Government ignores warnings of new DWP deaths, and UN intervention, as MPs pass universal credit cuts bill

Labour MPs have voted to impose £2 billion-a-year cuts on disabled people who cannot work, despite a last-minute intervention by UN disability rights experts, and repeated warnings that the bill will cost lives.

Despite efforts to defeat the much-changed bill, or at least soften some of its remaining measures – particularly by a small group of backbench Labour MPs – the universal credit bill* was easily passed by MPs last night (Wednesday).

It will now be debated in the Lords, but peers will almost certainly not be able to make any changes to the bill, and it is now likely to become law later this month.

Disabled people and disabled people’s organisations were last night using words such as “shameful”, “cruel”, “a gut punch” and “a deep concern” to describe the bill and the process that led to it being approved by MPs.

The bill will see cuts to spending for new claimants of the universal credit health element of more than £2 billion-a-year by 2029-30.

By 2029-30, this will mean 750,000 universal credit claimants who cannot work for disability-related reasons seeing their health element addition frozen at £50 a week, compared to the £97 a week existing claimants currently receive.

Existing health element claimants and just 80,000 new claimants – less than 10 per cent of new claimants – will be protected from this cut because they are terminally-ill or qualify for Labour’s new “severe conditions” group.

Although there was some relief last week that the government withdrew planned cuts to personal independence payment (PIP) – at least until the end of a year-long review headed by social security and disability minister Sir Stephen Timms – there was still significant opposition from Labour MPs to the bill’s cuts to out-of-work disability benefits.

Disabled Labour MP Olivia Blake – who later voted against the bill – told fellow MPs that it would push many disabled people further into poverty.

She said: “Disabled people know what is best for us.

“We should be investing in people’s independence, not leaving them on the sidelines or pushing them into poverty.

“That is a matter of justice, but in the end it saves money as well.”

Nadia Whittome – who also voted against the bill – paid tribute to the disabled people whose “tireless campaigning” led to the government removing its planned cuts to PIP from the bill, but she said the legislation would still take about £3,000 a year from many disabled people in the future.

She described herself as a disabled MP – possibly for the first time in the Commons – and warned that “benefit cuts and loss of payments help to trap women experiencing domestic abuse, make children grow up in poverty and even cost lives, like that of my constituent Philippa Day”, whose death was caused by flaws in the PIP system**.

Whittome was among several MPs who pointed to a letter sent to the UK government late on Monday by the UN’s committee on the rights of persons with disabilities, expressing concerns about the bill and its apparent assault on disabled people’s rights (see separate story).

And she praised the work of DPO Forum England for helping her draft a new clause that would have ensured the government had to produce a document showing the human rights impact of the bill before it could be implemented.

Whittome said: “As a disabled MP, I have first-hand experience of the disability benefits system.

“We have all met constituents who are already not getting the support they need.

“The question today is this: do we let their number grow?”

Labour’s Alison Hume – who voted against the bill – called for an urgent change to the culture of the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).

She mentioned the death of Jodey Whiting and the successful eight-year campaign of her “incredible” mother, Joy Dove, to prove via a second inquest that the department’s decision to wrongly stop her disabled daughter’s out-of-work benefits after a string of safeguarding failings was the “trigger” for her to take her own life.

Hume said her own experiences with her disabled son showed her that “the culture of the DWP is hostile to disabled people.

“That culture must change if we are to have any chance of building a sustainable, fair and compassionate welfare system for the future.”

Independent MP Zarah Sultana warned that MPs’ decisions on disability benefit cuts and reforms have previously led to deaths.

She also mentioned Jodey Whiting, and Errol Graham, who starved to death after his out-of-work disability benefits were wrongly removed, and she said his death was “not a tragic exception, it was a political consequence”.

She said: “These are not just names; they are the human cost of decisions made in this place.”

John McDonnell, a long-time supporter of the disabled people’s anti-cuts movements, who voted against the bill, pointed to a banner that had been brought to the House of Commons by disabled activists during the David Cameron Conservative government, which showed disabled people who had taken their own lives because of austerity cuts and reforms to disability benefits.

McDonnell, a suspended Labour MP, said: “It was one of the most distressing things I have seen in my political life, and I wept that day.

“I do not want that to happen again.

“Let us be honest, as sure as night follows day, if cuts go through on the scale proposed, people will lose their lives. People will suffer immense harm. Let us all understand that.”

Steve Darling, the disabled Liberal Democrat MP and his party’s shadow work and pensions spokesperson – who joined his party in voting against the bill – said the events surrounding the bill had been “chaotic” and “shambolic”, while it had been “irresponsibly rushed through”.

He also accused the Labour government of using Sir Stephen “as a human shield” because of the decision to appoint him to review PIP instead of carrying out immediate cuts.

Although he later voted for the bill, disabled Labour MP Liam Conlon linked the increase in the number of claimants of disability benefits with a “decade of savage cuts to our NHS and community care services”.

He said: “This country now has the lowest life expectancy in western Europe, one of the highest rates of preventable deaths among rich countries, and one of the lowest numbers of neighbourhood nurses and GPs per head among wealthy nations.

“The dismantling of preventive care has not only brought our NHS to the brink; it has done more than anything else to drive the increase that we are discussing in the number of people who are on health-related benefits and who are disabled.”

Cat Eccles, the Labour MP for Stourbridge – who voted against the bill – another who mentioned the UN letter, spoke of previously claiming universal credit after experiencing health problems.

She told MPs: “I was in receipt of universal credit for about a year, receiving £690 a month, but that did not even cover my rent and bills, and I was at risk of losing my rented home.

“Thankfully, I had friends and family to support me, but not everyone is that fortunate.

“My confidence plummeted, and the feelings of failure, rejection and uselessness at not being able to sustain myself were all-consuming. Nobody chooses this life.”

She added: “In my constituency of Stourbridge, many people have thanked me over the past few days for voting against this flawed bill last week – not just disabled people and their families and carers, but charity workers, work coaches, nurses and local authority staff.

“Nobody supports this bill: not Deaf and disabled people’s groups; not charities; and not health organisations. Not even the United Nations supports it.”

Richard Burgon, who voted against the bill, asked fellow Labour MPs whether they could support a bill that would cut the support of 750,000 disabled people who were already on low incomes.

He added: “Disabled people who come to see us in our constituency surgeries will not understand if we, as Labour people, vote for this cut to universal credit tonight or abstain.

“We will live with that vote in every single constituency surgery between now and the next general election.

“This is not a left and right issue in the Labour party; this is a right and wrong issue.”

Three other disabled MPs – Emma Lewell, Marsha de Cordova and Marie Rimmer – all voted against the bill, although they did not speak in the debate.

But some Labour MPs who had opposed the PIP cuts voted yesterday for the cuts to the universal credit health element, and measures to create a new “severe conditions” group, for claimants who are likely to have fewer requirements to engage with work coaches than others receiving the health element.

Labour MPs who have previously opposed cuts to disabled people’s support but who voted for the bill last night included Debbie Abrahams, who chairs the work and pensions committee; Vicky Foxcroft, the former shadow minister for disabled people, whose resignation as a whip helped kickstart the backbench Labour rebellion over the PIP cuts; and disabled MP Marie Tidball, who voted against the PIP cuts last week.

Another disabled Labour MP, Jen Craft, also voted in favour of the bill, as she had last week.

There was one small government concession, secured through the efforts of Tidball and others, who had called for a firmer commitment to co-production with disabled people of the Timms PIP review.

Sir Stephen promised there would be a majority of disabled people or representatives of disabled people’s organisations on a group he will set up that will “lead and deliver” and co-produce the review, but he shied away from promising that disabled people on this group would have a veto on the review’s conclusions.

Instead, he said he would “aim for a consensus among all those taking part”.

He said the outcome of the review would be “central to the legislation that follows”.

He claimed that the universal credit bill would “protect existing claimants in a powerful way, including those with fluctuating health conditions, but it will move decisively to a more proactive, pro-work system”.

And he claimed that the bill “begins to repair a broken system that holds people back, by removing work disincentives from universal credit”.

All the non-government amendments aimed at improving the bill, and which were voted on, were defeated, and the final vote on whether the bill should be approved and passed to the House of Lords was passed by 336 votes to 242.

Before yesterday afternoon’s debate, disabled activists warned that the events of the last few weeks would leave many disabled people struggling to trust Labour MPs for the final four years of this parliament.

Andy Mitchell, in parliament yesterday for a last-ditch lobby of MPs, said: “It’s such a betrayal of everything we believed Labour stood for.

“Working with Timms is going to be really difficult after what he’s done and said.”

And Megan Thomas, from the Coalition Against Benefit Cuts, who was also helping organise the lobby, told Disability News Service: “Disabled people are seeing this as a betrayal.

“This is not what we were campaigning for, it’s not what we were promised.”

*Previously named the universal credit and personal independence payment bill

**The Department: How a Violent Government Bureaucracy Killed Hundreds and Hid the Evidence, DNS editor John Pring’s book on the years of deaths linked to DWP’s actions and failings, including those of Jodey Whiting, Errol Graham and Philippa Day, is published by Pluto Press

10 July 2025

Urgent letter from UN to Labour government warns: We think your cuts continue Tory attack on disability rights

A UN committee of disabled experts has told the government that its new benefit cuts bill appears to be a fresh attack on disabled people’s rights, a year after it issued a similar warning to the Conservative government.

The letter sent to the UK government by the UN committee on the rights of persons with disabilities followed intensive efforts by disabled people’s organisations (DPOs) to provide the UN with evidence of the impact of the government’s planned cuts to out-of-work disability benefits.

The UN letter suggests the Labour government is continuing on a path laid by successive Conservative governments through their cuts and reforms to disabled people’s support since 2010.

Last year, the committee told the Conservative government it had made “no significant progress” in the more than seven years since it was found guilty of “grave and systematic” violations of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, following an inquiry sparked by a complaint by Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC).

Now the committee has told the UK government that it has “received credible information indicating that if approved, the [bill] will deepen the signs of regression that the Committee indicated in its 2024 report on the follow-up to the inquiry.”

This week’s letter was sent by the committee to the UK government on Monday evening.

It pointed to cuts to the health element of universal credit for most new claimants; the risk of these cuts increasing disability poverty; the lack of proper consultation with disabled people’s organisations; and concerns over the use of artificial intelligence to monitor the bank accounts of universal credit claimants.

But it also highlighted “public statements” by MPs and government departments that have portrayed disabled people as “making profit” from benefits, committing benefit fraud, and “being a burden to society”.

The letter gives the government until 11 August to respond, with the committee set to examine the concerns publicly at the UN in Geneva later in August.

The initial work to compile evidence for the committee was carried out by a small group of disabled activists within DPO Forum England, which later expanded to include representatives of other disabled people’s organisations (DPOs).

These other DPOs included the coalition that monitors implementation of the UN convention in the UK, DPAC, Disability Rebellion, Crips Against Cuts, and Amnesty International UK’s disabled people’s human rights network.

Their evidence had to be redrafted after the government agreed last week to remove measures to cut billions of pounds of spending on personal independence payment from the bill.

The DPOs were convinced that the bill would still prove highly damaging to disabled people, and activists met online last Friday with Jorge Araya, secretary of the UN’s committee on the rights of persons with disabilities.

They stressed the urgency of the situation, with the government set to rush through the legislation before the summer recess on 22 July.

They managed to produce a detailed letter describing their concerns by Monday, allowing Arraya to secure the committee’s approval, and send its letter to the UK government.

Within hours, disabled activists were contacting MPs who have backed parliamentary efforts to scupper the bill, and several of those MPs mentioned the letter in yesterday’s final Commons debate on the bill before it passes to the Lords (see separate story).

Rick Burgess, co-chair of DPO Forum England, who helped put the letter together, said: “I think it’s shameful that yet again, disabled people have had to appeal for international help to defend us against our own government.

“This was meant to be a change of government, and we are having to do the same things against a similar kind of hostility.

“It’s shameful, it’s absolutely shameful.

“The Labour party needs to look at itself and they need to look at the people in charge of it and say, ‘what have we let happen here within our party?’ if they have got a shred of their integrity or principles.”

Mark Harrison, a member of the Reclaiming Our Futures Alliance steering group, said he was glad the UN committee had expressed its concerns about the legislation and the “poisonous rhetoric” of ministers in justifying the cuts.

He said: “It feels like Groundhog Day, except it is not Cameron and Osborne but a Labour government attacking us, our rights and living standards.

“This is terrible politics, a Labour government vilifying disabled people and using the Tory media to parrot their lies.

“They will live to regret this, as disabled people and the public will remember in the same way as they did with pensioners’ winter fuel payments, the two-child benefit cap and continuing austerity for local government and the NHS.”

The Department for Work and Pensions said it would respond to the UN committee’s letter in due course.

It produced the following statement: “We are changing the broken social security system we inherited so it helps people across the country to live with dignity, genuinely supporting those who can work into employment, and ensuring the safety net will always be there for the most vulnerable.

“We are putting the views and voices of disabled people at the heart of our review to ensure PIP is fit for the future, and are only making changes to the benefit once we have completed the review.”

10 July 2025

Race against time to secure DWP deaths evidence before parliament passes new benefit cuts bill

There is a race against time to force the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to release vital evidence about flaws in the universal credit system before parliament passes a bill that will cut billions of pounds from disabled people’s support.

The government appears set to succeed in forcing the bill through parliament before the summer recess on 22 July, after it passed its final Commons stages yesterday (Wednesday).

The bill will cut the health element of universal credit (UC) for most new claimants from £97 a week to £50 a week, from April 2026, although a small number of new claimants – less than 10 per cent – will see their health element stay at the higher rate and rise in line with inflation*.

