Disability News Service 26th June

Disabled Labour MP Vicky Foxcroft has described how she was left with “no choice” but to resign as a whip over government plans to cut billions of pounds a year from disability benefits.

In her first interview since releasing her resignation letter last Thursday, she told Disability News Service (DNS) that the four years she spent as a shadow minister for disabled people had played a significant part in her decision.

And she also made it clear that the backbench rebellion over the cuts is “huge”, with many of the critics MPs who are “normally very loyal” to the government.

That became clear on Tuesday, when fellow Labour MPs – led by 11 select committee chairs – published a “reasoned amendment” which “declines to give a Second Reading” to the bill, although this is unlikely to be selected to be voted on by the speaker.

She has signed the amendment, which is currently supported by 162 MPs, including 126 other backbench Labour MPs.

Foxcroft says she was taken aback by the number of Labour MPs who approached her on Friday to share their concerns about the bill, as she came to the House of Commons chamber for the assisted dying bill debate (see separate stories).

“Many have come to me to share their concerns, to say they agreed with what I had said in my resignation letter,” she says.

“And some of these were colleagues that you wouldn’t maybe have expected to have expressed concerns.

“These are not the usual suspects from the left of the party, these are people who are normally very loyal and want to be loyal but know the government needs to change this.

“I mean, I’m the same myself, but I was left with no choice.

“I don’t want to speak out like this but the government needs to listen, so I will use my voice to amplify voices that are being ignored.”

It’s clear from Sunday’s interview that if she had thought she could effect change from within government, she would not have resigned, but she made her decision to quit when the bill was published last Wednesday, and she saw that ministers had made almost no changes since March’s green paper.

The next day, she resigned through a letter to the prime minister.

In fact, as DNS reported last week, the measures in the bill were in one respect even worse than those suggested by Pathways to Work, because of the misleading reference in the green paper to a premium for those in the “severe conditions group”, which the bill shows will only be a premium for new claimants.

This was confirmed by the minister for social security and disability Sir Stephen Timms, when he gave evidence to the Commons work and pensions committee yesterday (Wednesday).

Foxcroft’s criticisms of the bill are fuelled by her own lived experience as a disabled MP, but also by the evidence she gathered from meeting hundreds of disabled people, including many representatives of disabled-led organisations, during her time as shadow minister.

“We all know the benefit system desperately needs reform,” she says, “but PIP isn’t and has never been about getting people back to work.

“PIP is there to help disabled people with everyday needs. It’s an in-work and out-of-work benefit, and it’s wrong to deny support from someone who needs help to wash, dress, or use a toilet.

“The cuts will literally remove this basic dignity.

“I couldn’t vote for cuts that would make 800,000 people worse off, with 250,000 pushed into poverty, including 50,000 children. That’s a real human cost.

“And these cuts don’t make human needs disappear. They just shift the costs onto already over-stretched services such as the NHS, social workers and unpaid carers.

“It’s a false economy, with devastating consequences.”

She says she also understands disabled people’s concerns – evidenced in The Department*, by DNS editor John Pring – about the many deaths of claimants, including an estimated 600 from suicide during the incapacity benefit reforms, when there were similarly significant cuts and reforms to out-of-work disability benefits in the early 2010s under the Conservative-led coalition.

She is reading the book and is aware that safety and safeguarding must be a key priority with any reforms, because of the risk of unintended consequences.

During Sunday’s interview, she repeatedly stresses the crucial part played in her decision to resign by her four years as shadow minister for disabled people, leading up to last year’s general election.

She says her engagement with disabled people while she was shadow minister showed her just how badly many of them had struggled through 14 years of Conservative government, and she stresses her admiration for those she worked with, even those who “shouted” at her when her party did not go far enough on disability policy.

“They were desperate to see the change that a future Labour government would bring for them,” she says.

“I said as shadow minister that we would work with them to ensure that changes that affected them improved their lives, but that has not happened.

“These changes we’ll be voting on have not been consulted on with disabled people and disabled people’s organisations, and it’s so important to make sure that consultation happens and their voices are heard when such big changes are taking place.

“That is one of the reasons I resigned.”

She made the same point in Friday’s debate on the assisted dying bill – which she voted against – when she spoke of the “negligible” consultation there had been with disabled people about the legislation, and told MPs: “Disabled people’s voices matter in this debate, and yet as I have watched the bill progress, the absence of disabled people’s voices has been astonishing.”

She is hoping ministers will receive this subtle message: that government must engage with disabled people right from the start of any policy-making process that will affect them.

Despite several questions from DNS, she refuses to criticise work and pensions ministers, including Liz Kendall.

But asked for her message to the prime minister, she is blunt. “He needs to revisit it,” she says.

Despite that bluntness, and her high-profile decision to quit as a whip, her resignation letter makes clear that she is fiercely loyal to the government, but just intensely frustrated at the deeply harmful proposed cuts to the universal credit health element, and particularly to PIP.

She points to government policies that would allow people on out-of-work disability benefits to try work without fear of having to go through the assessment process again if it doesn’t work out; reform Access to Work; introduce disability pay gap reporting; and ensure all disabled claimants have access to a supportive work coach if they need one.

But she says: “We need to be doing those things first before we even start considering how we are going to be reforming disability benefits.

“And when we do eventually do that, we need to make sure that we do it with disabled people and organisations run by disabled people.”

She also lays a large part of the blame at the door of the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) itself.

She knows from her time as shadow minister that many disabled people have zero trust in the department.

“This bill is most definitely not the right way to persuade disabled people to trust DWP,” she says, “and certainly not when we’ve not worked with them to ensure that we get this right.”

Speaking on Sunday morning, three days after her resignation letter was published, she says she is finally finding time to think after the “whirlwind” media storm it caused, but she insists she has no feelings of regret, although she is sad she had to take the step she did.

“I’m sad to leave my colleagues in the whips office, who I think are absolutely brilliant and do really good work,” she says.

But there is also a keen sense that she knows time is running out to persuade the government to back off, with the bill’s second reading set to take place on 1 July.

“I want to see the government change this. Desperately.

“They need to listen to what I’m saying, to what Labour MPs are saying, and what disabled people are saying.”

26 June 2025

Disabled peers plan to ‘amend, amend, amend, amend, amend’ after assisted dying bill reaches Lords

The disabled peer who has led UK opposition to the legalisation of assisted dying for decades has pledged to work to make a bill passed by MPs so “tight” that only a very few people will be able to take advantage of it.

Baroness [Jane] Campbell said she believed that if the legislation made it easy for people to take advantage of the new laws – if they are eventually approved by parliament – then “people for whom this bill was never intended will die in their droves”.

She was speaking to Disability News Service (DNS) just minutes after MPs had voted by 314 votes to 291 on Friday afternoon to approve the terminally ill adults (end of life) bill, which will legalise assisted suicide in England and Wales for some people diagnosed with a terminal illness, in certain circumstances.

The crossbench peer, who herself has a progressive condition, said she believes her task as a member of the House of Lords – which will now examine the bill in detail – will be to “amend, amend, amend, amend, amend, so it becomes so tight that anyone would find it difficult to get it”.

She also said her task will be to ensure there is no “slippery slope” that will allow the bill to be extended to an ever wider group of people.

But she said that even if she and fellow peers were successful in amending the bill to make it safer, they were “not miracle workers”.

Baroness Campbell, founder of Not Dead Yet UK (NDY UK), which sees legalisation of assisted suicide and euthanasia as “deadly forms of disability discrimination”, said: “There will be mistakes and people will die, whom if they’d had the right support could have lived a good life until they died, but what else can we do?”

