the Grenfell inquiry, ensuring all Disabled people can evacuate safely.

Introduce enforceable standards to ensure good quality, well insulated housing in private and social rented sectors. Include adaptability requirements into Decent Homes Standard.

Introduce rent caps so that no one pays more than one third of their income on rent.

Invest in building accessible social housing.

Inclusion

We want plans for every aspect of life including energy policy, climate change, digital and technological development, health, housing, transport, street environment and emergency planning, to address specific needs of Disabled people from the outset. Segregated settings and programmes should not be a default. Choice, control, and inclusion are vital. Disabled people should have support to live, learn and work in the community.

Asks –

Education:

Work with organisations of Disabled people and the national organisation representing Deaf people, with equal decision- making power, to create an action plan/educational policy to fully implement the right to education in accordance with UNCRPD Article 4.3 & Article 24 and UNDRIP Articles 13 and 14.

A right for Deaf and deafblind children to get an education in BSL and in environments which maximise personal, academic and social development both within and outside formal school settings and support the linguistic identity of Deaf and deafblind children.

A right for every Disabled and Deaf student to get appropriate support to attend and remain in a fully inclusive mainstream education setting.

A right for every Disabled and Deaf child and young person to be mentored by a qualified and professionally trained person with a similar life experience of impairment, disability, communication and access needs from the point of diagnosis or earlier.

Commit £3bn extra per year for education support: to fund SEND; increase the number of Deaf and Disabled people in the teaching workforce; and increase the capacity and ability of national representative organisations of Deaf or Disabled people to lead on getting Deaf and Disabled education done right.

Access:

Review and strengthen the BSL Act to ensure BSL is recognised, promoted and protected on a par with English and all BSL-related public services and procedures are designed, managed and delivered by Deaf BSL signers.

New accessibility standards which meet the needs of people with different impairments for transport, built environment, and public realm.

Infrastructure investment plans and regulatory measures to ensure Disabled people’s access to the environment, transport, information and communication.

Work:

Introduce mandatory workforce monitoring including pay gap and progression, including monitoring pay gap and progression for Disabled women/people of colour.

Introduce mandatory two-week timeframe for reasonable adjustments and an enforcement framework which does not fully depend on an individual.

Commit to closing the disability employment gap.

A right to disability responsive employment support which helps people get good jobs.

Ensure quick and adequate support from Access to Work.

Other Demands

Implement the National Independent Living Support Service (NILSS)

(Developed by the Reclaiming Our Futures Alliance – ROFA – link: https://www.rofa.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Fixing-a-broken-system-for-ROFA-conference-EC-proof-read-1.docx)

Benefits

A “triple lock” on annual benefit rate increases (whichever is the highest of: Inflation rate, Average wage increase or 2.5%)

An end to the hate rhetoric used by politicians about disabled people on benefits

An end to the Hostile Environment from the government towards benefits claimants

An independent public inquiry into deaths through suicide and destitution of disabled benefit claimants since 2008.

An end to punitive degrading disability assessments

An end to pressuring people who cannot work into harmful insecure low paid work

An end to benefit sanctions

Health

An independent public inquiry into the deaths and maltreatment of disabled children and adults incarcerated in mental health institutions

Mandatory mental health, learning disability and neurodivergence training for all trainee doctors

Social Care

A National Independent Living Service, free at the point of use

Legislate for the right to independent living and a taskforce to develop independent living we can all be proud of

Commit extra 8 bn funding for social care and ensure funding is prioritised for community-based support.

End social care charging.

Housing

Introduce a national requirement for all new build homes to be accessible and 10% to be wheelchair accessible.

Implement all recommendations of the Grenfell inquiry, ensuring all Disabled people can evacuate safely.

Introduce rent caps so that no one pays more than one third of their income on rent.

Invest in building accessible social housing.

Transport

Free bus passes for people on disability benefits

A fully integrated, accessible, affordable publicly owned transport system for all

A right of disabled access to open public spaces, whether publicly or privately owned

Legislation to govern the placement of “street furniture” that impedes access by disabled people

Education

A right to mainstream education and to education in British Sign Language for Deaf and Disabled students

Disabled children, young people & adults to be fully funded and supported through education at every level

Work with organisations of Disabled people and the national organisation representing Deaf people, with equal decision-making power, to create an action plan/educational policy to fully implement the right to education

Include BSL as a language option at GCSE

Work and employment rights

Legal Aid for employment tribunals

Assisted Dying

No legalisation of assisted dying

Sunak faces verdict on misleading ‘fit for work’ stats, just days after his Labour tax row ‘lies’

The statistics regulator will rule tomorrow on whether the prime minister misled voters around the growth in disabled people found not fit for work, just two days after the same watchdog promised to investigate his claims about Labour’s tax plans.

The Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) is to release a statement today (Thursday) on claims made by Rishi Sunak during Tuesday’s leaders’ debate that Labour’s spending plans would result in a £2,000 tax rise “for every working family in this country”.

OSR is particularly examining the claim that the figures were produced by “independent Treasury officials”, with Labour figures accusing Sunak of lying after the Treasury’s permanent secretary told the party the figures were not produced by the Civil Service.

But before this row erupted, Disability News Service (DNS) had already been told that OSR would deliver its response tomorrow to three complaints made about claims made by the government around disability benefits, including one lodged by DNS in March.

At least one of the complaints relates to claims made by the prime minister.

The DNS concern, currently the oldest outstanding complaint on the regulator’s issues log, relates to figures repeatedly used by Sunak about the number of disabled people being found not fit for work.

The prime minister first used these figures in his main Conservative party conference speech last October.

He repeated them in March in an interview with the Sunday Times.

And he repeated them again in a major speech on social security at the Centre for Social Justice in April.

Sunak said in April: “In 2011, 20 per cent of those doing a work capability assessment were deemed unfit to work.

“But the latest figure now stands at 65 per cent. That’s wrong.

“People are not three times sicker than they were a decade ago.”

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), which will have briefed him on the figures, will have been aware that they were deeply misleading.

Like his fellow ministers, and many media commentators, Sunak ignored the fact that the 2011 figures reflected the early years of the WCA, before its most serious flaws were exposed.

It took years of research and activism by disabled people and allies to expose the links between the WCA and hundreds, and probably thousands, of deaths of claimants, and to force DWP ministers to ease the harshness of the assessment*.

That eventually made it less arduous to qualify for the employment and support allowance support group and avoid work-related conditions for those not fit for work, although the assessment process is still deeply-flawed and continues to be linked to serious harm and deaths.

DNS lodged a complaint with OSR on 11 March, and the regulator told DNS in April that it had “contacted the team in 10 Downing Street for information on the sources behind the figures quoted by the prime minister”.

When DNS approached OSR for an update the following month, it was told by the regulator: “As we have looked into your case, there have been other statements made by ministers on the topic of out-of-work disability statistics.

“We want to consider them together and respond in their full context. We will update you with our findings on this.”

DNS contacted OSR again on 31 May, after Sunak had called a general election, and pointed out that the complaint about the WCA figures was now the oldest outstanding concern on its issues log.

The regulator then confirmed that it would be publishing a statement on Friday 7 June on “recent statements on disability benefits and out-of-work statistics”.

It later clarified that this statement would be used to “respond publicly to three claims”, one of which was the DNS complaint.

Another appears to relate to claims made by work and pensions secretary Mel Stride in April that disabled people claiming personal independence payment (PIP) receive “thousands of pounds a month”.

Stride also claimed – wrongly – that PIP was “a benefit that has not been reviewed for over a decade”, when in fact there were two high-profile independent reviews of the PIP assessment process, with the first published in 2014 and the second reporting in 2017, just seven years ago.

When he was questioned about this in parliament, by Labour’s Neil Coyle, he appeared to add a further untruth, telling him: “It is the case that there has not been a fundamental review of PIP on the basis that that has subsequently led to a change in that benefit.”

But Stride’s own green paper makes it clear that the government made significant changes to PIP after the two reviews.

The green paper says: “We have continued to implement the recommendations of the independent reviews as we strive to shape PIP into a modern and dynamic benefit.”

*The Department, DNS editor John Pring’s book on DWP and how its actions led to countless deaths of disabled people in the post-2010 era, will be published by Pluto Press on 20 August. Visit the DNS website before publication for a 50 per cent discount  

6 June 2024

Disabled people ignored in ‘parallel universe’ election campaign

Disabled people were not mentioned once in the first major television event of the general election campaign, despite the participants speaking more than 21,000 words over more than two hours.