Despite these cuts, DWP is continuing to hold back potentially damaging evidence that links universal credit with the deaths of disabled claimants.

This evidence includes a secret “critical friend” paper from 2021 on the department’s safeguarding failures; another paper that details the impact of its errors on “vulnerable customers”; and recommendations made by its own secret internal process reviews (IPRs) following deaths linked to UC, dating back as far as 2020.

It is possible that some of the IPR evidence could be included in the department’s annual report, but that is unlikely to be published before the bill becomes law.

Last year’s annual report was published on 22 July 2024.

Information secured by Disability News Service (DNS) shows there were 63 secret reviews into deaths linked to UC between January 2020 and November 2023, and another 28 IPRs into cases involving serious harm to a claimant that did not result in their death.

But DNS has also been trying for more than 18 months to secure information from DWP that would show what recommendations for improvements – relating to its “capability, culture, behaviour and process” – have been made by civil servants who carried out these IPRs.

The information rights tribunal has ruled that DWP does not need to release these recommendations to DNS because they are “intended for future publication”.

DWP previously told the tribunal that it would release the information bit by bit, beginning with recommendations from 2022-23 that would be released by 31 March 2025; recommendations from 2020-21 and 2021-22 that would be released by 30 November 2025; and recommendations from 2023-24 that would be released by 31 March 2026.

None of this information has yet been published.

Rick Burgess, from the grassroots, user-led mental health group Recovery in the Bin, said: “They are doing all this stuff without MPs having full knowledge of the problems of the system.

“Am I surprised? No, I am not surprised; it is 100 per cent a continuing cover-up.

“The whole attitude of the DWP remains utterly unchanged; I don’t know how any MP can expect that institution to do anything except cause harm.

“I think we need a new ministry of social security that administers social security and has nothing to do with work… and which is safe and says, ‘we will catch you when you fall’.

“How can you say that any functioning democratic processes are happening when you’ve got a system that has been responsible for many, many, many deaths, and that is allowed to cover-up its role in that.”

*Existing claimants of the health element and those new health element claimants meeting the severe conditions criteria (SCC) or considered under the special rules for end of life will see their UC standard allowance combined with the UC health element rise in line with inflation in the next four years. People in the SCC group will be exempt from future UC reassessments. The standard allowance of UC will rise above inflation in each of the next four years

**The Department: How a Violent Government Bureaucracy Killed Hundreds and Hid the Evidence, DNS editor John Pring’s book on the years of deaths linked to DWP’s actions and failings, is published by Pluto Press

10 July 2025

‘Complete shift in thinking’ needed on education of disabled children, says ALLFIE

Inclusive education campaigners have called for a “complete shift in thinking” on how disabled children and young people are educated, just as the government faces public uproar over reforms to the special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) system.

There were widespread reports of another threatened backbench Labour rebellion this week, over concerns that ministers will reveal plans to restrict access to education, health and care plans (EHCPs) when they release a schools white paper in the autumn.

After years of alarm at Conservative moves to push an ever-growing number of disabled children into segregated special schools – at least until the final years of the last Conservative government – Labour’s plans appear to be aimed at ensuring more disabled children can be educated in mainstream settings.

But there are concerns that this will come at the expense of the legal rights to support provided through EHCPs, with significant doubt that the government will invest enough in the education system to provide that support.

The Alliance for Inclusive Education (ALLFIE) called on the government this week to “stop playing games with our lives”, and to provide “legally enforceable rights” to inclusive education in mainstream settings.

The EHCP issue became particularly toxic for the government this week after a letter to the Guardian newspaper from charities, family organisations and public figures.

The letter warned that “every sign from the government” suggests the white paper will remove the right to an EHCP from children attending mainstream schools.

It added: “Local authorities want EHCPs drastically reduced, or removed altogether, to relieve them of duties they often find costly and troublesome.”

The letter said about 270,000 disabled children with EHCPs are currently educated in mainstream settings, providing them with “legally enforceable” documents describing the support they are entitled to.

Among those signing the letter were non-user-led disability charities such as the National Autistic Society, Mencap, and Sense, and parent-led groups such as SEND National Crisis and Special Needs Jungle, although the disabled people’s organisation Disability Rights UK also added its support.

But ALLFIE declined to sign the letter because it said it did not support the current EHCP system, which it said was “primarily premised on resources and support that are available”, although it also did not back the government’s plans to remove or restrict access to EHCPs.

The problem, it said, was that the current system relies on “bureaucratic evaluations, eligibility thresholds, and means-testing methods resulting in dehumanising experiences”.

Its position was backed by Disability Action Haringey, which said this week that it “stands in solidarity with ALLFIE and echoes their concerns”.

ALLFIE’s chair, Navin Kikabhai, said the current “gatekeeping” system was “broken and fragmented” and was “desperately requiring a radical rethink and shift in practice”, even though EHCPs have enabled some disabled children and young people to access mainstream education.

He said: “We know that the current system pitches family against family for resources, often favouring those families who have the financial means to pursue legal representation.

“Why should a disabled child or young person need a plan to go to their local school or college alongside non-disabled peers, their friends, siblings and neighbours?

“This is a social justice and human right issue.

“We need a complete shift in thinking and practice.

“We need an Inclusive Education Act that makes it illegal for mainstream schools and colleges to refuse admission to a disabled person on the basis of their identity.”

And, he said, the government needed to remove the reservation against article 24 of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities*, phase out all forms of segregated provision, and “commit to a fully inclusive education system”.

He added: “The government must stop playing games with our lives.

“The education of disabled children and young people must not depend on the goodwill or budgets of local authorities.

“Rights are not optional.”

Questioned about the government’s reforms in the Commons this week, education secretary Bridget Philippson said little about its plans, other than promising that children will “get better access to more and strengthened support with a much sharper focus on early intervention” and that Labour would be “investing more in support for children with SEND”.

She added: “The guiding principle of any reform to the SEND system that we will set out will be about better, strengthened and improved support for children both inside and outside special schools.

“We want improved inclusivity and more specialist provision in mainstream schools and absolutely to draw on the expertise of the specialist sector and create the places where we need them.

“There will always be a legal right to the additional support that children with SEND need.”

*This means the UK has reserved the right for disabled children to be educated outside their local community, while an “interpretive declaration” explains that the UK believes the convention allows it to continue to operate both mainstream and special schools

10 July 2025

Minister ignored concerns from disabled advisers, months before publishing cuts bill

A minister ignored concerns about proposed benefit cuts that were raised in a meeting by his own network of disability advisers, months before the government published its ill-fated universal credit and personal independence payment bill.

Minutes of a meeting in March show all nine chairs of the government’s regional stakeholder network (RSN) – most of whom are disabled people – raised concerns about reports of government plans for cuts and reforms to disability benefits.

The quarterly meeting of RSN chairs was held on 10 March, a week before the publication of the government’s Pathways to Work green paper, which announced billions of pounds of cuts to disability benefits, and more than three months before the bill was published.

Two chairs even told Sir Stephen that fewer of their members than usual had attended their latest network meetings because of the stigma, fear and stress around the issue.

Despite the concerns raised by his network chairs, Sir Stephen Timms, the minister for social security and disability, pushed ahead with the plans for billions of pounds of cuts to personal independence payment (PIP) and the health element of universal credit.

That refusal to listen to grassroots concerns led to last week’s backbench rebellion over the PIP cuts, and to further anger this week over cuts to the health element of universal credit that remained in the bill (see separate story).

Sir Stephen’s failure to listen to his own disabled advisers raises fresh concerns over his pledge to co-produce the review of PIP he will be leading, which is expected to report in autumn 2026.

Among those who raised concerns in the meeting, RSN South East chair Chloe Plummer warned Sir Stephen that she would not have been able to remain in work without her PIP, while media speculation and uncertainty about PIP proposals was causing “huge anxiety”*.

Justin Donne, chair of RSN East Midlands, spoke of the “fear around people being pushed back into work and the risk of losing financial help”, according to the minutes.

Louise Mckiernan, chair of RSN West Midlands, said there was a need for clarity around PIP “being a disability rather than work-related benefit” – clarity that ministers repeatedly failed to provide in the following months, while even adding to the confusion – while also pointing out that media speculation about the cuts meant disabled people feared losing their PIP.

RSN London’s Marc Goblot spoke of the “concerns about signalled PIP cuts”, while John McDonald, interim chair of RSN North East, said there was a “real sense of fear” about “potential cuts and being forced into work”.

Carl Suckling, deputising for the chair of RSN East of England, told Sir Stephen that stress caused by media speculation meant disabled people “live in fear of receiving a letter about life changing benefit cuts”.

And he said there was a need for “counter-messaging” from the government in response to the media portrayal of disabled people as “shirkers or spongers who play the system”.

Last month, Disability News Service reported how two disabled leaders had quit the RSN after months – and even years – of “inertia” and a failure to respond to their input, and raising serious concerns about the government’s commitment to listening to disabled people and about the work of the Disability Unit.

*Note: the quotes used in this article are from the government’s minutes, rather than exact comments made by the RSN chairs in the meeting

10 July 2025

Frustration after government only issues partial ban on new floating bus stops

Disabled campaigners have expressed their frustration with ministers after they imposed a “pause” on the most dangerous types of “floating” bus stop but refused to halt the rollout of all such installations.

The National Federation of the Blind of the UK (NFB UK) is among disabled people’s organisations that have campaigned for years to highlight the risks of floating bus stops, particularly to blind and partially-sighted bus-users.

The charity has warned that such infrastructure is “not safe or accessible for blind and visually impaired pedestrians,” and that the designs are “discriminatory”.

It has previously pointed out that the Equality Act has “failed to protect blind, deafblind and visually impaired bus passengers, as well as many other disabled and vulnerable bus passengers from unsafe bus stops”, which it said was “nothing short of a national scandal”.

The announcement of a pause was made by transport minister Simon Lightwood during debate in the committee stage of the bus services (no 2) bill last Thursday.

The government has also promised to issue guidance on the design of floating bus stops within three months of the bill becoming law, but it has ruled out banning all floating bus stops because it believes that could put the safety of cyclists at risk.

Lightwood said the government recognised that “more needs to be done to make these installations accessible to all”.

He said this was why ministers had decided to “instigate a pause on designs [in England] where passengers board and alight directly into a cycle track shared between pedestrians and cyclists”.

These bus stops are known as “shared used bus boarders”, and they expose passengers to the risk of crossing cycle lanes when either boarding or leaving a bus.

But campaigners, including many who are blind and partially-sighted, have also been calling for years for the government to ban the “bus stop bypass” type of stop, where a cycle lane is routed behind the bus stop, creating a bus stop “island”.

This type of floating bus stop also creates significant risks of collisions with cyclists for pedestrians, particularly those who are blind or partially-sighted, and, NFB UK said this week, “renders bus services inaccessible for blind people”.

Lightwood added later in the debate: “This government do not believe that a complete ban on [all] floating bus stops is appropriate, given the need to improve safety for cyclists and to enable more people to cycle.

“The requirement to publish statutory guidance, to which local authorities are required to have regard, will enable the government to set out clearly what is expected of authorities in terms of making floating bus stops accessible.”

Andrew Hodgson, an NFB UK executive council member, said: “We are very disappointed about the outcome following debate in the House of Lords and at committee stage (in the Commons).

“We had hoped for a total ban on future bus-stop bypasses of all types and that all of the existing ones would be taken out.

“We feel that the proposed review of bus-stop bypass design is flawed, as the very people who have installed them will be assessing their future design.”

But the government’s actions were also thrown into confusion when it emerged that the previous week, in answering an oral question in the House of Commons, Lightwood had appeared to promise to pause the installation of both kinds of floating bus stop.

He had told Conservative MP David Reed that ministers had committed to “writing to all local transport authorities asking them to pause the installation of a specific kind of floating bus stop, where passengers get off the bus straight into a cycle lane or an island”.

The Department for Transport told Disability News Service yesterday (Wednesday) that the government would only be pausing shared used bus boarders, but the department had refused to say by noon today if the minister would apologise for his blunder.

10 July 2025

Report suggests five big ideas that could transform disabled people’s mobility

A new report – co-produced with a disabled people’s organisation – has suggested five “big ideas” that could transform disabled people’s mobility.

The Transforming Mobility report aims to ensure disabled people are included when places “become more ambitious in transforming mobility”.

The research was led by Transport for All and disabled members of the charity Sustrans, which works to improve opportunities for walking, wheeling and cycling.

Among the report’s five big ideas is to increase the number of “side road zebra crossings” – painted white zebra strips across a junction but without the flashing lights and zig-zag approach markings – so more drivers give way to disabled people and others waiting to cross the road.

When tested in Greater Manchester, they led to 65 per cent more drivers giving way, providing disabled people and other pedestrians with the space they need to cross a road.

Another of the big ideas is to create accessible “mobility hubs” that would make it easier to walk, wheel or cycle to the bus, train or tram.

The report also suggests taking space away from cars on some streets and making it available instead for walking, wheeling, cycling, and public transport; and cutting the amount of space allocated to car parking to make room for benches, trees, bike parking, and wider pavements.

And it says disabled people should be paid to become members of local access panels, so they can “help shape local transport decisions”.

The report says that mobility in the UK is currently “neither fair nor sustainable, especially for disabled people”, with disabled people experiencing “greater barriers to mobility, including cost, accessibility and safety”.

The project surveyed disabled people across the UK and found that less than half of those who cycled, or travelled by bus or train, viewed these kinds of transport positively, while walking and wheeling was rated negatively by one in five disabled people, including around safety, accessibility and comfort.

The survey also found that four-fifths (78 per cent) of disabled people supported a public commitment from public transport providers to improve the design of trains, buses and trams.