She added: “Why choose people like us to help to die when they can so easily put in support and care to help people live dignified lives at home so that they can cope with the bad times, and get through them.

“Because people do get through them and it is possible to have a good death with a progressive or terminal illness. This is what people forget.”

Her fellow disabled crossbench peer, Baroness [Tanni] Grey-Thompson, who has also spent years opposing legalisation, supports Baroness Campbell’s strategy.

She said: “There are very few safeguards in [the bill] currently. Very few amendments were voted on.”

And she said there was no protection in the bill for people with Down’s syndrome or others with learning difficulties.

Before the vote, Baroness Grey-Thompson told DNS that there would be many amendments proposed in the House of Lords, if the bill was passed by the Commons.

She said: “There’s so little safety in this bill, and so little understanding of the lives of disabled people, and the current government’s plans for welfare.”

Last week, NDY UK released polling showing that two-thirds (65 per cent) of disabled people believe that if benefits are being cut – as they are currently through the Labour government’s universal credit and personal independence payment bill – disabled people living in poverty may be likely to seek an assisted suicide instead of struggling financially.

26 June 2025

Minister finally admits that working-age benefits spending is stable, despite months of ‘spiralling’ claims

A minister has finally admitted that spending on working-age benefits is stable, and is not spiralling out of control, despite months of claims from his own department and fellow ministers.

Sir Stephen Timms made the admission as he told the Commons work and pensions committee that ministers had decided not to carry out a public consultation on the billions of pounds of cuts to personal independence payment (PIP) and the disability element of universal credit because of the “urgency of the changes needing to be made”.

He was giving evidence in the committee’s final session of its inquiry into the government’s Pathways to Work green paper.

Sir Stephen, minister for social security and disability, said that spending on PIP had risen in real terms from £12 billion in the year before the pandemic to £22 billion last year, which he said was “not a sustainable trajectory”.

But the committee’s chair, Labour MP Debbie Abrahams, asked if he accepted the evidence of Ben Geiger, professor of social science and health at King’s College London, who had told the inquiry that working-age social security spending had remained at about five per cent of GDP* for the last decade.

Abrahams also asked Sir Stephen if he accepted that the rise in the number of PIP recipients has been due to demographic change, the nation’s poor health, and the increase in the state pension age.

The minister replied: “Well, yeah, I mean, much of what you say, I completely accept.”

He added: “I think that working-age social security spending as a percentage of GDP isn’t much more now than it was before the 2008-2010 recession, but as you say, the share on disability and incapacity benefits is very substantially up.”

He said most of this increase was in the last six years, and that while the “incidence of disability” had risen by about 17 per cent since just before the pandemic, the incidence of “benefit claiming” had risen by 34 per cent.

Abrahams suggested an explanation for this was that more disabled people were needing to claim PIP because of financial pressures.

Sir Stephen agreed, and suggested that the government needed to cut spending on PIP, even though disabled people were only claiming it because they were struggling due to the cost-of-living crisis.

He said: “I think you’re absolutely right. I’m sure that the cost-of-living challenges are a very big factor in what’s happened.

“The people who may well have always been eligible but have not in the past claimed benefit are now doing, and that’s what’s driven this very substantial increase.

“As I say, the current trajectory is not a sustainable one and it is not in the interest of people who depend on PIP for it to be on a financially unsustainable trajectory.”

Disability News Service reported in February that claims by ministers, opposition politicians and the media that social security spending was “spiralling out of control” were false and “ideological”.

Last August, chancellor Rachel Reeves said the previous government had “let welfare costs spiral out of control”.

In January, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) said in a press release on benefit fraud that it wanted to “tackle the spiralling welfare bill”.

And in February, in a press release on disability employment, DWP claimed again that benefits spending was “spiralling”.

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

26 June 2025

This bill opens the door to scandal, abuse and injustice, disabled activists say after assisted dying bill vote

Disabled people’s lives will be increasingly in danger because of MPs’ failure to understand the risks posed by the assisted dying bill, devastated activists warned on Friday after the legislation was approved by the House of Commons.

Disabled activists had started gathering outside parliament at 6.30am last Friday in preparation for a crucial debate on the terminally ill adults (end of life) bill before a vote that determined whether it passed to the Lords.

The bill was eventually passed by the Commons by 314 votes to 291 on Friday afternoon, although disabled MPs strongly opposed the legislation (see separate story).

Before the vote, supporters of Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) and Not Dead Yet UK (NDY UK) held up traffic in front of the House of Commons with a last-minute direct action, accompanied by chants of “we are not… dead yet”.

Author and activist Ellen Clifford, who has helped lead disabled people’s opposition to the bill over the last year, said she trusted the Lords to improve the bill more than MPs, some of whom she said had acted on “naked ambition” and the principle of assisted dying, rather than what was in the bill.

She said she hoped the bill’s passage through the Lords would improve the safeguards and provide opportunities “to show what a shambles the bill is”.

Among those disabled people outside the Commons was musician and activist John Kelly, who said after the vote was announced: “The truth is, our voices haven’t been listened to.

“What this does is open the door for injustice.

“To rely on a panel to decide my life of social workers, and psychiatrists, have you not read how many injustices and mistakes those people have made, how much abuse and how many rights have been denied disabled people?

“And what they have done is open the door to allow in yet more scandals, yet more abuse.”

Disabled activist Anna Landre told Disability News Service (DNS): “A lot of us are scared about the prospect of enshrining a state-funded ability to die when we don’t have properly-funded state services to live with dignity, let alone to thrive, let alone to get disabled people into work, like this government claims it wants to do.”

She said: “I most certainly don’t feel safer now.

“I think it’s going to create an atmosphere for disabled people that is increasingly unsafe, when our services are being stripped from us, when we’re going to have to fight even harder to get the basics, the scraps that we can already barely access and now in any medical, in any doctor’s office we enter, we face the prospect of being offered a death, of being offered [an assisted suicide].”

She said it was particularly unsafe for disabled people who face multiple marginalisations, including disabled women, who are more likely to be in an abusive relationship; disabled people of colour, who are more likely to be doubted by their medical practitioners; and disabled people of low socio-economic status, “who are looking at not being able to pay rent next month”.

She added: “As a disabled woman, I’ve been trying to access a cervical cancer screening for over two years.

“I wish this government would work on that rather than working on streamlining my access to suicide.”

Another leading activist, Simone Aspis, said that, as a disabled woman with learning difficulties, it was “a very sad day for our community”.

She said the bill was “really, really dangerous”.

She said she believed that, for her and other people with learning difficulties, assisted dying will become the “de facto” treatment option given to them by doctors.

She said: “The government keep saying that there is not enough money to go around, so we are going to spend money on creating an assisted dying service?

“Where is this money going to be found? It’s going to be taken away from education, from care, from housing, from anything that supports us to have good lives.”

Aspis also pointed out that people with learning difficulties had been “excluded from this debate” because the bill had not been made available in easy read.

Dermot Devlin, co-founder of DPAC Northern Ireland, said that, with the government’s cuts to disability benefits coming in, it was “a dangerous country now if you’re disabled… but we will keep fighting back.”

Chelsea Roff, a researcher and founder of the US-based charity Eat Breathe Thrive, who has fought for months to alert MPs to the risks the bill poses to people with eating disorders, said: “I’ve spent the last six months trying to raise awareness about this loophole, and hundreds of experts have warned parliament: charities, people with eating disorders, physicians, doctors, lawyers…

“I did that because I thought it was the right thing to do because I thought if MPs understood the evidence, they would act on it and amend the bill.

“I’m really disappointed and I think the evidence was minimised, it was dismissed, it was not meaningfully engaged with.”