Analysis of transcripts of the leaders’ debate between Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer, followed by interviews with Ed Davey, Stephen Flynn, Richard Tice and Adrian Ramsay, shows none of them, and neither of the two journalists moderating the debate or interviewing the leaders, mentioned disabled people or disability.

The one exception to the sidelining of disability from the two programmes broadcast by ITV on Tuesday evening was in its treatment of social care, but even this received only cursory attention and disabled people were not mentioned directly.

Social care was mentioned in the leaders’ debate after a question was put by ITV’s Julie Etchingham to Sunak and Starmer.

And when Davey was interviewed later by ITV’s Anushka Asthana, he gave his party’s call for an end to charging for personal care for all adults, and a higher minimum wage for care workers, as an example of a Liberal Democrat manifesto policy (see separate story).

The sidelining of disabled people during the leaders’ debate and interviews came just two days after Kamran Mallick, chief executive of Disability Rights UK, said it was “astonishing and appalling” – and that political parties appeared to be “living in a parallel universe” – that disabled people had been ignored in the first 10 days of the election campaign.

The section on social care during the leaders’ debate lasted approximately one minute and five seconds, and there was no cross-examination of the answers provided by Sunak and Starmer.

Etchingham had asked them: “Five years ago, Boris Johnson was standing where you both are now. He told me there was a plan ready to go on this.

“We’re still waiting. Will you both now commit to a fully-funded solution in your manifesto this time round?”

Sunak claimed the government had “already implemented charging reform” but then added: “Pilots are in place to implement the reforms. They will be rolled out later this year.”

These long-awaited government reforms were widely seen as regressive and unfair but would have introduced a lifetime cap of £86,000 on how much anyone paid for social care in England.

Two years ago, the government delayed their introduction from October 2023 to October 2025.

But in January this year, the permanent secretary of the Department of Health and Social Care, Sir Chris Wormald, told the Commons public accounts committee that the government could be forced into further delays if it decided under-pressure councils would not be able to cope with the “big new chunk” of “complicated work”.

It is not yet clear whether the Conservative manifesto will stick to the October 2025 date for the rollout of the reforms, with pilot projects later this year.

Sunak then said that his Conservative government had provided “an extra eight billion” for social care because “the pressures are immediate”.

This appears to refer to the £7.5 billion funding provided for adult and children’s social care (PDF) over 2023-24 and 2024-25 – although only £2.7 billion of this was new central government funding – that was announced in November 2022 when the government said its charging reforms would be delayed, although some of this money went to the NHS.

The other £500 million of the £8 billion appears to refer to new funding for social care announced by the government in January.

The Association of Directors of Adult Social Services said later that this extra funding “simply isn’t enough to meet rising costs and growing numbers of adults needing care and support this year” and that social care “needs a long-term, sustainable, fully-funded plan”.

The National Audit Office said last November (PDF) that the government had “delayed its charging reforms, scaled back system reform, and is behind on some aspects of its revised plan”.

Starmer focused, as his party has in recent years, on the need to improve conditions for care workers, rather than any attempt to end care charges or increase the availability of funding for disabled people in need of care and support.

He told the audience: “We will have a plan for social care that, like everything else in our manifesto, it’ll be fully costed and fully funded.”

He said the focus on care workers was because “one of the biggest problems in social care is that the workforce has fragmented”, with “poor conditions of many, many people”.

Research by disabled campaigners showed in 2022 that tens of thousands of disabled people across the country every year were having debt collection action taken against them by their local authorities over unpaid care charges.

6 June 2024

Labour silent over key concerns on disability employment policy and claimant safety

The Labour party has refused to answer key questions about the safety of its disability employment policies, and why it published an inaccessible social media post about those plans.

Disability News Service (DNS) has been trying to clarify details of its announcements around disability employment since a speech by shadow disability minister Vicky Foxcroft at the TUC Disabled Workers’ Conference in Liverpool, the day after the general election was announced by prime minister Rishi Sunak.

Those questions became more urgent last week when Labour leader Keir Starmer delivered a speech in which he promised that “those who can work, will work” under a Labour government.

His statement suggested – although this was not explicit – that a Labour government would continue to exert pressure and impose sanctions on disabled people who are not currently in work, rather than offering a more supportive, safer system than the one operated under successive Conservative-led governments.