The survey found three-fifths (58 per cent) of disabled people support cutting car use across urban areas to “reduce congestion, speed up buses, and make places more pleasant to walk, wheel and cycle in”, although the report says it is essential that any such plans ensure disabled people who rely on cars do not face barriers to making their journeys with “freedom, dignity, ease and confidence”.

The report’s findings come from a 2024 survey of more than 1,000 disabled people across the UK, carried out by researchers at More in Common, and workshops with disabled people in Birmingham, Edinburgh, and Oxford.

The research was funded by Motability Foundation*.

Dr Ruth Cumming, senior research officer at Transport for All, said: “We all need the freedom to travel – for work, for school, for shopping – and to make those journeys easily and safely.

“Disabled people are often blocked from that.

“Including disabled people as experts in transport and urban planning ensures our requirements are built into developments, creating streets, communities and cities that we can all use and enjoy.”

Tim Burns, head of research at Sustrans, said: “We know disabled people face greater barriers to getting around and accessing the things they need to live well – while also wanting to travel more sustainably.

“Our report highlights tried and tested ideas, increasingly being adopted across the UK.

“Disabled people want transport to change.

“When disabled people are represented, the outcomes are better for everyone.”

*Motability Foundation is a Disability News Service subscriber

10 July 2025

My new book shows exactly why we need the disability movement, says disabled author

A disabled journalist has said she hopes her new book detailing the history of disability activism will show other disabled people how they can fight back against the waves of attacks on their rights and support.

Rachel Charlton-Dailey’s book, Ramping Up Rights: An Unfinished History of British Disability Activism*, was published on Thursday (3 July), just a day after MPs voted on a watered-down bill that will cut billions of pounds a year from disability benefits.

As she says in its introduction, she hopes it will allow disabled people to see “where our movement came from, and why it’s still needed in the 2020s”.

Much of the book describes the non-violent direct action that parts of the movement have used since the late 1980s to draw attention to the struggle against oppression.

In an online interview on Friday with Steve Topple, a journalist with the radical working-class media organisation The Canary, Charlton-Dailey said she believed direct action by disabled people was still essential, at a time when their rights are so clearly under attack.

Partly, she said, that is because of the widespread misinformation about disabled benefit claimants being spread by the media and government.

She said: “More than ever, we do need the disruptive action, but we also need the explaining… we do just need to talk to people and say, ‘you know that’s not true, don’t you?’”

This, she said, is why the new anti-cuts campaigns like Taking the PIP, which she is heavily-involved with, are so important, because they show what is “actually happening”.

Both direct action and campaigns like Taking the PIP are necessary, she said.

“We shouldn’t be building one up more than the other… and we should be the ones who are doing the explaining side.”

Asked by Topple for her “standout” piece of direct action, she points to the successful campaign by the Disabled People’s Direct Action Network (DAN) to ensure that former Tory MP Robert Hayward – who had wrecked an attempt to introduce a disabled people’s civil rights bill, and then lost his seat in 1992 – lost a by-election in the safe Conservative seat of Christchurch, Dorset, in 1993.

DAN activists chased Hayward around Christchurch, ensuring that his would-be constituents knew exactly how he had sabotaged attempts to bring in anti-discrimination legislation.

Charlton-Dailey said: “They chased him around for three days on the campaign trail.

“I would love to do something like that.”

She said all her conversations locally – she lives in Sunderland – were about the cuts to disability benefits, and that it was clear MPs were not listening to their constituents.

She said: “We know just how fucking scared people are, and I think they don’t realise just how much this affects pretty much everybody.

“They want us scared and they want us confused because it means we are less likely to fight back, and we are more likely to accept the bullshit when we are scared and confused and we don’t know how to fight back.”

She said her book was “giving people the ways that they can fight back and the way that they can keep going”.

Asked by Disability News Service where she saw the movement in five years’ time, she said: “Hopefully, stronger and better. I want to hope that we will not need to be where we are now, that we won’t need to be constantly fighting.

“But I think that we’ll just be going from strength to strength and hopefully that we’ll be a lot more unified.

“I’m trying to hope that we don’t need to exist, but we will always have to exist.”

Asked by Topple what the movement could do better when it comes to disability activism, she said: “A lot of it is just inclusion… making sure people are included, making sure there is more provision for a lot of people who can’t go to protests every day.

“It’s making sure we keep up the fight, and keep the pressure on.

“Basically it is just getting involved, trying to get involved as much as you can, like joining your local groups… getting involved online as much as you can, sharing, just talking to people more than anything, and just making sure that we’re getting the truth out there.”

The book – described by Kamran Mallick, chief executive of Disability Rights UK, as “a call to arms”, and by the Guardian’s Frances Ryan as a “much needed take on disability history and our power in protest” – covers events up until March 2025.

She told Topple that so much had happened since March, when she had to stop updating the book ahead of its publication, that from that point until now “it feels like we’ve lived about 20 political cycles”.

Her one regret is over her criticism in the book that there had not been much online disability activism, because in the last few months that has changed.

She said: “Since then, we have had online protests, and we’ve had online communities spring up, out of necessity.

“They needed to spring up, and we needed new life in the movement.”

Since March, she said, all that has changed, with “some really incredible action from disabled people”, and she pointed particularly to the week of action from the new Crips Against Cuts.

Charlton-Dailey said there was “lots of soul-searching” before deciding to write the book, because she questioned whether she was the right person for the task, as she “didn’t really know” about the history of the movement until she started her research.

It was appearing at an event alongside Barbara Lisicki – DAN’s co-founder – that gave her the idea to write Ramping Up Rights.

She said: “I really wanted to take people on the journey and make it as accessible as possible, and make it about the people instead of just dates, dates, dates, dates, dates…”

The book is the first time someone has attempted this kind of history of the British disability rights movement and “bring all of it together”, she said.

As disabled doctor and author Grace Spence Green says, Charlton-Dailey’s book manages to trace “disability justice across generations, yet feels so current and pressing”, and is a “damning indictment of the state’s treatment of disabled people”, while also being “an ode to our creativity, perseverance and resilience”.

Ramping Up Rights: An Unfinished History of British Disability Activism, by Rachel Charlton-Dailey, published by Hurst

10 July 2025

Other disability-related stories covered by mainstream media this week

A frail elderly woman says she was raped after turning to strangers online for help because care was not put in place by her local council when she came out of hospital. The woman said she had requested urgent care from Hammersmith and Fulham council having been sent home from hospital: https://www.mylondon.news/news/west-london-news/elderly-london-woman-raped-after-31946194

10 July 2025

News provided by John Pring at www.disabilitynewsservice.com

UC Bill briefing – in detail

The selection of amendments for debate in today’s Committe of the whole house means there is no way to prevent massive cuts impacting over 800,000 Deaf and Disabled people across the UK by 2029/30 and pushing at least 50,000 into poverty.

Despite the potential devastating impacts to people’s lives, this bill has been rushed through without proper engagement from Deaf and Disabled people or a chance fo MPs to adequately exercise their role of legislative scrutiny. The bill is now unrecognisable from the original draft with changes happening too quickly for MPs to keep up with. The proposals will have only negligible employment impacts, instead pushing Deaf and Disabled people further from employment and into entrenched disadvantage and destitution.

There are a few amendments selected for debate that can make things slightly less worse, although it is now too late to prevent the cuts going without a big enough rebellion against the Government.

We ask that all MPs vote for amendments NC8, NC11 and 38.

Key Points:

• The remaining cuts to Universal Credit (UC) will still impact over 800,000 people and leave Disabled people in poverty
• Even with Government concessions, proposals to cut UC will entrench inequality among Disabled people who are already most at risk of poverty and destitution
• The new Severe Conditions Criteria (SCC) is too restrictive, covering just 8% of those found to have Limited Capability for Work and Work related Activity (LCWRA – often commonly referred to as “unfit for work”). This will leave people at substantial risk exposed to sanctions and trap others away from accessing work at all.There has not been enough information provided for MPs to make an informed decision and the process has been too quick for meaningful engagement with Deaf and Disabled people and our organisations
• This Bill has been rushed through, is unrecognisable from it’s original version and requires more scrutiny
• We urge all MPs to vote against Government amendment 2 to ensure tha as many Deaf and Disabled people as possible will not be adversely affected by this bill.

Proposals still in the bill

There are a number of proposals remaining in the bill which will massively harm Deaf and Disabled people. Even with the removal of the PIP eligibility criteria, at least 50,000 people will be in poverty as a result of these proposals. We are particularly concerned about:

• Halving out of work disability benefit payments for new claimants found unfit for work. Under proposals in the bill, the “health” element of UC for new claimants found to have Limited Capability for Work and Work Related Activity (LCWRA) will be cut for new claimants from the current rate of £423.27 per month to just £217.26 per month from April 2026. Although they will benefit from the increase in the standard allowance, they will still lose an average of £2735 per year from this cut.^[1] Existing claimants found to have LCWRA will meanwhile carry on getting the full rate, creating a two tier system. This cut will impact 754,000 Disabled people by 2029/30 according to the government’s own figures.^[2]

• Setting up a new “severe conditions” group and additional premium. To be found to have a “severe condition”, new LCWRA claimants will have to prove their condition is “constant”. Claimants in this group, or who access UC through special measures for those with terminal illness at the end of life, will be eligible for an additional premium on top of their “health” element of UC. This will give them the same amount per month as existing LCWRA claimants. This is expected to protect just 10% of those who are found unable to work due to disability.^[3]

• Freezing the “health” element on top of the standard allowance payments for Disabled people found to have Limited Capacity for Work (LCW) before 1 April 2017. This is significant because prior to this date there were to different levels of UC “health” element: the LCW and the LCWRA. Claimants were allocated to these groups according to the outcome of their Work Capability Assessment. This will impact 76,000 Disabled people.^[4]

Trapping in poverty

It is unlikely that new LCWRA claimants impacted will be able to make up the significant financial loss proposed in the bill regardless of how much disability employment support they receive due to:

• Frequency and duration of untreatable levels of pain, distress and fatigue
• Hours each week spent of necessity in medical appointments, therapy and self-management each week
• Frequency of illness, hospitalisations and operations exceeding employers’ staff performance rules
• Lack of treatment and support essential in order to engage in paid work, due, for example, to NHS waiting times, lack of available social care and mental health support, and the Access to Work backlog
• Lack of available and suitable jobs with employers able to meet the support needs of Disabled employees

Currently 50% of Disabled people who receive LCWRA but not PIP are unable to meet basic needs and 89% are in a low income household. Even a freeze on their benefits over time becomes a cut to their income and risks further entrenching poverty.^[5]

Work is no longer a secure route out of poverty in the UK. Reports show that there are high levels of in-work poverty in the UK. Those particularly at risk are people in either part-time or freelance employment, where Disabled workers are overrepresented.

It is unlikely that any Deaf and Disabled people in the LCWRA group will be able to earn enough through paid employment to move off benefits altogether. Employment outcomes attached to this bill will not be published until October 2025.

The perversity of a “severe conditions” group

The creation of a new “severe conditions” group will trap Disabled people in benefit dependency in a way that the current system doesn’t.

Under the current system, Disabled claimants in the LCWRA group are able to try flexible part time hours of working on a self-employment basis. This involves reporting hours and income each month. The Department for Work and Pensions calculates monthly UC payments accordingly.

Under the new system, anyone in the severe conditions group will be unable to even try any hours of work or work related activity. Because if they did, it would disprove their eligibility to be in the group. Inadequate benefit payments for new claimants in the LCWRA group will lead to deterioration and higher levels of support need for many. In this way they may end up meeting the severe conditions criteria and then not have a way back to accessing paid work.

Crucial, missing information

These proposed cuts have not had the attention they deserve because of the understandable focus on PIP.

Key information relating to impacts and wider cost implications of the proposed cuts is dangerously lacking.

The only information that has been provided on poverty impacts of these cuts are predicated on previous Conservative policy going through, which it did not.

We still do not know what the poverty impacts of cutting the incomes of some of the poorest will have.

There is still no estimation of employment outcomes and therefore no indication of how this would impact poverty levels.

These measures in themselves could be very costly.

We have received no information on the projected costs of increased Mandatory Reconsiderations and appeals. In 2022, appeals were estimated to cost the Government over £1,000 per appeal^[6] and in 2025 it was found that since 2013 over £14 million had been spent on staffing costs alone to address appeals alone.^[7]

With widespread reassessments likely to result in large-scale appeals it is a major oversight to not include estimated costs of the appeals process.

We are also concerned there will also be additional cost pressures on public services and local authorities.

We know that poverty results in poorer health outcomes and a lack of access to support services can result in requiring more expensive care down the line, however, there has been no information provided by the Government on the potential financial implications of public services having to take up the slack to provide for Deaf and Disabled people who have lost access to the full health element of UC.^[8]

Why MPs should not be afraid to vote for and against the amendments that will best benefit Deaf and Disabled people across the UK

Last minute Government concessions have left this bill unrecognisable from what was proposed and the Chancellor will be required to rethink her approach to these reforms. The speed of these changes has left many Deaf and Disabled people unable to engage with the process and there has not been meaningful consultation with us or our organisations to inform the bill. The Green Paper consultation process has been heavily criticised and the simultaneous green paper consultation and UC Bill has left people confused about what is being consulted on and what proposals are in which bill.

Even though this bill could have a devastating impact on over 700,000 disabled people across the UK, MPs have not had the time or resources to be able to properly scrutinise this bill. There is no reliable information on what the impact of this bill will be on poverty, no information on employment outcomes, the specifics of the bill is confusing and has been changed by last minute concessions and there has not been enough meaningful engagement with Deaf and Disabled people and our organisations.