Michael Lorimer, from DPAC Northern Ireland, said he was concerned that the bill gave ministers “massive executive powers”.

He said: “Given what they’re doing on benefit cuts, we can’t trust them to represent our best interests in terms of implementing this legislation.

“It’s getting to the stage where Labour are a clear and present danger to disabled people’s lives here because of the benefit cuts and because this bill has gone through, giving them almost unlimited powers in terms of how they shape this legislation.

“And they’ve been clear through the benefit cuts that they don’t value our lives.”

Jason de Souza said he believed the new law would be “a catalyst for a much wider agenda against disabled and vulnerable people, especially people who are in a situation where they need palliative care and support”.

Earlier, disabled activists had gathered nearby to share their final thoughts before the vote, after months of campaigning.

Devlin had told fellow protesters: “As a disabled person, this assisted dying bill breaks my heart. It terrifies me.

“It tells me that my life, already pushed to the margins, already made harder by endless cuts and cruelty is… now disposable, it [turns] the language of choice and dignity into something darker.

“I want to live, I deserve to live, but this bill makes it clear to them that lives like mine are just too expensive to bother saving.”

The disabled crossbench peer Baroness [Tanni] Grey-Thompson fought back tears as she thanked disabled activists for attending the protest “despite the discrimination they face in their daily lives and inaccessible public transport”.

She said there was “so little safety in this bill, and so little understanding of the lives of disabled people, and the current government’s plans for welfare”.

Kevin Caulfield, former chair of Hammersmith and Fulham Coalition Against Cuts, said: “The bill, and what is happening with the universal credit and personal independence payment bill, really indicates disabled people’s position in society, because we have been sidelined all the way through this process.

“People with life-limiting illnesses are disabled people and that’s in practice and in law and yet they have successfully managed to portray this bill as having very little to do with disabled people, and that’s a f*****g disgrace and it’s disgusting and the same is happening with the benefit cuts.”

Caulfield was given a terminal diagnosis 28 years ago, and says he “might well have decided to take the option” of an assisted death if it was available then “because I was a newly disabled person, I didn’t have access to other disabled people, I had no access to mental health support, and it may well have seemed like a reasonable option”.

But he said he was “still here 28 years later”, and there were “going to be many people in a similar situation to me, tens of thousands of people that will end up being dead as a by-product of this legislation”.

Disabled actor, writer and activist Liz Carr, said the number of disabled activists who had attended the protest was “amazing” in the context of spending cuts and “the struggle to survive”.

She told fellow activists: “You make me know that we’re right and that even if this goes through today and goes through to the Lords, we just keep going there because we know where this goes, we know what it means, we know how it will impact our community and other communities.”

Paula Peters, who had been the first to start the protest, at 6.30am outside parliament, said: “Whatever the outcome, we keep going, and we keep fighting, and we keep resisting… and we are not dead yet.”

Jamie McCormack, another disabled activist who refused to accept defeat, said: “We will fight on, we will fight for assistance to live, not to die.

“We will fight to our very last dying breath.”

And George Fielding told fellow activists: “Our most precious public services, and the things on which we all rely, rely on doing no harm.

“This bill will do harm; its very premise is to kill people, it’s a pre-designed process.

“We are on the right side of history, always have been, and the resistance starts as soon as we hear the result today.”

26 June 2025

Timms says cuts must go ahead, despite being reminded of risk that disabled claimants could die

The minister for social security and disability has insisted that billions of pounds a year of cuts to disability benefits must go ahead, despite the risk that they will once again cause countless deaths of disabled claimants.

Sir Stephen Timms was giving evidence yesterday (Wednesday) to the Commons work and pensions committee about plans to cut billions of pounds a year from spending on personal independence payment (PIP) and the disability element of universal credit.

He was giving evidence to the committee’s final session of its inquiry into the government’s Pathways to Work green paper.

The first question he was asked, by committee chair Debbie Abrahams, was about the health impact of the cuts on disabled people, and whether the planned new employment support and jobs would be available by the time the government begins to implement the cuts next year.

She highlighted how research in 2015 by academics at Liverpool and Oxford universities showed the reassessment of disabled people on incapacity benefit through the work capability assessment was linked to about 600 suicides between 2010 and 2013.

Unpublished research also showed how cuts in 2017 – of nearly £30 a week to payments to new claimants of employment and support allowance who were placed in the work-related activity group (WRAG) – were associated with 130,000 “new onset mental health conditions”, she said.

Conservative ministers were ridiculed when they first announced the 2017 cuts and argued that they would “incentivise” those in the WRAG to find work.

Abrahams had already asked Sir Stephen what estimates the government had made of the impact the bill would have on health, in the light of these two pieces of research, at work and pensions questions on Monday.

He said on Monday that the Department for Work and Pensions was “working very closely with the Department of Health and Social Care to ensure that the health and care needs of people who lose benefits as a result of this process are met”.

And when asked again yesterday about the risk of harm caused by the bill, Sir Stephen said the government needed to make sure that both “employment support” and “health and care support” were in place when the cuts were implemented.

He said that new investment in infrastructure and jobs would be “coming into place” in the next few years, and with “what we are proposing on all of those fronts that we will be seeing the progress that we need”.

He added: “I don’t think it would be a viable option to say, well, we’re kind of not going to do anything about the health and disability benefits for a few years and see how things go.”

The minister was also asked by Liberal Democrat MP John Milne about government plans to halve the health element for new claimants of universal credit next year from £97 per week in 2024-25 to £50 per week in 2026-27, and to freeze it at £97 for existing claimants from 2026-27.

Sir Stephen claimed there was a “very big incentive” for disabled people to “seek to be classified” as having limited capability for work and work-related activity (LCWRA), and so eligible for the health element top-up.

He said: “If they are classified as LCWRA they get a premium which is worth more than the universal credit standard allowance, and that is unavoidably a massive magnet for people.”

He pointed to a letter he had seen in which an MP’s disabled constituent had said that being classified as LCWRA – rather than as having limited capability for work – would mean they would be paid £400 a month more, which would mean they would be “comfortable”.

But Sir Stephen Timms appeared to suggest that a disabled person being financially “comfortable” on benefits was a bad thing.

He said: “And I think this is a really serious flaw in the current system, that it presents this sort of LCWRA status as a sort of something to aim for, that ‘if only I could get to that, I would be comfortable’, when the system should not be doing that to people.

“That is a very bad feature of the current system.

“What the system should be doing is encouraging people to aspire to work and providing the support to make work possible and feasible, and so, yeah, we are wanting to substantially reduce that incentive.”

He said this would partly be done by raising the standard allowance of universal credit by £5 a week, as well as reducing the health element.

But Milne suggested that the government was concentrating on “Treasury first, needs second”, when what it should be doing was focusing on “needs first, Treasury second”.

26 June 2025

Absence of disabled people’s voices from assisted dying bill has been ‘astonishing’, says disabled MP

Disabled MPs have voted overwhelmingly against the assisted dying bill, and warned that it poses a clear danger to disabled people if it eventually becomes law.

Although the terminally ill adults (end of life) bill was passed by the Commons by 314 votes to 291 on Friday afternoon, disabled MPs strongly opposed the bill.

By Disability News Service (DNS) calculations, those MPs who have publicly self-described as disabled people voted against the bill by seven to one.

Disabled MPs who voted against the bill were Labour’s Jen Craft, Marsha de Cordova, Vicky Foxcroft, Liam Conlon, Emma Lewell and Marie Rimmer, and Liberal Democrat Steve Darling.

The only disabled MP who voted for the bill was Marie Tidball, who spoke repeatedly in favour of the legislation during its committee stage, and whose support has likely persuaded some wavering MPs of its safety.