Starmer also said: “Under the Tories, there are too many people who are not in work, who should be.”

The party highlighted how spending on “health and disability benefits for working age adults” is set to rise by over 50 per cent over the next parliament, from £41.3 billion in 2022-23 to £68.5 billion in 2028-29.

But the party has refused this week to confirm whether it was correct that its approach in government would involve continuing to exert pressure on disabled claimants, while ignoring the need for a more supportive and safer system.

DNS also asked the party why it had made no reference to concerns raised repeatedly by DWP staff about the safety of their department.

Late last month, the work and pensions select committee released the results of a survey of DWP staff which found that two-thirds of them do not have enough time to deal with safeguarding concerns “carefully” and “correctly”, despite years of deaths of benefit claimants linked with DWP’s actions.

And last December, the PCS union submitted a dossier of concerns to DWP that suggested the department was in a state of crisis, while it accused DWP of “deliberate neglect”, and said benefit claimants in vulnerable situations were “falling through the gaps” in the system.

But Labour made no mention of these concerns in last week’s announcements, or in Foxcroft’s speech, while it also ignored two recent letters sent to DWP by coroners after the suicides of universal credit claimants.

DNS asked the party whether last week’s announcements on disability employment, which were heavily criticised by disabled people, suggested that it had already abandoned its supposed commitment to co-producing its disability policies with disabled people.

DNS also asked the party why a social media post it published on Saturday (1 June) referred to “people with disabilities”, and whether this meant Labour no longer supported the social model of disability.

And it asked why the post’s “alt text” – which allows screen-readers to describe an image that appears on the screen – failed to include the words included on the image the party had posted.

The alt text simply said: “A pink graphic with two animated people in work clothes under text.”

But it failed to say what that text was, even though the words summarised the party’s back-to-work plan in three bullet points.

Foxcroft, Labour’s shadow minister for disabled people, has now declined to answer questions about her party’s disability employment policies from DNS three times in the last two weeks.

The first time, she said she had a train to catch after delivering a speech at the TUC Disabled Workers’ Conference; the following week, she said she was tied up with her legal duties relating to her office and constituency casework after the election was called; and finally this week she said she was just “too busy” but could “probably” answer questions after the manifesto launch “in a few weeks”.

She redirected questions to the party’s press office, but after a two-day delay, a Labour spokesperson said yesterday (Wednesday), in response to the questions asked by DNS: “Confirming that we will not be commenting on this occasion.

“Apologies for the delay in getting back to you. We are receiving an increased volume of press enquiries during this general election period.”

6 June 2024

DWP can’t find report on universal credit safety that PM’s unit told it to write

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) and the Cabinet Office have both been unable to find a report that was supposed to describe how DWP supported “vulnerable” people who rely on the universal credit benefit system.

DWP was told to produce the report five or six years ago by a civil service unit set up by David Cameron and deputy prime minister Nick Clegg in 2012.

But neither DWP nor the Cabinet Office have been able to find the report, despite separate freedom of information requests from Disability News Service (DNS).

The failure to find the report comes as DWP has faced a series of coroners’ reports and concerns raised by its own staff about the safety of universal credit and its failure to ensure the working-age benefit system is safe for claimants in vulnerable situations.

Previous freedom of information requests showed that the Prime Minister’s Implementation Unit (PMIU) had produced a report – Experience of Claimants and Vulnerable Groups – that described the “additional difficulties” faced by vulnerable claimants of universal credit.

The Cabinet Office had initially claimed it could not find this document.

When it finally found the report and provided a copy to DNS, it showed that the document had warned that the “experience of many groups of vulnerable claimants on UC is not currently understood”, while there was a “lack of evidence” on whether the range of support for these groups is “delivered consistently and delivering the desired outcomes with efficacy”.

The report included a recommendation by PMIU for DWP to draw up a “single and coherent” document that described its approach to vulnerable claimants.

The aim was to “demonstrate the support and adjustments” DWP had developed and help those working in the department to share information about this support and “ensure greater consistency” in how it was applied.

This report was supposed to be produced “internally” and then shared with PMIU.

But when DNS submitted fresh freedom of information requests to DWP and the Cabinet Office, neither of them were able to find the “single and coherent” document.

DWP told DNS: “We have carried out a detailed search for the information you have requested and can confirm, DWP does not hold this information.”