However, there is one chance to put this right.

And that is to vote in support of the combination of amendments that we recommend.

^[1] Average loss of £3000 per year minus average gain of £265 per year. See p. 6 https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/67e3fbe29c9de963bc39b4b5/spring-statement-2025-health-and-disability-benefit-reforms-equality-analysis.pdf

^[2] p. 3 https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/bills/cbill/59-01/0267/hcb267_ia_may2025.pdf

^[3] Table 6. https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/bills/cbill/59-01/0267/hcb267_ia_may2025.pdf

^[4] p.10 https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/bills/cbill/59-01/0267/hcb267_ia_may2025.pdf

^[5] Factsheet: Health-related benefit cuts | Joseph Rowntree Foundation

^[6] £1,000 cost per benefits appeal is a massive money saver for DWP

^[7] DWP blows £400 million in taxpayer cash on fighting PIP appeals – Birmingham Live

^[8] MPs are being expected to vote without the figures for these. Poverty impacts of all green paper proposals combined were at least 400,000. The reported number of 250,000 households including 50,000 children as quoted in the Pathways to Work impacts paper was calculated by deducting from the total the number of 150,000 households who it was estimated would have been pushed into poverty by the changes to the WCA proposed by the previous government that never went ahead.

In the last few months we have come together as Disabled people and Disabled people’s organisations to fight against the benefit cuts. After this week’s vote the Government have agreed to remove PIP for now from the Bill but there are still cuts related to Universal Credit and protecting future claimants.

On Wednesday 9^th July we are organising another MP lobby event at parliament on the disability benefit cuts. This one will be smaller than the mass lobby and focused on the Universal Credit bill. We need your help!

When: Wednesday 9^th July from 11 30 am (the debate starts at 1 pm). Please note later time for start.
Where: Westminster Hall, House of commons
What: MP lobby on the Universal Credit cuts

How can you get involved?

We need as many people as possible to write to their MP to invite to meet constituents and attend our lobby. We are encouraging people to Green card their MP on the day to meet with them. We are particularly focused on MPs who voted for the bill on the 1^st July and those who abstained. You can find a full list of MPs here: How your MP voted.

New Claimants for the Universal Credit Uplift will be subject to a £50 cut per week- this means 700,000 Disabled people will be plunged into poverty. We need to come together to protect future claimants. We need you to write to your MP and meet them to share with the harm these cuts will bring.

What is Green carding:

If your MP doesn’t meet with you or you can’t reach them we will be encouraging people to green card on the day. Stewards on the day will explain to you what this will involve – but you would need to queue up on the day at central lobby and fill in a card to the information desk which will be sent to your MP to request a meeting that day. This is a great way to get your MPs attention if you’ve struggled to hear back from them.

Want to volunteer?

We need volunteers to assist Disabled people to fill out their greencards and help them enter parliament. If you are interested in this please email mail@dpac.uk.net

Next steps:

Write to your MP today inviting them to the MP lobby on Universal Credit cuts and join us Wednesday 9^th July from 9 am

End

Demo on the Disability Benefit Cuts to protect future claimants: #BinUCBill

Join us on Wednesday 9th July from 4 pm at Old Palace Yard in Westminster.

The government is continuing with its cuts to disability benefits despite mass opposition. The PIP cuts have been removed for now, but this does not mean we can stop. The Universal Credit Bill as it stands means new claimants will be subject to a £50 cut per week. This cut will leave 700,000 Disabled people plunged into poverty – this is not right. We must protect future claimants and will fight against the Government’s two-tier benefits system. The welfare bill is in tatters, but the cuts proposed will still harm us as a community.

Where: Old Palace Yard, Westminster
When: From 4 pm (the vote is at 7 pm)
What: Disability Benefit Cuts Demo #BinUCBill

We need as many people as possible to attend and show up for our community and future Disabled claimants. If you would like to help steward on the day please email mail@dpac.uk.net

End

Contents

Government offers three clues that it is set to plough ahead with cuts to disability benefits 1

‘Real danger’ that disabled people will not benefit from £39 billion for social and affordable homes 3

Self-driving taxis that are not accessible will be allowed pilot scheme licenses, government suggests 5

Insurance industry silent over whether it lobbied DWP to cut disability benefits 8

We will keep fighting, disabled activists warn DWP as they protest against benefit cuts outside Tate Modern 11

Labour government faces questions over why it stuffed access to elected office committee with Tories 15

Disabled students set to protest over cuts in support 18

Other disability-related stories covered by mainstream media this week 21

Government offers three clues that it is set to plough ahead with cuts to disability benefits

Labour appears set to plough ahead with billions of pounds of cuts a year to disability benefits, after this week’s spending review failed to offer any suggestion of a U-turn.

The government had already given two other major signs that it was not intending to reverse the cuts, even before yesterday’s spending review.

In her statement to MPs, chancellor Rachel Reeves confirmed the government’s U-turn on cuts to winter fuel payments for older people, but she made no mention of disability benefits, and did not mention disabled people or disability.

The Treasury’s spending review document – which sets out the budgets for government departments for day‑to‑day spending until 2028‑29, and until 2029‑30 for capital investment – mentions disabled people or disability just six times in about 43,000 words, and only in connection with planned reforms to the special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) system and in confirming increases in employment support for disabled people.

Asked by Disability News Service whether the chancellor’s failure to mention disability benefits meant there would be no U-turn on the cuts, the Treasury had not commented by noon today (Thursday).

Even before Reeves delivered her statement, the prime minister had misled MPs about the planned cuts to personal independence payment (PIP).

He had been asked in prime minister’s questions by Labour MP Richard Burgon why a Labour government was planning to “balance the books on the backs of disabled people”.

Burgon said that “people who need assistance to cut up their food, to wash themselves, to dress themselves and to go to the toilet will lose the personal independence payments that they currently receive”, and he asked Sir Keir Starmer to “drop these disability benefit cuts”.

But instead of responding to the concerns about cuts to PIP, the prime minister said Labour’s cuts and reforms would be based on the principle that “those who can work should work, that those who want to work should be supported so that they can do so, and that we must protect those with the most severe disabilities who will never be able to work”.

PIP is not an out-of-work benefit, and it can be claimed by disabled people who are in or out of work.

Only last month, work and pensions secretary Liz Kendall misled MPs four times in just 23 minutes by suggesting that the cuts to PIP were linked to supporting disabled people into work.

And in a third sign that the government has no intention of making a U-turn on the cuts laid out in the Pathways to Work green paper, Kendall wrote to the work and pensions select committee this week to confirm that she believes she was right to cut billions from disabled people’s support.

In Monday’s letter to the committee’s Labour chair, Debbie Abrahams – which was published on the day of the chancellor’s statement – Kendall defended the cuts to PIP and said again that the increase in the number of claimants was “not sustainable if we want our welfare safety net to exist for those who need it in future”.

She also referred to the “urgently needed changes to the PIP eligibility criteria”.

Kendall also made it clear that her position had not changed on the planned cuts to the universal credit disability payment, because of the “perverse incentives” in the system.

She said at the end of the letter: “We will not avoid or delay the decisive action needed to transform the system, so it helps people in the best way possible and ensures our welfare state is sustainable for the future.”

Meanwhile, the spending review document says the Department for Education will set out the government’s “intended approach to SEND reform” in a schools white paper in the autumn.

It says this will “make the system more inclusive and improve outcomes for all children and young people”.

It is looking increasingly likely that these will be major reforms, with The Law Society Gazette reporting yesterday that SEND tribunal judges “have been told their services will not be needed in future”.

Although not mentioned in the chancellor’s speech, the spending review document also mentions an increase of more than £4 billion a year in funding for adult social care by 2028-29, compared with this year, with further details to be announced “shortly”.

But the Liberal Democrats said the spending review document had revealed “a potential black hole for social care”.

Daisy Cooper, the party’s Treasury spokesperson and deputy leader, said: “This spending review was a missed opportunity to repair the damage done by the Conservatives and finally deliver on the promise of change.

“Behind the smoke and mirrors is a potential black hole for social care as local government budgets remain at breaking point.

“Putting more money into the NHS without fixing social care is like pouring water into a leaky bucket.”

Her party said the spending review document showed that, while local government has a statutory responsibility to provide social care, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government was facing a 1.4 per cent real terms cut over the course of the spending review.

12 June 2025

‘Real danger’ that disabled people will not benefit from £39 billion for social and affordable homes

Fresh concerns have emerged about the government’s commitment to solving the accessible housing crisis after the chancellor announced a £39 billion investment in social and affordable homes, but ignored disabled people’s urgent needs.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves stressed in her spending review that these would be “homes built for working people”, in a statement that failed to mention disabled people.

The spending review document says the new funding will provide “the biggest boost to social and affordable housing investment in a generation”, with £39 billion for a successor to the Affordable Homes Programme over the 10 years from 2026-27 to 2035-36.

It also says: “A major shortage of housing is one of the country’s biggest blockers to growth, limiting people’s ability to access well-paid jobs and constraining the growth of the country’s most productive towns and cities.”

But there is no mention of what measures the government will take to ensure these homes will be accessible to disabled people, and whether a significant proportion will be built to be suitable for wheelchair-users.

Last July, in one of the Labour government’s first major announcements, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government failed to mention the accessible housing crisis in its consultation on reforms to England’s National Policy Planning Framework.

And Labour ministers – including housing secretary and deputy prime minister Angela Rayner – failed to make any commitment to toughening accessibility standards on new-build homes, despite announcing a string of new housing measures, at their annual party conference last September.

Labour promised Disability News Service at the conference that it would set out its policies on accessible housing “shortly”, but nearly nine months later it has failed to do so.

It is now nearly three years since a pledge by the last Conservative government – which was never fulfilled – to take action to address the shortage of accessible homes.

It had promised to consult on new rules that would have forced all new homes to be built to the M4(2)* standard of accessibility, except for cases where this was “impractical and unachievable”.

Mikey Erhardt, campaigns and policy officer for Disability Rights UK (DR UK), said: “The promise of a huge injection of cash is welcome, but without the government committing to improving the accessibility standards of new-build homes, there’s a real danger that disabled people won’t benefit.

“The promise to build new homes is not enough; it fails to tackle the here and now of cold, inaccessible and expensive homes.

“The spending review also made clear that the government will continue to force thousands of disabled people into the most dangerous of choices: heating or eating, paying rent with their social security payments and risking going without to keep a roof over their heads.”

Erhardt said the government had “no serious plans” to bring down the cost of “ever-spiralling rents”.

He said: “How much will local authorities have to fork out to private landlords to pay to house people in temporary accommodation, as a consequence of the government’s failure to build accessible homes?”

And he said DR UK continued to be shocked that, while “talking up its investment in housing”, the government was moving forward with cuts to the financial support that disabled people rely on.

These include government plans to cut the disability element of universal credit by almost £50 a week for new claimants and freeze it for current recipients, and increase thresholds for PIP eligibility, which he said will “undoubtedly drive disabled people into even deeper poverty and put us at risk of homelessness”.

Inclusion London welcomed the increased funding for the Affordable Homes Programme (AHP) but said it remained “deeply concerned that the programme does not go far enough to address the acute shortage of accessible, social rent housing in London and across the country”.

An Inclusion London spokesperson said: “The AHP does not only provide grant funding to support housing providers to build social rent homes but also other so-called ‘affordable’ tenures such as shared ownership housing which is not affordable for the majority of disabled Londoners.

“The government must significantly invest in building the social rent homes that Deaf and disabled people need.

“We are also concerned that the government has agreed to allow social housing rents to raise annually by one per cent above [inflation] for the next 10 years, doubling the amount announced last year.

“Disabled people are reliant on social rent due to the security and affordability this tenure provides.

“Increasing social rent in the same year the government is proposing devastating disability benefit cuts, will disproportionately impact disabled people and push many of us even further into poverty.”

She added: “Currently, one in five disabled people in social housing and one in three in private rented housing are living in inaccessible homes.

“The announcement today fails to address this.

“We once again call on the government to take national action and ensure that all new-build homes have to meet the M4(2) adaptable and accessible homes baseline standard, and that at least 10 per cent of all new-build homes have to meet the wheelchair-user standard M4(3).

“Without doing so, any large-scale house building programme will fail to meet current and future housing requirements and will build inaccessibility into England’s housing stock.”

The Treasury had failed to comment by noon today (Thursday) on why there was no mention of the accessible housing crisis in the spending review statement and document.

*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

12 June 2025

Self-driving taxis that are not accessible will be allowed pilot scheme licenses, government suggests

Companies will be allowed to launch self-driving taxis and minibuses in pilot schemes in England as early as next spring even if the vehicles are not accessible to disabled people, the government has suggested.

A disabled peer who raised concerns about the issue in the Lords last year, Baroness [Sal] Brinton, said yesterday (Wednesday) that she was “very, very concerned” and planned to question the government about its position.

She spoke out after the Department for Transport (DfT) announced that it had brought forward the launch of pilot projects of self-driving vehicles to next spring, subject to a consultation on regulations later this summer.

But the press release announcing the move said the “key priorities” of the pilots would be “cutting-edge innovation, regulation and road safety”.

It made no mention of accessibility, including access for wheelchair-users, the need for on-board audio-visual announcements, the accessibility of apps used to book journeys, and physical infrastructure such as kerbs and drop-off points.

DfT said firms would be able to pilot small-scale “taxi- and bus-like” services without being monitored or controlled by a human for the first time, before a potential wider rollout when the Conservative government’s Automated Vehicles Act is implemented in the second half of 2027.

The act, which became law last year, provides a legal and safety framework for the introduction of automated vehicles.