Of the eight disabled MPs, only Craft and Foxcroft spoke in Friday’s debate.

Craft told fellow MPs that their vote would have “real-world consequences”.

She warned that the medical establishment placed a lesser value on disabled people’s lives, and revealed that when told of her daughter’s Down’s syndrome when she was pregnant, “the first thing the midwife said to me after ‘I’m so sorry’ was, ‘I can book you a termination within 48 hours.’”

She said she could not support the bill “because we cannot legislate against discrimination and we cannot legislate out inherent bias”, and the bill did not have “the adequate safeguards in place”.

She said: “We have been told that there are panels that will provide a safeguard and take into account all of someone’s circumstances, and whether they have capacity.

“However, those panels may in exceptional circumstances – the bill does not set out what those are – opt not to even meet the person whom they are discussing.

“We know that the panels do not allow for family members and carers and those who know that person – if they have limited capacity, a learning disability or are unable to make certain decisions themselves – to play a role in that process or have any right of appeal.”

Craft said it was not the job of MPs to send a flawed bill to the Lords and then “out into the world, hoping that others will do our job for us and that it will all just come out in the wash”.

She said: “That is a dereliction of our duty as members of parliament.

“If you have any concerns about this bill, now is the time to vote against it. You must do that.

“You must not think that someone else will do your job for you. It is our decision.”

Foxcroft, who was speaking a day after resigning as a government whip over her concerns about the government’s disability benefit cuts, said she had previously been in favour of legalisation.

But she said that her four years as shadow minister for disabled people, during which she spoke to hundreds of disabled people and their organisations, showed they were “extremely fearful of assisted dying”.

She pointed to the huge numbers of disabled people who died during the pandemic, and those who had “do not attempt resuscitation” notices placed on their health records without their knowledge, which “made them fear for their lives”.

She said: “It made them fear that the authorities thought that their lives were worth less. It also made them fearful of what would happen if assisted dying was brought forward.”

She said disabled people “need the health and social care system fixing first” and “want us as parliamentarians to assist them to live, not to die”.

She said: “Disabled people’s voices matter in this debate, and yet as I have watched the bill progress, the absence of disabled people’s voices has been astonishing.

“They have wanted to engage. Indeed, they have been crying out to be included, yet the engagement has been negligible.

“I believe that only one disabled people’s organisation was given the opportunity to provide [oral] evidence to the committee.”

She also pointed to the failure to provide the bill in accessible formats, including easy read and British Sign Language.

She told MPs: “I will finish by saying that I am not opposed to the principle of assisted dying, but until we have a system that supports the right to life, I cannot support it.

“Until we ensure that all safeguards are in place, I cannot support it.

“And until the vast majority of disabled people and their organisations support the legislation that is being brought forward, I cannot support it.”

She added: “We are not voting on principles today.

“This is real and we have to protect those people who are susceptible to coercion, who already feel like society does not value them, who often feel like a burden to the state, society and their family.”

26 June 2025

Timms misleads MPs on DWP transparency and cover-ups, as he gives evidence on PIP review

The social security and disability minister has misled MPs after suggesting he has ushered in a new era of openness and transparency in the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).

Sir Stephen Timms told members of the work and pensions committee yesterday (Wednesday) that DWP was being “much more open” than under successive Conservative-led governments.

He had been asked by the committee’s chair, Labour MP Debbie Abrahams, about the review of personal independence payment (PIP) that he will shortly be leading.

He was giving evidence to the committee’s final session of its inquiry into the government’s Pathways to Work green paper, which will see billions of pounds a year cut from disability benefits.

Abrahams highlighted how the department had previously failed to share its own secret reviews into deaths linked to the benefits system with independent experts commissioned by ministers.

Disability News Service had exposed how the department failed to share both peer reviews – now known as internal process reviews (IPRs) – and coroners’ reports with the experts commissioned to review the work capability assessment between 2010 and 2014.

Abrahams asked Sir Stephen to reassure the committee that data on deaths associated with PIP assessments would be available to whoever led the review.

He told the committee: “I’ll be undertaking the review, so yes, the information will be available to me, and actually, you know, we are being – not least thanks to your work, chair – much, much more open about all of this now than was the case in the past.”

He said the department “want people to see what’s going on”.

He said: “There isn’t any benefit for the department in hiding these things.

“They were hidden too often in the past. And I think that’s one reason why the trust in the department deteriorated so badly, because people can see that things were being covered up and hidden and it shouldn’t have been happening.

“And I’m determined that it won’t happen in the future.”

But despite his comments, the department is continuing to hide crucial information about deaths linked to the disability benefits system.

This week, Disability News Service (DNS) submitted written evidence to DWP’s safeguarding review to highlight how DWP was still hiding crucial information that would expose its past actions and failings.

Last month, DNS reported how DWP had unlawfully failed to respond to a freedom of information request to see a secret “critical friend” paper from 2021 on the department’s safeguarding failures.

It is also continuing to refuse to release recommendations made by IPRs following deaths linked to universal credit, dating back as far as 2020.

DWP is also appealing a decision made by the information commissioner that the department should release to DNS “a paper detailing the impact of errors on vulnerable customers” that was discussed at the 12 October 2022 meeting of the department’s serious case panel.

And the department is continuing to refuse to release a transcript of a training session on human rights law given to DWP staff employed on working-age benefits.

These are just some of the reports being hidden by DWP; there are likely to be countless other reports and data being kept from other disabled campaigners and allies.

Sir Stephen said he hoped the terms of reference for the PIP review would be released before MPs rise for their summer recess on 22 July.

26 June 2025

Ministers are considering further extension to disability hate crime laws, after pledge on ‘aggravated’ offences

The government is considering whether to strengthen disability hate crime laws even further, after ministers agreed to make a long-awaited improvement that will mean longer sentences for offenders.

Home Office minister Diana Johnson announced last week that the government would act to extend the law so that standalone “aggravated offences” would

apply to disability hate crime and hate crime motivated by sexual orientation or transgender identity.

She said the government would add an amendment to the crime and policing bill to make this change when it reached its committee stage in the House of Lords, keeping a pledge made in Labour’s general election manifesto last year.

This would mean an offender could be charged with an offence – such as assault, harassment or criminal damage – that was aggravated by hostility towards a disabled person, and they would then face a tougher sentence if convicted.

At present, aggravated offences only apply to racial and religious hostility, and a disability hate crime can only be addressed by a court during sentencing, where the sentence can be increased if prosecutors can prove the offence was motivated by disability-related hostility.

The move was proposed in an amendment to the crime and policing bill by Labour’s Rachel Taylor, who told fellow MPs last week that the current discrepancy “cannot be right”.

She said: “We cannot say, as a society, that some forms of hatred are more evil than others.”

The amendment was supported by disabled Labour MP Marie Tidball, who said the “opportunity to legislate to strengthen the law on hate crime offences must be seized”.

Disabled campaigners have been calling for the change for more than a decade.

But one leading campaigner said the government needed to go much further.

The aggravated offences change was recommended by the Law Commission in December 2021, but it also made two other key recommendations to strengthen disability hate crime laws.

It called for existing offences of stirring up hatred, which only apply to race and religion, to be extended to disabled and LGBT+ victims.

And the Law Commission also said an offender should be found guilty of a disability hate crime offence if they had been “motivated” by “hostility or prejudice” towards disabled people, rather than – at present – only by hostility.

Dr David Wilkin, a disabled activist, researcher, author* and support worker for survivors of disability hate crime, welcomed the move to extend aggravated offences.

But he was critical of the continuing refusal – following years of resistance from Conservative governments – to implement the two other Law Commission recommendations.