The government believes self-driving vehicles could help reduce deaths and injuries on the roads, add new public transport options in rural areas, and have the potential to improve mobility, accessibility and independence for those who cannot drive, including many disabled and older people.

But there were only two fleeting mentions of accessibility in this week’s DfT announcement.

Last year, two disabled peers – Liberal Democrat Baroness Brinton and Conservative Lord [Chris] Holmes – warned that the act must not be allowed to create new access barriers for disabled people.

When asked this week by Disability News Service (DNS) why the key priorities of the pilot schemes did not include accessibility, and what measures ministers were taking to ensure that the pilots would be accessible to all disabled people, DfT initially declined to produce a statement.

DfT did say that operators had taken a range of different approaches to ensure accessibility in trials with a safety driver, but it did not say what those approaches were.

The government also said that conditions – which can include references to accessibility – can be attached to the permits that will be needed to operate automated passenger services.

And once the permit has been granted, the transport operator will have to publish reports showing the steps taken to meet the needs of older or disabled passengers. 

But these reports will only be published after the permit has been granted.

The department claimed it was working with a range of stakeholders and experts, including the Disabled Persons Transport Advisory Committee, and would carry out further engagement with disabled people and representative groups through a consultation this summer.

After DNS asked why there was no obligation for the pilots to be accessible and why reports on accessibility will only be completed after a permit is granted, DfT produced a statement.

A spokesperson said: “Before pilots deploy a passenger carrying service, the secretary of state must consider, in deciding whether to grant a permit, how the service will help lead to improving understanding of how these services should best be designed and operated for older and disabled people.

“Improving transport for disabled and older people is one of our key priorities, and self-driving vehicles will help boost mobility, accessibility and independence for those unable to drive.

“We will learn from these pilots to better understand what good accessibility looks like for these services.”

DfT also said that more details on guidance for the pilots – including accessibility expectations – would be published in due course.

Baroness Brinton said she and Lord Holmes had failed in their efforts to persuade the Conservative government to amend the automated vehicles bill before it became law to ensure that accessibility was built in from the beginning of any schemes.

Baroness Brinton told DNS, before DfT issued its statement: “I am very, very concerned because the whole point of our amendments was to make sure that accessibility was built in from the start.”

She said the government’s admissions suggested this was now not going to happen.

And she said Labour had followed the last government in appearing to say that they “cannot stop the tech companies” because they are so important to growth.

She will now try to put an emergency question to ministers in the Lords about the government’s announcement.

She said: “I am extremely frustrated because our argument was that now, before they do anything, is the best time to describe what these vehicles must have, because if it’s built in from the start, like with black cabs, then everybody just knows that it has to be accessible.”

Transport for All (TfA), the disabled-led campaigning organisation, said it was concerned by the government’s apparent failure to put accessibility right at the heart of these new pilots.

Emma Vogelmann, TfA’s head of policy, public affairs and campaigns, said: “Department for Transport statistics show only 61 per cent of disabled people hold a full driving licence.

“Our own research found that a lack of a driver is a key barrier to many of us travelling by car.

“Autonomous vehicles are an incredible opportunity to create a transport system that includes disabled people from the start and is accessible to everyone.

“The last government excluded disabled people from the development of self-driving vehicles.

“We refuse to be shut out of yet another transport system.

“It’s imperative that the trials being planned include disabled people, to ensure we can all travel easily and confidently now and in the future.”

12 June 2025

Insurance industry silent over whether it lobbied DWP to cut disability benefits

Major insurance companies – including one that spent years lobbying the government to tighten eligibility for out-of-work disability benefits – have refused to say if they pushed the government to introduce controversial cuts to one of those benefits.

Not one of the seven companies approached by Disability News Service (DNS) agreed to answer questions over the last month on whether they welcomed planned reforms to contributory benefits, including to new-style employment and support allowance (NS ESA).

One of the companies, Unum, spent years pushing reforms that would later be closely linked to the deaths of many ESA claimants and to harming the health of countless others.

Disabled researchers and activists showed in the early 2010s how Unum spent years undermining the social security system to try to boost the market for its own income protection insurance policies.

The government’s Pathways to Work green paper proposes replacing new-style jobseeker’s allowance (NS JSA) and NS ESA – benefits that are only open to those with a certain period of national insurance credits – with a new unemployment insurance, paid at the current ESA rate.

But unemployment insurance will be time-limited, which will mean that disabled people who would currently receive contributory ESA indefinitely – if assessed as having limited capability for work and work-related activity – will only be able to receive the new benefit for a limited period.

After that period has ended – the green paper suggests this could be after six months – they will have to claim universal credit, which is itself being reformed to make the disability-related top-up less generous (although details have yet to be confirmed), and where nearly all disabled recipients are set to face conditions and potential sanctions.

The government says these reforms will make the contributory system “simpler and significantly more pro-work” by removing the difference in treatment between jobseekers and those considered unable to work for health or disability reasons, but also removing the “financial incentive to be considered unable to work”.

It will also mean that “almost all disabled people and people with long-term health conditions” who receive the new unemployment insurance would have to take part in “tailored employment support”, although it claims there will be “appropriate exemptions”.

But the introduction of these reforms, and the greater pressure on newly-disabled people to engage with the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), are likely to increase demand for disability insurance (otherwise known as income protection) policies sold by some of the country’s biggest insurance companies.

These policies provide a regular income if someone is unable to work due to disability, illness or injury.

It is likely that at least some insurance companies will have pushed Labour and previous governments to introduce these reforms, something DWP failed to deny this week.

But when DNS approached seven prominent insurance companies selling these policies in the UK, none of them would discuss the government’s reforms or say whether they had lobbied DWP ministers or civil servants to introduce such policies.

Unum said that it “won’t be able to provide commentary for your article” as its communications team was “pretty swamped at the moment”.

Aviva said it was “not something that we would comment on”.

Royal London said it had “not been able to find someone to cover these questions for you”.

A Zurich spokesperson said: “As far as I’m aware we haven’t engaged with any lobbying.”

When asked to check this with senior people in the organisation, and to comment on the reforms, she did not respond further.

Legal & General did not respond to repeated requests to comment.

Vitality said that it would “not be able to share any comments this time”.

And LV= Life and Pensions did not respond to repeated requests to comment.

This week, DWP refused to say if it was lobbied by the insurance industry to introduce the changes, or if it believed the industry would benefit from its cuts and reforms to contributory benefits.

But the department did insist that it had not been influenced by insurance companies.

It is also unclear what will happen to existing claimants of NS ESA and NS JSA.

Asked in a written question by SDLP MP Claire Hanna how many current recipients of contributory ESA ministers expected to transfer to the new unemployment insurance, Sir Stephen Timms, the minister for social security and disability, said this week: “No decisions have yet been made about transitioning existing claimants of NS ESA and NS JSA to the proposed Unemployment Insurance and therefore an estimate cannot be provided at this stage.”

Edward, a wheelchair-user who took part in Fight4Life’s anti-cuts “die-in” protest outside Tate Modern in London this week (see separate story), and who relies on NS ESA, said the idea that it was going to be replaced was “really scary” and would be “toxic and painful” for a lot of disabled people.

He said it made “perfect sense” that the insurance industry would have been pushing for such changes to contributory ESA.

Disabled researcher Mo Stewart, who did most to raise concerns about Unum’s influence on welfare reform in the early 2010s, said the green paper would “cause a great deal of preventable harm for the chronically ill and disabled community who are unable to work”.

Stewart, who has continued her work through her Preventable Harm Project, following the publication of her book Cash Not Care in 2016, said she believed the consequences of the green paper would be “an increase in the purchase of private income replacement health insurance policies now that the past psychological security of the welfare state has been demolished by successive UK governments”.

She said: “Given that Unum insurance was instrumental in guiding previous social policy reforms… it can’t be much of a surprise to learn that Unum and other corporate health insurance giants refuse to comment on the DWP green paper which guarantees an increase in their profit margins.

“I suspect they will never admit to lobbying for government reforms to line their pockets, but it’s hard to imagine that they would resist the opportunity to influence more social policy reforms which are guaranteed to continue the government-induced public health crisis negatively impacting on those in greatest need.”

Stewart is now working on a new book, Social Policy Abused: The Creation of Preventable Harm, a collection of articles, research papers and reports she says will demonstrate “the government-induced public health crisis generated to move the UK to welfare funded by insurance”.

Ellen Clifford, a member of the national steering group of Disabled People Against Cuts, and award-winning author of The War on Disabled People, said: “Important research by John Pring, Mo Stewart and others has meant we have clear evidence of the role the insurance industry has played in the welfare reform agenda.

“It seems unthinkable that they would have stopped now given the effort put in over the decades and now that the UK government is taking such dramatic steps to destroy the social security system for out-of-work disability benefits, which can only be to their advantage.

“The lack of transparency is an indictment on our so-called democracy and refusal to comment can only fuel fears that big business is pulling the strings and doing their best to ensure politicians put profit before people.”

Unum’s links with the UK government date back to the 1990s, when Peter Lilley, social security secretary in John Major’s Conservative government, hired senior Unum executive John LoCascio to offer advice on how to cut the number of claimants of long-term sickness benefits*. 

A submission to the Commons work and pensions committee in 2002 by a director of Unum – then known as UnumProvident – called on the Labour government to “ensure both that work always pays more than benefits, and more importantly that it is clearly seen to do so”.

In 2011, Unum launched a major UK marketing campaign to promote the need for income protection insurance policies, just as the Conservative-led coalition began its three-year programme to reassess about 1.5 million existing claimants of old-style incapacity benefit through the new work capability assessment (WCA).

Research by public health experts from the Universities of Liverpool and Oxford later linked that reassessment programme with about 600 suicides in just three years.

Unum has previously dismissed claims that it pushed the government to introduce the WCA system.

*The Department: How a Violent Government Bureaucracy Killed Hundreds and Hid the Evidence, DNS editor John Pring’s book on the years of deaths linked to DWP, is published by Pluto Press

12 June 2025

We will keep fighting, disabled activists warn DWP as they protest against benefit cuts outside Tate Modern

Disabled people have warned the Labour government that they will “not go quietly” and plan to keep fighting its plans to cut spending on their benefits by billions of pounds a year, as they staged a dramatic “die-in” outside a London landmark.

The protest outside the Tate Modern art gallery on the south bank of the Thames – led by disabled actors and artists – was held to remember all those who have died because of cuts and all those who might die if the government’s cuts go ahead.

There was also a parallel protest online, with disabled people contributing pictures of their own die-ins with homemade placards.

Disabled writer and actor Polly Wiseman, one of the organisers of the Fight4Life protest, told activists gathered outside Tate Modern on Tuesday that they had all gathered there in “fear and sorrow and solidarity, but mostly in anger”.

She said the lives of disabled people were at risk from the “most heinous disability cuts any of us have ever seen”.

The Fight4Life campaign was set up by disabled people who will be directly affected by the cuts to universal credit and PIP and are determined to fight back.

Tamm Reynolds, who performs as Midgitte Bardot, told protesters that she believed disabled people had so far been “a bit too polite and a bit too understanding” and needed to “start being unreasonable” and “start kicking back”.

Another disabled activist, Priscilla Eyles, said the government had failed to “reckon with how we will fight back” and that Labour had proved to be even worse than the last Conservative government.

She said the cuts were “an intersectional issue”, and that the government’s cuts to Access to Work “shows you all you need to know about how much they care about whether we actually work or not”.

Ian Jones, co-founder of the WOWpetition, spoke of the demands he and others had made of the coalition government in the 2010s to carry out a cumulative assessment of the impact of the austerity cuts on disabled people.

He said Labour had supported those campaigns, and he said it was also important to remember that disability benefit deaths had started under a Labour government, and he pointed to the suicide of Stephen Carré in January 2010.

He said: “The first coroner’s report landed on Yvette Cooper’s* desk.

“Labour started the cull of us, let’s stop them finishing it.”

Another disabled activist, Michael, said he would no longer be entitled to personal independence payment (PIP) if the government cuts become law.

He said the “meagre amount of £290 a month makes my life go from a miserable no-reason-to-exist to being able to do little things that give glimmers of hope”.

Daniel Hooks told the protest that cuts to disability support “cost lives” and that many disabled people have been “marginalised and separated from society, but we won’t go quietly”.

Paul Atherton, who said he had been fighting DWP’s systems for more than 20 years, including a successful two-year judicial review battle to force the department to communicate with him by email, said it had been hugely expensive for the government to fight his case.

He said: “If the government is serious about cutting costs, look after us, don’t fight us.”

Edward, a wheelchair-user, said the cuts were “absolutely disgusting”.

He said: “The government is coming after disabled people in a big way.”

And he said disabled people were struggling to survive even before the cuts, and there was an “enormous gap” between what is provided through PIP and the much higher disability-related costs disabled people face.

He said: “If you take away vital money from people… it will only force more people into poverty.”

Edward said he used his PIP for medication that costs hundreds of pounds a month, which he would not be able to afford if he lost his PIP, and this would leave him unable to consider working.

Arti Dillon, a member of the Unite union and Disabled People Against Cuts, said disabled people had lost so much over the last 15 years and “we have to keep standing up, and it’s so tough”.

She said the knock-on effects of the cuts would worsen the crises in social care and homelessness.

She said: “This is the worst and barbaric side of capitalism.

“They are dividing us racially, disability, trans brothers and sisters and comrades, as much as they can.

“The concentration of wealth is continuing, and they are doing it on the backs of us.”

*Cooper was Labour’s work and pensions secretary from June 2009 until the general election in May 2010

**The Department: How a Violent Government Bureaucracy Killed Hundreds and Hid the Evidence, DNS editor John Pring’s book on the years of deaths linked to DWP, is published by Pluto Press

12 June 2025

Labour government faces questions over why it stuffed access to elected office committee with Tories

The Labour government has refused to explain why more than a third of the members of a new steering group that will target the barriers to elected office faced by disabled people have close links to the Conservative party.

Nearly a year after Labour won a landslide general election, the steering group is one of the first non-employment-related steps the new government has taken to try to improve disabled people’s lives.

The government also announced it will set up a new fund to help with the disability-related costs faced by disabled people who want to achieve elected office, particularly as MPs and councillors.

The cross-party steering group will advise the government on how to boost opportunities for disabled people in seeking to enter elected office and ensure the new fund “is effective in increasing disability representation in future elections”.

But the announcement failed to explain that four of the 13 members of the steering group have played key roles within the Conservative party, while another has a senior role within a thinktank closely linked to the party. 

Just two members of the steering group appear to have links to the Labour party and two to the Liberal Democrats, while others have links with smaller parties or no apparent party political links.

One member, Chloe Schendel-Wilson, is a former head of outreach for the Conservative party and co-founder of the party’s Ability2Win campaign, which was designed to help more disabled Conservatives into elected office.

Another, Barry Ginley, is a former Conservative councillor and deputy chair and former chair of the Conservative Disability Group.

Celia Chartres-Aris is former executive of the Conservative Disability Group and former manager of Richmond Park and North Kingston Conservatives.

And the fourth member linked to the party, Dr Mustafa Mohammed, is co-chair of Ability2Win and chair and founder of Genix Healthcare; he donated more than £400,000 to the Conservative party between 2013 and 2019, either personally or through companies he controls.

Schendel-Wilson, Chartres-Aris and Mohammed are all current or former directors of the Disability Policy Centre (DPC) – and were its three founding directors – although the centre has never disclosed its funding sources.

After the thinktank launched, it had to remove the publications page from its website after a disabled campaigner pointed out that the only links on the page were to articles published on the Conservative Home website.

Schendel-Wilson claimed again this week that DPC was a “cross-party, independent think tank, and [is] not affiliated with any political party”.

A fifth member of the government’s new steering group, Dr Mark Carew, is an assistant professor at the International Centre for Evidence in Disability at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, but he is also a non-executive director at the Disability Policy Centre, although Schendel-Wilson stressed that he has no affiliation with the Conservative party.

Asked why a Labour government had appointed so many disabled people with links to the Conservative party to the steering group, a spokesperson for the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) refused to comment and suggested that Disability News Service contact the Labour party.

DWP also refused to say how much money the government expects the fund to receive every year, and when it expects the fund to go live.

And it refused to say if the Disability Policy Centre had disclosed the source of its funding to the government.

Kathy Bole, chair of Disability Labour and another member of the steering group, said she was “dismayed” to hear that there were so many members with Conservative links, which she said “does feel a bit strange”.

She said many disabled people with current or former links to Labour “would not run for office as they don’t trust in the direction which the party is going in” because the party “has strayed from its long-held set of values”.

She said: “If this steering group is incompatible with my ideals on how things have to change, I will step down.

“I am hoping this project has the ability to create positive change, but I will wait to be convinced.”

David Buxton, a Liberal Democrat member of the steering group, said he was “surprised” by the number of Conservatives on the steering group.

He said: “It would be good to see a natural and sensible approach from the Labour government minister, one that ensures fair and equal representation of disabled people from each main political party.”

But he said he was “very pleased” that the government had resurrected the Access to Elected Office Fund.

He assisted a Liberal Democrat minister during the coalition government in setting up the first Access to Elected Office Fund in 2012, following Liberal Democrat pressure on its Conservative coalition partner.

The fund was scrapped by the Conservatives after the 2015 general election, and was replaced in 2018 with the temporary EnAble fund in response to legal action taken by Buxton and two other disabled politicians who had warned that the failure to reopen it breached the Equality Act.

EnAble eventually covered the 2019 English local elections, the May 2020 local and police and crime commissioner elections, which were postponed to 2021 because of the pandemic, and retrospective funding for applicants who stood in the 2019 elections to the European Parliament.

The last government had been promising to set up a replacement for three years until it lost power at the general election last July.

Buxton said there was now a “genuine opportunity to sit down and have a proper, constructive discussion on establishing the fund as a permanent resource, no longer a pilot or temporary measure”.

When he stood for parliament in East Hampshire in December 2019, he spent more than £5,000 on British Sign Language interpreters, mostly out of his own pocket, with some help from family and friends.

He said: “This is not the kind of financial burden candidates should bear.

“Candidates should be able to spend their funds on campaign resources to reach voters, not on accessibility costs.

“This must stop once and for all.

“I hope the steering group will work together to establish new funding criteria and availability, enabling Deaf and disabled candidates to confidently stand for public office without financial barriers related to their impairments.

“They should be able to compete on equal footing with non-disabled candidates.”

12 June 2025

Disabled students set to protest over cuts in support

Scores of disabled students are to demonstrate next week in protest at their university’s “discriminatory” decision to secretly introduce cuts to their support.

They say the University of Derby has removed the entitlement to support from many of the disabled students who started their studies in autumn 2024, but it has yet to issue a formal policy explaining its new rules.

The university appears to have told many disabled students starting undergraduate or masters degrees this year that they will no longer be entitled to reasonable adjustments such as extra time in exams or extensions to deadlines.

And campaigners say the university has also told students they will not receive support packages if they only have a single specific learning difficulty such as dyslexia, dyspraxia and dyscalculia.

Despite the concerns, there is still no clarity on the university’s policy on support for disabled students, and how it has changed.

The university – which is believed to be £120 million in debt – is using its commitment to Universal Design for Learning principles to justify its cuts to individual support, arguing that because it is committed to an inclusive learning environment there is less need for many individual packages of support.

This is allowing it to cut the number of individual support packages and save money, at a time when it is facing significant financial challenges.

There are also concerns about the university’s decision to introduce charges for its “Unibus” university bus service – which was previously free – which could have a major impact on disabled students, particularly those with mobility impairments.

The bus service connects the university’s halls of residence and teaching sites across Derby.

Disabled students at the university concerned about the changes have started the Independent Disabled Students Network (IDSN).

More than 60 disabled students – including some who have been forced to leave their course because of the lack of support – have raised concerns about the cuts with the network.

They say the university’s new policies are a clear breach of its duties to provide reasonable adjustments under the Equality Act and are damaging disabled students’ wellbeing, health and academic progress.

And they say the university’s response to the concerns has been marked by “delay, dismissal, or silence”.

A petition calling on the university to “reconsider and reverse this new discriminatory policy” has already secured more than 1,400 signatures, mostly from University of Derby students.

IDSN is set to lead a protest outside the main campus next Friday (20 June) during one of the university’s open days.

James Eames, disability officer for the University of Derby Students’ Union and founder of IDSN, told Disability News Service he started receiving emails from disabled students after he was appointed to the post.

Some of them had had their support cut after they had already started their course at Derby, he said.

Eames, a mental health nursing student who is autistic and has ADHD, said the extensions he had been allowed on assignments were the reason he had not had to repeat a year on his course while he was having to cope with repeated shortages of ADHD medication.

He said: “Almost all of the students this is affecting are coming straight out of school.

“What the university is teaching them is that they shouldn’t stand up for themselves, they don’t deserve equal opportunity and equal access, and they won’t be listened to if they raise concerns, and those lessons are going to stay with them.

“Some of the lessons can’t be unlearned when it’s drilled into people that, at any point, whether it’s your education provider, workplace, or Capita, they can just decide you no longer have access to the support, you no longer have access to the service, and no matter what you do that won’t change.”

One disabled student, Ben White, was told before he started his degree that he would be given a week extra to write his essays, due to being autistic and having long-term mental distress.

When he started the course, he was told the support plan might look different, but it took him six months to discover that the extension had been removed before the start of the year.  

He said: “So far, the new policy has meant disabled students at the University of Derby face further pressure, not less.

“We’re expected to spend our time arranging and attending extra meetings with staff who don’t know how to support us and have no options of how to even if they did.

“It’s shameful that a university is happy to put disabled students further behind in life.”

Another disabled student, Logan, who has just finished the first year of his degree, said he had been assured before starting the course by the student support team that the university would fully accommodate his needs as a student with multiple chronic conditions that cause pain, limit his mobility and cause fatigue, and who has experience of mental distress.

But the support he has experienced has been poor quality, and at the start of the academic year he learned the university would only consider allowing him extra time and extended deadlines if he started to struggle with his work.

He said the changes have had “a massive physical and mental effect”, including worsening fatigue, migraines and joint issues, which have led to worsening attendance.

And by April, the lack of support meant he was no longer able to live independently and had to leave student accommodation to live with his partner.

He said the bus changes would “reduce attendance by disabled students and may even contribute to widening the attainment gap between disabled and non-disabled students”, while he was dreading the personal impact as he cannot walk to university and cannot afford to pay for the bus.

In response to the concerns raised by its disabled students, the university said it provided “adjustments in line with our duties under the Equality Act as our learning and teaching is inclusive by design, and the requirements of the Equality Act are built into everything we do”.

It said it “sent information to new and current students between July and September 2024, and we held a Q&A Forum on the changes in February 2025, alongside the union of students, for students to voice concerns and ask questions”.

It insisted that it had not removed any support for its “students with disabilities” and that its students were “at the heart of everything we do”.

But it later said that the “removal of blanket extensions is only applicable to new students”.

And it said that “agreed extended deadlines may be applied for any student if the diagnosis, assistive technology, and disabled students’ allowance will not bridge the gap”. 

Although it did not confirm that it was £120 million in debt, it said today that it had “not cut any services, in fact we have invested heavily in our disability services”, and that its debt was “a reflection of the strategic investment in our estate” and was “balanced by cash and investments totalling over £150 million”.

A spokesperson had said earlier: “Historically we applied a blanket approach whereas now we are improving our support and providing a bespoke service which aims to ensure each student has what they need to thrive.

“This ensures our students receive enhanced support, tailored in line with their individual needs.

“The option of providing extensions to deadlines or extra time in exams, remains for those students with a disability for whom this is an appropriate support mechanism.

“All of the changes introduced were co-designed with students and informed by best practice from across the sector.

“It is early days, but current data indicates that the change has been successful in delivering improved outcomes for students with a disability.”

She said the decision to re-introduce charges for the Unibus service was “developed following consultation with our students and… will help towards our environmental sustainability goals”, while the bus costs £2 a journey.

She said: “This change brings us in line with other universities and incentivises walking the short distances between campuses for those who are able.

“Disabled students may be entitled to support with travel via certain government benefits and can contact our disability advisers who can provide advice and guidance on how to access this.

“We are working with the Union of Students to ensure that all those in need of support understand what is available and how to access it.”

12 June 2025

Other disability-related stories covered by mainstream media this week

Tens of thousands more people will be pushed into poverty by the government’s social security cuts than previously feared, a major foodbank charity has warned. Trussell has claimed that 340,000 people in disabled households will be forced into severe hardship by the end of the decade: https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/disability-cut-impact-could-even-35357184

Parents are demanding answers over how a paedophile was able to abuse potentially dozens of disabled children while working as a teaching assistant. Daniel Clarke may have targeted “well over 81” vulnerable young people over a decade, according to detectives overseeing a major West Midlands Police investigation: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c989qrd648go

MSPs have unanimously passed legislation which will allow people in care homes to receive visits from a named loved one, even in restricted measures. The care reform (Scotland) bill will also introduce changes to social care procurement and a new right to breaks for unpaid carers. Plans to introduce a national care service, which were initially part of the bill, were dropped in January after unions withdrew support and a number of health boards and care organisations expressed concerns: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cje78kqnj1jo

Disability benefit cuts planned by the UK government will disproportionately impact people in Wales, campaigners have said. Research has estimated that 190,000 people – six per cent of the population – could have their incomes slashed by up to 60 per cent by the end of this parliament if eligibility for personal independence payment is tightened as proposed: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/jun/08/disability-benefit-cuts-will-affect-wales-disproportionately-campaigners-say

Thousands of people have marched through central London calling for an end to public service and social security cuts. People’s Assembly, which organised the demonstration, called on the government to “tax the rich and their hidden wealth to fund public services”. It brought together trade unionists, health, disability, housing and social security campaigners with community organisations under the slogan: No More Austerity 2.0: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/jun/07/anti-austerity-march-london-labour-starmer-cuts

12 June 2025

News provided by John Pring at www.disabilitynewsservice.com

Contents

DWP hides truth from coroner on exactly what happened in lead-up to Jodey Whiting’s suicide 1

Call for public inquiry into deaths after coroner rules suicide was ‘triggered’ by DWP 3

Coroner finds DWP’s decisions and safeguarding failings were ‘trigger’ for suicide of Jodey Whiting 6

Union activists applaud challenge to minister over billions of pounds of cuts to disability benefits 9

Activists consider legal action after DWP cancels only face-to-face benefit cuts consultation event in Wales 12

Beresford’s book shows how disability movement can be part of ‘antidote’ to neoliberalism 14

Rail travel has become less accessible since pandemic and cost-of-living crises, researchers are told 16

Other disability-related stories covered by mainstream media this week 17

DWP hides truth from coroner on exactly what happened in lead-up to Jodey Whiting’s suicide

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has hidden the truth from a coroner about its role in a disabled woman’s suicide, allowing ministers to avoid having to explain how they would prevent more benefit claimants taking their own lives.

Helga Swidenbank, DWP’s director for accessibility, disability services and disputes resolution, was chosen by the department to give evidence on its behalf this week in the long-awaited second inquest into the death of Jodey Whiting in February 2017.