He said: “Now, with the perfect opportunity to bring disabled people into the 21st century by establishing legislative equality, they are choosing once again to make sure that disabled people are treated differently, with their hopes and needs once again relegated.

“Hate crime campaigners have looked forward to disabled people being offered the same rights as other protected groups in new legislation.

“But now, having reached this timely and convenient critical moment, the Labour government are deliberately excluding those with the greatest needs from attaining simple, fair, and much needed equality.”

The Home Office has told Disability News Service that it will be considering these two further recommendations carefully.

A Home Office spokesperson said: “This government has committed to making our streets safer for everyone and nobody should ever be harmed because of who they are.

“Criminals motivated by racial or religious hate already get tougher sentences.

“Now we are making sure thugs who carry out vile attacks against someone based on their sexual orientation, transgender identity or disability will also spend longer behind bars.”

*Disability Hate Crime: Perspectives for Change, is published by Routledge

26 June 2025

Making all self-driving pilot schemes accessible would be ‘counter-productive’ and slow us down, says minister

A transport minister has told peers that it would be “counter-productive” – and take too long – to draw up rules that would ensure all pilot schemes of self-driving taxis are accessible to disabled people.

Labour’s rail minister Lord [Peter] Hendy was responding to concerns from disabled peer Baroness [Sal] Brinton, who had asked whether the government would make sure disabled people could use the self-driving vehicles when the pilots begin in England next spring.

The former president of the Liberal Democrats told Disability News Service (DNS) earlier this month that she was “very, very concerned” that the government was planning to allow companies to launch self-driving taxis and minibuses even if their vehicles were not accessible to disabled people.

She told fellow peers that the launch of driverless vehicles was a “once in an era moment”, and that contracts with providers should ensure that ramps and audio and visual announcements are “designed in right from the start”.

She said: “The government need to ensure that taxis and bus-like taxis will have accessibility designed into them.

“Otherwise, it will be like everything else for disabled people: reasonable adjustments after the event that are expensive for the manufacturer and never perfect for the user.”

Lord Hendy told her the government would be subject to equality laws in deciding how granting a permit could “improve understanding of how these services should best be designed for and provided to disabled and older passengers”.

And he said permits could enforce certain conditions, while “accessibility considerations” would be set out in guidance.

But he said: “It would be counterproductive to specify detailed requirements in regulation for innovative new services.”

He said it was likely that the first driverless vehicles would be “the same sort of vehicles” already used for taxis and private hire vehicles.

He added: “In the medium term, clearly there will be new designs, and there are already some that are suitable for wheelchairs and people with disabilities.

“We have to acknowledge that automated vehicles are part of an exciting future, but they have to be implemented safely, and she is right that they have to be implemented to benefit all parts of the community.”

He said he had “great sympathy” with Baroness Brinton “striving to make sure that disability is treated in the mainstream, but if we are going to do this quickly, we have to recognise that the early adoption under this act is likely to be using the same sorts of vehicles as are used now”.

He said: “What we are looking for in the medium-term future is new designs, which should have the facilities such as audio-visual equipment and facilities for people in wheelchairs that she would expect.”

Lord Hendy said the government needed to “design in – as far as we can – facilities for disabled people among this”, but the government “have to get going with this, because it is such an exciting future”.

But another disabled peer, the Conservative Lord [Kevin] Shinkwin, pointed out that deputy prime minister Angela Rayner had spoken of the importance of getting disabled people into work, and he questioned how “the retro, ad hoc inclusion of disabled people facilitates the realisation of that worthy goal”.

Baroness Brinton told DNS afterwards that Lord Hendy’s response was “very disappointing” and that she would now seek a private meeting with him to discuss her concerns.

Transport for All (TfA), the disabled-led accessible transport charity, said the government’s plans, which could exclude disabled people from the pilot schemes, were “unacceptable”.

Megan Barnett, TfA’s policy and public affairs officer, said: “Equal access to transport allows us to be part of society.

“If self-driving vehicles are allowed to develop without disabled people, they will only deepen existing inequalities.

“We need a strong national policy to ensure that the design and rollout of this exciting new technology includes disabled people from the start, so our whole community can benefit from driverless vehicles, now and in the future.”

The Department for Transport announced earlier this month that 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 next spring, before a potential wider rollout when the Conservative government’s Automated Vehicles Act is implemented in the second half of 2027.

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.

26 June 2025

Involve disabled people ‘meaningfully’ from the start when developing digital assistive tech, says report

There must be “meaningful participation” of disabled people in the initial stages of developing new digital assistive technology, if its potential for supporting their independence is to be realised, according to a new report.

The Royal Society concluded that tech companies, researchers and governments should do more to remove barriers and engage disabled people in the design of digital assistive tools and services.

Among the recommendations made by the Digital Technology report*, launched this week, is that governments should not consider smartphones as any less a form of assistive technology than hearing aids, manual wheelchairs, or white canes.

But it also warns that many disabled people globally experience lower levels of income compared with non-disabled people, so digital assistive technology needs to be affordable if it is to be useful.

It calls on governments, technology companies and research funders to explore ways to ensure affordability.

As part of the research, the Royal Society – the UK’s national academy of sciences – commissioned the Research Institute for Disabled Consumers to survey a panel of 850 disabled people.

Three-fifths (62 per cent) of them said they used digital assistive technology, with more than half of this group doing so throughout the day.

The survey found that more than half of users of digital assistive technology (53 per cent) said they could not live the way they did without it.

The report defines digital assistive technology as “any technology that processes information to help make people’s lives easier”, such as audio-to-text apps, wayfinding and navigation apps, wearable health devices, smart home devices, sight assistance apps, and screen-reading software.

The report also calls for statistics bodies to collect more data on the daily barriers many disabled people experience with their sight, mobility, and memory, rather than solely focusing on their self-reported disability identity.

Sir Bernard Silverman, emeritus professor of statistics at the University of Oxford and chair of the report’s steering committee, said: “As a statistician, I would particularly stress that the data we record, and how we categorise it, affects everything and everyone.

“Data on the functional challenges experienced by disabled people would help researchers and providers to ensure that digital products and services, especially in the AI age, are genuinely responsive to their needs.”

The report was developed by a committee of international researchers and technology experts, several of whom are themselves disabled.

Dr Hamied Haroon, a research fellow at the University of Manchester and a member of the Royal Society’s diversity and inclusion committee’s disabled scientists subgroup, said: “We shouldn’t be developing assistive technologies or policies without disabled people being front and centre of the process.

“How do you capture the day-to-day challenges faced by disabled people, or ensure you’re offering solutions that actually work, unless you talk to disabled people?”

Dr Haroon, a member of the report’s steering committee, added: “These assistive technologies are fundamental to the workplace and our daily tasks – but they can be prohibitively expensive or unusable in some settings.

“We need to look at removing these barriers, whether that’s costs, additional training, or infrastructure improvements – like addressing patchy mobile data services that can cut off disabled people in rural and deprived areas.”

*Disability Technology: How data and digital assistive technologies can support independent, fulfilled lives

26 June 2025

Save the date. Protest the disability cuts.

The government is expected to introduce the disability cuts bill on the 18th of June, and vote on it as soon as July 1st.

They are not even waiting for the sham “consultation” to end on 30th of June.

Disabled People Against Cuts and allies are organising a mass Protest of Parliament on June 30^th and a national day of action on July 1st when the second reading of the bill will occur.

More details to follow but it is essential that as many people as possible attend these events.

Some funding is available for travel and other essential costs. Email mail@dpac.uk.net

If you are able to arrange a local protest on July 1st please send us details of your event.

Welfare Not Warfare

End Labour’s War on Disabled People

Tax the Rich, Not Crips.

The Government are lying about cuts.

Total planned disability benefit cuts are at least £9 billion and not the £4.8 billion being reported.
Number of households to be plunged into poverty by the PIP cuts alone is at least 350,000 – 4000,000 including 50,000 children.
1.5 million Deaf and Disabled people will be badly impacted by the changes to PIP, not just the 800,000 being reported.
MPs will be forced to vote on the cuts without having all the information and based on the misleading figures that have been reported.

What can I do as a disabled person?

If you’re not already a member – join DPAC!
Set up a DPAC group in your area if one doesn’t exist!
Participate in DPAC Actions to Scrap the Benefit Cuts
Organise locally with other Disabled People to mobilise support for our campaign
Contact unions, trades councils, Labour party branches, and build a broad based movement to reverse these austerity cuts.

For more details of local groups and actions, keep checking this page!

Template response to the WCA consultation

WCA No Responses »

Oct 232023

Many thanks to DPO Forum England for sharing the below template consultation response with us. Individuals and organisations are free to use all or parts of this as you need.

Information about the consultation including how to respond is here: https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/work-capability-assessment-activities-and-descriptors

The deadline for the consultation is Monday 30 October 2023.

Consultation Response

We strongly oppose the proposed changes and believe this is a deliberate attempt to save money by risking Disabled people’s lives.

Concerns about this consultation

This consultation lasted only 8 weeks. It proposed a huge change which will have a serious impact on thousands of people. We did not have enough time to properly engage with our members in accessible ways. Many of our organisations do not have the capacity to respond in such a short time. This is why we are submitting this joint response. We find it totally unacceptable that such a short period of time is given, when the key audience are Disabled people with a range of access needs who will find it harder to respond and need more time, not less.

General points

We refute the government’s proposals to change the Work Capability Assessment descriptors.

The stated aim to “support more Disabled people into work” will not be achieved through subjecting people to greater sanctions and reducing their income. More Disabled people will be pushed into poverty, we will see more deaths and greater deterioration in health.

The proposals are ideological and will lead to serious consequences

The proposed changes are driven by two key elements:

A significant increase in the number of people who are economically inactive because of ill health and the desire to control welfare spending.

We believe reducing benefit payments and subjecting to conditionality to address economic inactivity is a political and ideological attack on Disabled people. It is especially true in the context of aggressive rhetoric towards Disabled people unable to work because of ill health.

These changes rushed through despite the proposal to abolish WCA altogether indicates to us that the primary aim is saving money on the backs of Disabled people’s lives and health.

The talk of employment support is misleading. The easiest and most constructive way to help more people into work is to ensure the workplace is inclusive, Access to Work is working effectively, and provides good quality employment support to everyone on a voluntary basis. Those of us who want to work and are able to do so will seek support if it is effective.

The growing number of people who are out of work because of ill health is a reflection of demographic changes and discrimination in the workplace. The focus needs to be on improving the workplace, not on cutting people’s finances and subjecting them to compulsion.

Some Disabled people will not be able to work, nor engage in any work preparation activities. This is equally true for those who just acquire impairments and those who have been claiming benefits for some time. The proposed changes will mean that thousands of Disabled people whose health conditions make it difficult or impossible to work will be forced to carry out work preparation activities without a real prospect of a job.

Thousands of people will be pushed further into deep poverty

The low capability to work related activity element, not only means the person does not have to fulfill job preparation requirements, it also means more money. As a result of proposed changes people will lose £390 a month. It is shocking that the consultation proposal does not mention this at all. It is also disappointing there is no clear indication of how many people will be affected. This is crucial information and we seriously doubt the public can make informed contributions to this consultation without fully understanding the negative financial impact for future claimants.

An attempt to mirror WCA criteria with PIP now, is an attempt to deny as many people as possible transitional protection they may have if the WCA was abolished and PIP was used as a proxy to health element in UC.

Thousands of Disabled people will lose significant part of their income at a time of the cost of living crisis, where 34% of Disabled people are already materially deprived[1] and t 7 in 10 low income households with a Disabled person cannot afford the essentials and almost a half are in debt [2].

Manipulating evidence

The government justification for the reform is based on the research showing that 20% of people in the Support Group or on LCWA element said they would like to work at some point in the future. The same research indicates that only 4% of those felt able to work now if the right job and the right support were available[3].

The reference to changes in the work conditions with an increase in home working is also not relevant to the cohort. ONS data shows that home or hybrid working is much more prevalent among highly educated highly paid senior professionals. This cohort or people are highly unlikely to even be entitled to Universal Credit. On the other hand, the high number of people in low paid jobs are unable to work from home[4]. There is no evidence that the percentage of people working remotely is higher among Disabled workers. Not all jobs can be done remotely and in any case remote working will still not be an option for the vast majority of Disabled UC or ESA claimants.

It is also striking that the only data about changes in the workplace cited in the consultation document is about an increase in home working. There is no data to show improvements in the workplace. There is on the contrary plenty of evidence that Disabled people are overrepresented in low paid jobs[5], are paid less[6] and are subjected to discrimination[7].

The rising number of people leaving work due to ill health should also be interpreted as a sign of deep structural problems in the workplace.

Poor employment support

Under the proposed changes many more people will be subjected to conditionality.

Work coaches are not specifically trained, it is unclear how they will be able to help Disabled people to, for example, manage mental health at work. It is also potentially dangerous to leave so many decisions on the level of conditionality to individual work coaches, as those decisions could be influenced by their knowledge or the lack of it, preconceived ideas and stereotypes. It also reduces accountability, certainty and the ability of the claimant to challenge. The DWP research showed that those people who wanted to engage in employment support thought that the most helpful support is when it is individualised, delivered over a substantial period of time and by Disabled people.

We believe it is important for many of us to be able to get good employment support, the support should result in getting good jobs that benefit health. While there is evidence that work can improve health, it is only true if the job is the right kind of job and the work environment is inclusive.

The work coach will not be able to fast track people through waiting lists for medical treatment, they will not be able to put in place appropriate social care and other support. This is why it is important that Employment programmes targeted at Disabled people need to be co-produced by Disabled people with Disabled People’s Organisations involved in their implementation.

The proposed approach to force support on people who are not able to work because of health conditions will lead to further deterioration in people’s health, greater pressure on the NHS and other services and will cause lost lives. There is no evidence that sanctions work for Disabled people, there is plenty of evidence about the negative impact they have.

Employment programmes targeted at Disabled people need to be co-produced by Disabled people with Disabled Peoples Organisations involved in their implementation.

Subjecting Thousands to punitive conditionality regime

Sanctions are harmful and dangerous for Disabled people.

The work and pensions committee concluded in November 2018 that:

“Of all the evidence we received, none was more compelling than that against the imposition of conditionality and sanctions on people with a disability or health condition. It does not work. Worse, it is harmful and counterproductive.

We recommend that the Government immediately stop imposing conditionality and sanctions on anyone found to have limited capability for work, or who presents a valid doctor’s note (Fit Note) stating that they are unable to work, including those who present such a note while waiting for a Work Capability Assessment.

Instead, it should work with experts to develop a programme of voluntary employment support.”^[8]

In December 2022 MPs were warned that the “aggressive attitude” on benefit sanctions that was taken by DWP in the coalition years of 2013 to 2015 was “back with a vengeance”[9].

The DWP’s own statistics show that more than 500,000 sanction decisions were made against universal credit claimants in the 12 months to January 2023.