The inquest found that DWP’s wrongful decision to stop Whiting’s benefits – along with a string of safeguarding failures – was the “trigger” for her to take her own life.

Coroner Clare Bailey found that Whiting’s “deteriorating” state of mental health had been “precipitated” by the withdrawal of her out-of-work disability benefits (see separate story).

But Swidenbank’s evidence helped persuade Bailey not to write a prevention of future deaths (PFD) report, which would have obliged DWP to explain in writing how it would prevent further such tragedies.

During the inquest, Swidenbank, who only joined DWP in 2022, failed to answer key questions from barrister Jesse Nicholls, who was representing Whiting’s family.

DWP has refused to tell the family, and their legal team, whether it ever carried out a secret internal process review (IPR) into the circumstances leading up to the death, even though its guidance suggests it almost certainly will have done so.

But when Swidenbank was asked by Nicholls on Monday to confirm if an IPR was carried out into Whiting’s death, she said she didn’t know and would have to ask colleagues.

During Monday’s inquest, at Middlesbrough’s Teesside Justice Centre, Swidenbank declined to comment several times when asked key questions about Whiting’s case and the procedures in place at the time of her death.

Asked why both DWP and Maximus – the private sector contractor paid to carry out work capability assessments – had failed to deal with Whiting’s request for a work capability assessment to be carried out in her home, she said: “I’m not able to comment on that.”

Asked by Nicholls if anyone had ever asked the DWP decision-makers and call-handlers who dealt with Whiting’s benefit claim “how this happened”, she said she didn’t know.

And asked if DWP had identified if there were problems at the time with the “decision-makers’ guide” – the guidance for DWP staff who make decisions on benefit claims – she said: “I can’t comment on that.”

Swidenbank said she believed there had been a “culture shift” within DWP since 2017 towards becoming “much more compassionate” rather than being “process-driven” at the time of Whiting’s death, although she said the department still had “more work to do”.

She said DWP was “deeply sorry” for its failings at the time, and accepted the findings of an Independent Case Examiner report that found in 2019 that the department had failed five times to follow its own safeguarding rules in the weeks leading up to her death.

Swidenbank also said DWP had launched new customer experience standards – which were set up in 2023 – to “test how our teams are working”.

But she failed to tell the inquest that an internal survey last year of how they were being applied found that DWP staff were failing in two out of five cases to meet those standards.

Jonathan Dixey, the barrister representing DWP, said there was “a lot of work going on” within the department, including a public consultation on whether DWP should have a statutory safeguarding duty.

He said the department accepted that further improvements could be made, and that it would be responding to a new report by the Commons work and pensions select committee on “safeguarding vulnerable claimants” within DWP.

But Nicholls later told the coroner that even though it was more than eight years since Jodey Whiting’s death, there were a “substantial” number of matters that caused “ongoing concern” about the risk of future deaths linked to DWP.

He said: “There still remains ongoing concerns about the risks of vulnerable benefits claimants dying on the termination of their benefits and related processes.”

He said a number of Swidenbank’s replies were either that an answer was “not one that I can give you” or that DWP was “awaiting the outcome of the department’s response to the select committee’s investigation”.

He said: “That is not a basis for not making a PFD report. Quite the opposite.”

But Bailey told Monday’s inquest that she would not be sending a PFD report to DWP.

She said she had heard of “many changes” made by DWP since Whiting’s death, and had been told that actions were still being taken, with new structures being put in place “to support vulnerable claimants”.

And she said the committee’s report would be “keeping this issue front and central for the DWP”.

She said that for these reasons she believed “sufficient steps will be taken”, so there was no need to write a PFD report.

Bailey is not the first coroner to be convinced by DWP’s insistence in a court hearing that it is already addressing failures that have caused the death of a disabled claimant.

Six years ago, two senior DWP civil servants persuaded a coroner not to write a PFD report following the death of Errol Graham – who starved to death when DWP wrongly stopped his out-of-work disability benefits – after providing her with misleading information about a safeguarding review.

More than a decade of evidence now links the department with hundreds – and probably thousands – of suicides and other deaths of claimants.

Bailey was probably unaware that DWP’s chief medical adviser had told MPs in January that PFD reports are crucial in persuading DWP to act on safeguarding issues.

Dr Gail Allsopp said in January that she focuses on PFDs – rather than IPRs – when it comes to learning lessons from suicides and other deaths.

*The Department: How a Violent Government Bureaucracy Killed Hundreds and Hid the Evidence, DNS editor John Pring’s book on the years of deaths linked to DWP, including those of Jodey Whiting and Errol Graham, is published by Pluto Press

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

5 June 2025

Call for public inquiry into deaths after coroner rules suicide was ‘triggered’ by DWP

The mother of a disabled woman who took her own life after the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) wrongly stopped her benefits has called for a public inquiry into the years of deaths linked to the department’s actions.

Joy Dove was speaking to Disability News Service (DNS) after a long-awaited second inquest into the death of her daughter, Jodey Whiting, from Stockton-on-Tees, concluded that DWP’s decision to stop her out-of-work benefits after a string of safeguarding failures was the “trigger” for her to take her own life on 21 February 2017.

But both Dove and her ex-husband, Eric Whiting, told DNS that they do not trust the department to make the changes needed to prevent further deaths of disabled people like Jodey.

Dove said yesterday (Wednesday) that she “100 per cent” supported calls for a public inquiry into the hundreds, and probably thousands, of deaths linked to DWP’s actions and failings, and hoped to carry on campaigning for other disabled people.

She said it was difficult to trust DWP to make the necessary changes after everything they have done over the eight years since Jodey died.

Her message to DWP has not changed, she told DNS: “It should never have happened.”

Dove said she was growing increasingly concerned that many more disabled people would die – just as her daughter had – due to the Labour government’s planned cuts of billions of pounds to disability benefits.

She said: “It’s hard to think that everything is done and dusted in other people’s eyes after the coroner’s decision, but I will always feel the same.

“It’s never going to bring her back. I still miss her so much.”

She is now thinking of writing a second book about her campaigning.

Coroner Clare Bailey concluded on Monday that Jodey Whiting’s “deteriorating” state of mental health had been “precipitated” by the withdrawal of her benefits.

A DWP director told the inquest that there had been a “culture shift” since 2017 towards becoming “much more compassionate” rather than being “process-driven” at the time of her death, although DWP still had “more work to do”.

She said DWP was “deeply sorry” for its failings at the time, and accepted the findings of an Independent Case Examiner report that found in 2019 that DWP had failed five times to follow its own safeguarding rules in the weeks leading up to Jodey Whiting’s death.

The coroner said she had heard of “many changes” made by DWP since her death, and that actions were still being taken by the department, with new structures being put in place “to support vulnerable claimants”.

And she said a new report by the Commons work and pensions select committee on “safeguarding vulnerable claimants” would be “keeping this issue front and central for the DWP”.

She said that for these reasons she believed “sufficient steps will be taken”, and so there was no need to write a prevention of future deaths report, to which the department would have had to respond (see separate story).

The coroner’s ruling follows Dove’s eight-year campaign for justice.

She also worked with DNS for years to campaign for a public inquiry into DWP deaths, including a parliamentary petition in 2019 that secured more than 55,000 signatures.

She and her ex-husband told DNS on Monday that they did not trust DWP to make the changes it had promised to make during the inquest.

Dove said after the inquest: “I have always known that the failings of the DWP led to Jodey’s death and now this has been confirmed by this inquest.

“I feel like I’ve got justice for Jodey, but I still need to carry on.

“I have got my Justice for Jodey page and I am sure people will keep getting in touch.”

She said many others had also lost their lives due to DWP failings, and she said she believed it would “get worse” because of the Labour government’s cuts to disability benefits.

The first inquest in 2017 lasted just 37 minutes and Dove had to fight for years through the high court and the court of appeal for a second inquest, with the support of solicitors Leigh Day.

The coroner at the first inquest had failed to examine DWP’s role in her death or take evidence from any DWP witnesses, and failed to criticise the department.

Dove began her quest for justice even before the first inquest, after approaching the local paper, the Gazette.

She said on Monday that Jodey had been “a perfect daughter” and “would help anyone in need or with problems”.

She said she had always believed that DWP caused her daughter’s death and that it should not have taken an eight-year fight to secure “justice for Jodey”.

She said it had been an “uphill battle trying to get answers and accountability”.

Eric Whiting told the inquest that Jodey “always put others before herself” and was like a “pied piper” because she always had children around her.

He told DNS that the way DWP had conducted themselves had been “appalling”.

He said: “They say time heals. I am still waiting.

“I just hope that the DWP have learnt a few things and start to make a lot of changes so other people and families don’t go through what our family have and are still going through.”

He said the family felt “cheated” and that Jodey “touched the hearts of everyone she knew” and that her smile could “brighten the darkest room”.

He said later that DWP had tried to “sweep things under the carpet and hide this for the last eight years” but today “it has all come out”.

The family’s solicitor, Merry Varney, from Leigh Day, said DWP had been the cause of many deaths.

She said: “Today’s conclusion shows the importance of thorough inquests that properly investigate how a death occurred.

“Without them, the dangerous and sometimes deadly way that those unable to work due to ill-health or disability are treated by the DWP will remain covered up and unchecked.”

She said Joy Dove’s efforts had not only secured “justice for Jodey” but had “shone a light for many others that must now lead to change to prevent further deaths and further families being broken by the acts and the omissions of the DWP”.

*The Department: How a Violent Government Bureaucracy Killed Hundreds and Hid the Evidence, DNS editor John Pring’s book on the years of deaths linked to DWP, including Jodey Whiting’s, is published by Pluto Press

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

5 June 2025

Coroner finds DWP’s decisions and safeguarding failings were ‘trigger’ for suicide of Jodey Whiting

A coroner has found that the decision of the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to wrongly stop a disabled woman’s benefits after a string of safeguarding failings was the “trigger” for her to take her own life.

Coroner Clare Bailey found that Jodey Whiting’s “deteriorating” mental health had been “precipitated” by the withdrawal of her out-of-work disability benefits after she missed a work capability assessment (WCA).

The decision of the coroner follows an eight-year campaign for justice by the family of Jodey Whiting – who died on 21 February 2017 – led by Jodey’s mother, Joy Dove.

The first inquest in 2017 lasted just 37 minutes and Dove fought for years through the high court and the court of appeal for a second inquest, with the support of solicitors Leigh Day.

She also worked with Disability News Service for years to campaign for a public inquiry into DWP deaths, including a parliamentary petition in 2019 that secured more than 55,000 signatures.

The coroner at the first inquest had failed to examine DWP’s role in Whiting’s death, or take evidence from any DWP witnesses, and had failed to criticise the department.

Although the new coroner at this week’s second inquest declined to send a prevention of future deaths report to DWP (see separate story), she became one of the few coroners in the last 15 years to conclude that the department’s actions had triggered the suicide of a benefit claimant.

That conclusion particularly echoes the inquest into the death of Michael O’Sullivan in September 2013, and a coroner’s ruling that the trigger for his suicide was being found fit for work by the department.

Bailey concluded at the end of Monday’s long-awaited second inquest, at Middlesbrough’s Teesside Justice Centre, that Whiting had taken her own life.

She said: “Her actions were in the context of her benefits having been wrongly withdrawn by the DWP in circumstances where there had been five missed opportunities to avoid the significant errors.

“This had the effect of negatively impacting upon her mental health and was the trigger to her [decision to take her own life].”

She said the context of her suicide was “a deteriorating mental state precipitated by the withdrawal of state benefits”, and she concluded that she had probably intended to take her own life.

She had told the inquest that Whiting’s life “was all about her family” and that she had “just loved being a mum”.

The inquest heard that she was the mother of nine adult children and six grandchildren, and that eight years after her death – at the age of 42 – she was still “deeply missed by all of her large family” (see separate story).

Whiting, from Stockton-on-Tees, had multiple health conditions, including chronic pain and longstanding mental distress – including a diagnosis of emotionally unstable personal disorder – and was on eight different medications, including two lots of morphine, a tranquiliser, anti-anxiety medication, and two anti-depressants.

By the time of her death, she was rarely able to leave her flat and was unable to afford a mobility scooter because DWP had cut her personal independence payment.

She had missed a WCA in January 2017 because she had recently come out of hospital for treatment for pneumonia and a cyst on her brain, was not coping well with her correspondence, and had not opened the appointment letter from Maximus, the private sector contractor paid by DWP to carry out assessments.

DWP wrote to her that month to ask her why she missed the assessment.

But Maximus and DWP had both failed to consider her request for the WCA to take place in her own home, while DWP then failed to phone her to check why she missed the assessment, and failed to consider a safeguarding visit, and failed to contact her GP for more information about her health.

On 6 February 2017, Whiting received a second letter from DWP, telling her she had provided no good reason for missing her face-to-face assessment and therefore would be considered fit for work and her employment and support allowance (ESA) would be stopped on 17 February, while her housing benefit and council tax benefit would also stop.

DWP made this decision, even though it had been told in 2014 of her suicidal thoughts, that in October 2016 she had made it clear she was seeing a psychiatrist and was under the care of a mental health crisis team and could not cope with work or looking for work, and that a “vulnerability” red flag had been placed against her name on DWP’s system.

Her mother described to the inquest how her daughter had been left “shocked and distressed” and “felt desperate” and “looked as though she had lost all hope” because she believed she would be left destitute.

On 20 February 2017, the jobcentre rebuffed Dove’s attempt to help her daughter, and when she told her what had happened, she said she saw the hope fading from her eyes and said: “Mum, what am I going to do? I can’t walk out the door, I can’t go and sign on, I can’t breathe.”

The following day, concerned that her daughter was not answering her phone, Dove rang the police and then she and two of Whiting’s daughters – Emma and Amy, who were also concerned – visited her flat and were let in by the concierge.