In the Budget 2023 referred to strengthening and improving efficiency of the sanctions regime[10]. We are extremely concerned that changing WCA activities and especially changing non-functional criteria will lead to an increased number of Disabled people exposed to conditionality and sanctions. Giving the huge extra costs of disability and more significant external barriers to work Disabled people face will be discriminatory and especially punitive and will lead move people further from the labor market.

Response to specific questions

Q1. What are your views on the three Mobilising options?

WCA activities and descriptors were designed as a proxy to understanding how difficult it would be for a person to work and take into account wider barriers a person might face. We fundamentally disagree with activities being taken literally. Therefore we disagree with all proposed options. Difficulties with mobilising may indicate other things, for example a level of social care support a person might need.

Difficulties with mobilising may mean that a person may need more time, extra support to move around their home.

As mentioned above, there is no evidence that greater number of Disabled people work from home.

WCA mobilising descriptor is different from PIP moving around descriptor. They were designed for different purpose. PIP descriptors act as a proxy to identifying extra costs of disability, when WCA descriptors are proxies to barriers to work.

The real outcome of any proposed changes is fewer people qualifying for the health element, greater number of people subjected to conditionality and greater number of people losing substantial amounts of money. This is why we oppose those options.

Q2. What are your views on the three Absence or loss of bowel/bladder control (Continence) options?

We disagree with the proposed options. This activity again acts as a proxy to the level of support a person may need. Continence can still be a problem during online meetings, it also will require time and sometimes extra support to deal with it.

Q3. What are your views on the two Coping with Social Engagement options?

Coping with social engagement is relevant in home working situations as well. A person would need to communicate with their manager/employer in some way by having online meetings or engaging otherwise.

Q4. What are your views on the two Getting About options?

As stated above, there are many jobs that cannot be done online, very few Disabled individuals will be able to get those jobs. Changes to this descriptor will mean that some people with sensory or cognitive impairments will be subjected to work preparation activities for jobs that may never exist or jobs they can never get to.

Q5. In addition to the above options for change, are there any other WCA activities or descriptors that you think we should be considering changes to and why?

We believe there is a need for a radical reform of benefits, based on the recognition of everyone’s right to an adequate standard of living and the social model of disability. This reform must be co-produced with Disabled people and our organisations. We do not think the current WCA is working well, but we strongly oppose any changes that would lead to people getting less money, fewer people qualifying or a greater number of people being subjected to compulsion and conditionality.

Substantial Risk

Q6. What are your views on how the LCWRA Substantial Risk regulations could be amended with the emphasis on what work preparation activity an individual is able to safely undertake?

Q7. What do you think would be the impact of these changes?

Q8. What could constitute tailored or a minimum level of work preparation activity?

Q9. What are your views on whether we should remove the LCWRA risk group and place the people in this group in LCW risk instead?

Q10. How can this group be safely supported within the LCW risk group?

We strongly disagree with any proposed changes to the risk criteria. Restricting eligibility or removing it will put lives at risk.

The regulations as well as the DWP’s own WCA Health Assessment handbook is clear that this criterion only applies when there is good evidence

The substantial risk criteria should only be recommended if there is evidence that substantial risk to the mental or physical health of any person, by reason of some specific disease or bodily or mental disablement, would be triggered if the claimant were found not to have limited capability for work or work-related activity.

The award under substantial risk cannot be made without good evidence. The only consequence of changing or removing this criterion will be that people’s health and lives will be put at risk. This can lead to serious violations of their human rights. The reason why 14% of people qualify under this provision is that functional activities and descriptors do not capture everyone who needs this support.

The consultation document says that removing this criterion is not to subject people to conditionality, however, if substantial risk is removed then we do not see what safeguarding will exist. This will mean that people who have medical evidence saying taking part in work preparation activity could put their life or health at risk will be left to decisions of work coaches, who are poorly trained and do not have specific knowledge and skills to support a range of Disabled people with different impairments and needs. Work coaches are not professional psychiatrists or psychologists, they won’t themselves be seeking evidence of possible risk. All burden will be on claimants to negotiate the level of work related activity they can do. This will lead to some claimants being forced to do activities that will lead to deterioration in their health. Some people become ill at work and subjecting them to work preparation activities is completely inappropriate.

We strongly believe no one should be forced to participate in anything that could put their health or life at risk. Needing to claim benefits to be able to meet basic needs should not be a justification for compulsion, especially where it can lead to deterioration in health.

The better approach would be to offer individualised support on a voluntary basis.

^[1] O El Dessouky & C McCurdy, Costly differences: Living standards for working-age people with disabilities, Resolution Foundation, January 2023.

^[2] https://www.jrf.org.uk/blog/our-social-security-system-must-support-households-disabled-person-afford-essentials

^[3] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/work-aspirations-and-support-needs-of-claimants-in-the-esa-support-group-and-universal-credit-equivalent/the-work-aspirations-and-support-needs-of-claimants-in-the-esa-support-group-and-universal-credit-equivalent

^[4] ONS, https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/articles/characteristicsofhomeworkersgreatbritain/september2022tojanuary2023#characteristics-of-homeworkers

^[5] https://www.tuc.org.uk/news/tuc-7-10-disabled-workers-earn-less-ps15-hour

^[6] https://www.tuc.org.uk/research-analysis/reports/jobs-and-pay-monitor-disabled-workers

^[7] https://www.tuc.org.uk/news/nearly-one-three-disabled-workers-surveyed-treated-unfairly-work-during-pandemic-new-tuc

^[8] https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201719/cmselect/cmworpen/955/95502.htm

^[9] https://www.disabilitynewsservice.com/dwps-aggressive-post-2010-attitude-to-sanctions-is-back-with-a-vengeance/

^[10] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/spring-budget-2023/spring-budget-2023-html

Universal Credit-Waiting Days Exceptions

All Posts, Benefits, DWP, ESA, Universal Credit, Welfare reforms 6 Responses »

Aug 152017

Many claimants will be aware that with Universal Credit there are 7 waiting days when claiming , well some good news is that there are some exceptions. While this is going to be quite daunting for many, there are small things which will help existing IR ESA ,JSA,IS claimants.

Exceptions
5 A person will not have to serve 7 waiting days where

1. a new award of UC is made2

1.1 to a single claimant where a previous award has ended when the
claimant ceased to be a member of a couple or

1.2 to joint claimants where two previous awards ended as the result of the
claimants becoming a couple or

1.3 in any other circumstances where the assessment periods for the new
award begin on the same day of each month as the assessment periods for a previous award or

2. on the relevant date, the claimant or either of the joint claimants

2.1 is terminally ill or

2.2 has recently become a victim of domestic violence or

2.3 is a care leaver or

2.4 is aged 16 or 17 and has no parental support or

2.5 has been a prisoner within the month ending on the relevant date or

2.6 has been entitled to new-style JSA or new-style ESA within the 3 months
ending on the relevant date or

2.7 was entitled to old-style JSA, old-style ESA or IS at any time during the
period of 3 months ending on the relevant date and ceased to be entitled
to that benefit on starting paid work or

2.8 does not fall within paragraph 5 2.7 and was entitled to one of the
following benefits at any time during the period of one month ending on
the relevant date

2.8.a old-style JSA or

2.8.b old-style ESA or

2.8.c IS or

2.8.d HB or

2.8.e child tax credit or

2.8.f working tax credit

1 UC Regs, reg 19A(3); 2 reg 19A(3)(a); 3 reg 21; 4 reg 19A(3)(b); 5 reg 98(2); 6 reg 8(3); 7 Universal Credit
(Transitional Provisions) Regs 2014, reg 16A; UC Regs, reg 19A(3)(b)

2.7 was entitled to old-style JSA, old-style ESA or IS at any time during the
period of 3 months ending on the relevant date and ceased to be entitled
to that benefit on starting paid work or
2.8 does not fall within paragraph 5 2.7 above and was entitled to one of the
following benefits at any time during the period of one month ending on
the relevant date
2.8.a old-style JSA or
2.8.b old-style ESA or
2.8.c IS or
2.8.d HB or
2.8.e child tax credit or
2.8.f working tax credit7 .