They found her dead on the sofa, next to a notebook of individual messages she had left for each of her children, and for Joy, and other notes which the coroner said showed “how desperate Jodey felt about her financial situation and her inability to pay her bills”.

Just weeks after she died, on 31 March, in response to an appeal lodged by Dove, DWP overturned the decision to stop her benefits and admitted that she did have good reason not to attend the assessment and had been entitled to ESA.

Dove took up the fight for justice, and complained to the Independent Case Examiner (ICE), which two years later concluded that her benefits should never have been stopped and that DWP had failed five times – a conclusion supported by the coroner – to follow its own safeguarding rules in the weeks leading to her death.

A DWP director told the inquest that the department was “deeply sorry” for its failings at the time and that it accepted the ICE findings.

Psychiatrist Dr Trevor Turner, who was commissioned originally by the family’s solicitors and then by the court, concluded in his second report that DWP’s failings had “substantially affected” Jodey’s mental health and decision to end her own life.

He found that the decision to cut her benefits would have had an “acute and pervasive effect” on her mental state and could be seen to some degree as “the straw that broke the camel’s back”.

He said the key factors affecting her mental state were the psychiatric diagnosis, her chronic pain condition, and the withdrawal of her “necessary benefits”, and that “her mental state at the time of her death, in particular the negative and depressive conditions, would have been substantially enhanced by the experience of her benefits being withdrawn and the seemingly insurmountable difficulties that would present in her day-to-day life”.

Dove said on Monday that Whiting had been “a perfect daughter” and “would help anyone in need or with problems”.

She said she had always believed that DWP caused her daughter’s death and that it should not have taken an eight-year fight to secure “justice for Jodey”.

She said it had been an “uphill battle trying to get answers and accountability”.

Whiting’s father Eric told the inquest that his daughter “always put others before herself” and was like a “pied piper” because she always had children around her.

He told DNS that the way DWP had conducted themselves had been “appalling”.

He said: “I just hope that the DWP have learnt a few things and start to make a lot of changes so other people and families don’t go through what our family have and are still going through.”

He said that DWP had tried to “sweep things under the carpet and hide this for the last eight years” but today “it has all come out”.

The family’s solicitor, Merry Varney, from Leigh Day, said DWP had been the cause of many deaths.

She said: “Today’s conclusion shows the importance of thorough inquests that properly investigate how a death occurred.

“Without them, the dangerous and sometimes deadly way that those unable to work due to ill-health or disability are treated by the DWP will remain covered up and unchecked.”

*The Department: How a Violent Government Bureaucracy Killed Hundreds and Hid the Evidence, DNS editor John Pring’s book on the years of deaths linked to DWP, including those of Jodey Whiting and Michael O’Sullivan, is published by Pluto Press

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

5 June 2025

Union activists applaud challenge to minister over billions of pounds of cuts to disability benefits

Disabled union activists repeatedly challenged a Labour minister at a conference this week on the government’s plans to cut billions of pounds a year from spending on disability benefits.

There was prolonged applause when one disabled delegate, Mark Anthony Bastiani, from the Communication Workers Union, asked Sir Stephen Timms why a Labour government was targeting “the most vulnerable in society” with its cuts rather than “super-rich tax evaders”.

Delegates were questioning the minister for social security and disability – who appeared online rather than in-person – at the annual TUC Disabled Workers’ Conference in Bournemouth.

A delegate from the retail trade union USDAW challenged Sir Stephen to justify the huge cuts to disabled people’s income when one charity had estimated that a maximum of three per cent of disabled people having their benefits cut would benefit from £1 billion in new funding for employment support.

Another delegate, Pat Roche, from the University and College Union, asked what steps Sir Stephen would take to stop the demonisation of disabled people as “lazy, workshy and benefit scroungers”.

And a UNISON delegate asked him if the government had estimated how many disabled people would lose their jobs through plans to tighten eligibility for the daily living part of personal independence payment (PIP), which will mean only those who receive at least four points in at least one of the activities claimants are assessed on will continue to receive it.

In his responses, Sir Stephen mostly repeated previous government lines on the cuts, including the insistence that only 10 per cent of those receiving PIP in November 2026, when DWP starts to review claims under the new rules, will have lost it by 2029-30.

He said the Learning and Work Institute had told DWP that the government’s plans to boost employment support could increase the number of disabled people in work by 165,000.

Sir Stephen described the government’s plans as “bold”.

He said it was a “very fair point” that many disabled people used PIP to stay in work, but he insisted again that “the numbers that are going to be affected by these changes are a good deal less than some people are suggesting”.

Sir Stephen said far fewer disabled people would lose PIP than those who currently do not receive four points in any activity because there would be “a good deal of behaviour change”.

He said this would be at least in part because the healthcare professionals carrying out PIP assessments for the companies contracted by DWP would “reflect” the importance of four points.

He said: “So, there is going to be much more focus on that, the assessors are going to reflect that.”

This suggests that disabled people should trust those working for companies such as Maximus and Capita, which have both been associated with poor quality assessments, the deaths of claimants, and – in Capita’s case – countless dishonest PIP assessments.

In the case of Maximus, its link to the death of Jodey Whiting was exposed again this week during the long-awaited second inquest into her suicide (see separate stories).

Sir Stephen also repeated the government’s position that the increase in PIP spending was “unsustainable”.

He said: “If it is unsustainable then in the end it is going to be the people claiming the benefit who lose out.

“I appreciate that it doesn’t always feels like that but that is actually what is motivating this and the reason it is so important.”

But he failed to explain the logic behind his statement, which appears to suggest that cutting benefits from disabled people receiving PIP now will benefit those people because it will prevent them having their benefits cut in the future.

He also claimed that the government wanted to “tackle head on that kind of demonisation that you were talking about”, and suggested Labour may introduce new legislation to address it, telling the conference: “It is completely wrong, and, you know, it may need some legal changes to improve the position.”

And he insisted that Labour had already taken several steps to increase taxes on the wealthy, including introducing VAT on private schools and private jets, cutting exemptions on inheritance tax, doubling the stamp duty on second homes, and increasing capital gains tax.

He added: “And as you know, we have abolished non-dom tax status.

“We’re told that a few people have left the UK in response to that. I think we will manage without them.”

But there are also questions this week over whether Sir Stephen asked the TUC (Trades Union Congress) to ensure that his speech to the conference, and the question-and-answer session, were not livestreamed.

Key parts of previous conferences, including last year’s speech by Labour’s then shadow disability minister Vicky Foxcroft, have been livestreamed by the TUC.

And until questions were asked of the TUC by Disability News Service (DNS) this week, there was a message on the conference webpage stating that its public sessions, including keynote speakers, would be streamed online.

That message was then removed from the TUC website.

One delegate told DNS that they had been informed by a TUC staff member that the ban on livestreaming was introduced at Sir Stephen’s request.

But the TUC has strongly denied that Sir Stephen requested that his session should not be streamed live.

It insists that it told DWP the conference would be a closed event with only delegates in attendance, and that the message had been placed on the conference webpage by mistake.

It says that none of its equalities conferences have been livestreamed this year, although DNS has found this speech that appears to have been filmed openly with TUC approval and streamed at the TUC Black Workers’ Conference in April.

A TUC spokesperson said in a statement: “Disabled Workers’ Conference is a closed event for TUC delegates.

“No TUC equalities conferences have been live streamed this year.

“The chair of the disabled workers’ committee reminded delegates that there should be no filming of the conference, which is to ensure delegates feel able to speak freely about personal testimonies.”

DWP had refused to say by noon today (Thursday) if the minister had requested that his speech and question-and-answer session should not be livestreamed, but a spokesperson said: “This was a private event which the minister attended virtually due to diary pressures.”

5 June 2025

Activists consider legal action after DWP cancels only face-to-face benefit cuts consultation event in Wales

Disabled activists are considering taking legal action against the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) after it scrapped the only event due to take place in Wales as part of the consultation on its disability benefits green paper.

They say MPs should not be allowed to vote on the government’s plans – with a bill due to be published within days – until there has been a “full and genuine” public consultation.

They spoke out after DWP cancelled a consultation event on the Pathways to Work green paper just days before it was due to take place at a hotel in north Cardiff on Tuesday.

Disability News Service (DNS) has seen an email sent by DWP which blamed “an unexpected last minute cancellation by the venue”.

But the email also offered those who had been due to attend “a priority space on our other virtual events in place of this cancelled event”, or a place at “a new Wales-only online event for the end of June on the entire consultation”.

It would have been the only face-to-face consultation event on the green paper in the whole of Wales, although disabled activists had already complained about the inaccessible location of the hotel venue in north Cardiff.

They are now considering “all options”, including legal action, due to the discriminatory way the consultation event had been organised, and the failure to carry out a genuine consultation process in Wales.

Disabled People Against Cuts Cymru (DPAC Cymru) went ahead with a planned protest on Tuesday – outside Cardiff Central rail station – even though the consultation event had been cancelled.

DPAC Cymru said: “We are not surprised that private venues do not want to be seen hosting a toxic consultation on proposals to take more than £5 billion away from disabled people.”

DPAC Cymru said it was now possible that MPs could be voting on many of the proposals in the green paper by the time the replacement event had taken place.

It called for a “full and genuine public consultation in Wales” that is run by Welsh disabled people’s organisations with DWP attending only as observers, and called for supporters to sign an open letter backing their demands.

Among those who have signed the open letter, and attended Tuesday’s protest, was Plaid Cymru MS Sioned Williams, who raised the concerns in the Senedd later the same day.

DPAC Cymru is still calling for Swansea West MP Torsten Bell – a work and pensions minister – to debate the green paper publicly with DPAC.

Disability Wales said it was “aghast” at DWP’s decision to cancel the only in-person consultation event in Wales.

It said: “The decision silences disabled people across Wales – those who would be most affected by these devastating changes.

“An online alternative is no substitute for meaningful, accessible, face-to-face engagement.

“Cancelling the in-person meeting effectively cancels our right to be heard and erases lived experience from the conversation.”

DWP had refused by noon today (Thursday) to confirm if there would be a replacement face-to-face consultation event in Wales before the consultation finishes at the end of this month.

Instead, a spokesperson said in a statement: “We will never compromise on protecting people who need our support, and our reforms will mean the social security system will always be there for those who will never be able to work, and that their income is protected.

“We are working to rearrange the event in Wales as part of a series of face to face and virtual consultations, so the views and voices of sick and disabled people are at the heart of our reforms.”

It is just the latest setback for DWP since it launched the consultation on the green paper, including disabled activists gate-crashing a “sham” consultation event in Manchester and persuading civil servants to let them put questions that ministers had not wanted to be asked.

The DWP consultation process is only seeking views on 10 of the 22 controversial proposals in the green paper, including ducking questions on Labour’s plans to cut billions of pounds from spending on personal independence payment (PIP) and the health element of universal credit.

In April, leading disabled people’s organisations wrote to work and pensions secretary Liz Kendall to express “serious concerns” about the human rights implications of her “incredibly dangerous” plans to cut spending on disability benefits.

Last week, Disability News Service reported how disabled activists had been left shocked after Sir Stephen Timms, the social security and disability minister, was accused of walking past and ignoring a disabled woman who had collapsed on the floor at the end of a small consultation meeting with a charity.

Meanwhile, a group of disabled actors and artists who will be directly affected by the cuts will be leading a protest outside Tate Modern art gallery in London on Tuesday (10 June) at 2pm.

The protest will include a “die-in” – with activists invited to lie on the ground in a symbolic gesture “to remember all those who have died because of cuts and all those who might die if more cuts go ahead” – followed by a minute’s silence.

A disabled actor will then read out statements submitted by disabled people from across the UK, highlighting the consequences of these policies, followed by contributions from other protesters who wish to speak.

A spokesperson for Fight4Life, the new campaign group organising the action, said: “We hate the fear and despair the announcement of these cuts has caused disabled people, their carers and loved ones by our so-called Labour government.

“If they go ahead, it will be at the cost of many lives. We are determined to fight back. 

“So we’re asking disabled people and our allies to stand up against these cuts by lying down at a public ‘Die In’ to symbolise the lives that will be lost if the cuts go ahead.” 

Fight4Life is encouraging supporters to attend the protest.

To contribute a statement or for details on how to take part, including organising your own #Fight4Life event or contributing from your home, visit the Fight4Life website.

5 June 2025

Beresford’s book shows how disability movement can be part of ‘antidote’ to neoliberalism

A new book by a leading disabled academic-activist explores how people-powered movements – including the disability movement – can end the dominance of the “man-made disaster” that is neoliberalism.

Professor Peter Beresford has been at the heart of the movement and wider battles for rights for more than 30 years, and his new book – The Antidote – charts how people-powered movements could offer an “effective route” to ending the global dominance of an ideology that has championed deregulation and the slashing of state support.

His book, published last week, explains how these movements can provide an antidote to the “global catastrophe” that is neoliberalism, which has brought staggering profits for a tiny minority, and, for others, “insecurity, threat and disaster”, including isolation, inequality, poverty, disease and environmental crisis. 

The Antidote makes a case for a new politics based on principles such as inclusion, support for user-led organisations, sustainability, empowerment and valuing lived experience.

And it includes an examination of how the national disabled people’s organisation he co-chairs, Shaping Our Lives, found ways to address the barriers to communication that can prevent disempowered groups from challenging neoliberalism.

It also hears from Dr Sally Witcher, former chief executive of Inclusion Scotland and founder of the social enterprise Inclusive New Normal, about how she witnessed a new grassroots community-led movement spring up among those who are clinically at very high risk from COVID-19, or who have long Covid.