Documentary on WCA

News, Atos, Maximus, WCA, welfare cuts 4 Responses »

Apr 042017

‘The Work Capability Assessment’ is a 30 minute presentation about the WCA, released by DPAC.

The Work Capability Assessment (WCA) is the primary assessment for Employment and Support Allowance, the main social security payment for disabled people and those with a long term health condition. In this documentary advocates, lawyers and claimants outline the fundamental problems with the WCA, and the adverse effects it can have on claimants. They show how the WCA not only fails disabled people, but fails on the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) terms; it can worsen people’s health and does not help them return to work. The WCA is carried out by private companies (initially Atos now Maximus). Although some assessments can be carried out smoothly and professionally, others are in buildings that do not have disabled access, require people in pain to sit for hours on hard chairs, and are carried out by assessors who can be rude, and even cruel.

We would like to thank everyone who volunteered their time to talk about the WCA. Some people have requested anonymity, therefore we have either a) used their voice only or b) got actors to record what they said (a lot of claimants are scared of the DWP).

It can be viewed on youtube:

and is available for viewing and download on Vimeo

The Work Capability Assessment from DPAC on Vimeo.

Please share this far and wide!

Jan 032015

Different forms of Government Propaganda began and ended the year. We saw delays, backlogs, more cuts, more campaigns and direct actions. We reproduce some of the DPAC actions, research and call outs from 2014. Highlights included the Westminster Abbey Occupation against the closure of ILF as part of the #saveilf campaign, lowlights included the court case that arrived at the decision that Penning had taken appropriate process into account by saying that ILF users could be entitled to less under local authorities. Chaos with the DWP, PIP, ESA was compounded by misinformation, dodgy stats , backlogs and increasing sanctions. The brilliant Hammersmith and Fulham Coalition against Cuts achieved the abolition of ‘care’ charges by their local authority-proving it can be done. Esther McVey was awarded Scrooge of the year. DPAC was threatened with legal action for our support of the Anthony Kletzander campaign -in response we increased the campaign, and the relationship in the propaganda against disabled people between the DWP and the Mail was finally exposed

News that the UNCRPD Committee had initiated its first ever inquiry into grave and systematic violations of the UN Convention against the UK identified how far our disability rights and independent living had been eroded by the Coalition-although the Mail didnt seem to like it much

Our constant court cases against the DWP continued, and we have more lined up for this year too- yes, we could be talking to you Motability!

We look forward to 2015 and a change in the regime that has seen the poor grow poorer, while the richest grew richer. A year in which we launch Who2vote4? and the DPAC revenge tour. We will continue to fight for #saveilf with an event on 6^th Jan at the House of Commons and an online twitter event.

For an excellent review of the fight against cuts from 2010-2014 please download From Cuts to Resistance and if you want a count down to the election , then the DPAC downloadable calender can help

Here’s to a better year in 2015 with thanks to all our members and supporters. Keep up with news in 2015 by subscribing to posts through our website www.dpac.uk.net or follow us on twitter @Dis_ppl_protest

Some selected actions of DPAC in 2014

January saw the posting of a call for those who were waiting for PIP due to backlogs. This post has received over 40,000 views,shares and many comments. The situation has now been described as a backlog that , at the current rate , could take 42 years to clear. For those claiming ‘reforms’ are working have a look to see that they are not: https://dpac.uk.net/2014/01/have-you-waited-months-for-a-pip-assessment/ and let’s not forget the backlog in ESA either-in short complete chaos for disabled people.

In ‘Austerity Street: the real impacts’ we reproduced some of the stories we had received from those left without cash and homes via sanctions, delays and backlogs. This was in response to Love Production’s poverty porn , Benefits Street, part of the media’s continued demonization regime -the campaign incorporated a twitter fest against the format of biased programming. We supported our partners in Canada Sudbury Coalition Against Poverty (SCAP) and Ontario Coalition Aginst Poverty (OCAP). In an international campaign against increasing homelessness. Austerity is global. We supported Boycott workfare against CAPITA cashing in on poverty.

Through the excellent work of Nick Dilworth we exposed more BBC media double dealing and the fact that they weren’t publicizing the 88% success rates of those claiming ESA and asked ‘Are the DWP failing apart at every level? When a freedom of information response incorrectly claimed that PIP was subjected to sanctions. In another they claimed that the cap would be cut for those without children, both were incorrect. With Inclusion London we campaigned against the Care Act’s exclusion of ‘independent living’ and DPAC also joined Hands off London Transport against ticket office closures, as well as regional Rail protests

February We joined the many direct actions against the removal of legal aid. Raquel Rolnik ‘s report on the bedroom tax is published and recommends immediate suspension of the bedroom tax. The Government’s response is to accuse her of giving sacrifices to Marx and telling her to ‘sort out her own country’. We republish the excellent ‘Why the rise of UKIP is dangerous for disabled people’ and receive the usual abuse from Kippers proving the point. DPAC, Black Triangle and Wow publish a joint statement on Atos exit strategy , calling again for an end to the WCA. We expose how 9 out of 10 sanctions are dismissed when challenged

March More direct actions against proposed cuts in legal aid for judicial review.We publish ‘Punching Holes in Austerity’ an insightful analysis of DPAC and direct actions. DPAC supports #stopchanges2A2W against punitive changes in Access to Work. We publish an update on Anthony Kletzander and questions for HSE in Ireland with ENIL , a story of human rights abuse in Dublin, Ireland, a stand that we would later find invoked a threat of legal action against one of our co-founders.

DPAC joins protests against DWP and ATOS country wide. Protests that were reminiscent of the very first DPAC protests against Atos carried out by DPAC from 2011 onwards, culminating in the 2012 DPAC Atos games that saw Atos tarnished forever. DPAC leads direct actions and online protests against the despised disability Con-fident, leading to the highest number of tweets and retweets ever, exposing the scheme as no more than a Government gloss while they were cutting access to work and removing the means for disabled people to work. We produce a critical analysis of Pennings impact assessment regarding ILF. We reproduce the piece by John Pring asking ‘Where was your MP during the Wow Debate’

April The brilliant Ellen Clifford travels to Canada to embark on a successful speaking tour with raise the rates. We hold a well attended DPAC Grassroots Fightback conference. DPAC, Inclusion London, Equal Lives and the Greater Manchester Coalition of Disabled People promote the #saveilf postcard campaign. Top Corrie stars support the postcard campaign to #saveilf. DPAC supports Lifeworks and protests against cuts to mental health support. DPAC gives its response to Labour on reform of WCA

May DPAC releases its research documents for download. DPAC and ILF users block the DWP in protest. We learn that disabled students allowances are now under threat of cuts. DPAC publishes a powerful piece by one of our readers that sums up many peoples’ feelings: ‘I’ll never forgive or forget what this Government has done to me and thousands of others‘. We pay homage to the strength of Quiet Riot, celebrate the #dpactour and the success of the Freedom Riders.

June The Independent Living Fund’s Birthday protest happens in June with lots of action outside the DWP. We see JSA benefit sanctions sky rocket under the coalition Government. More actions happen to fight the bedroom tax.

We publish a piece by Angela 28 on how ‘care’ support has been threatened and why that threatens independent living and rights– legal representation was found for many people, but we were aware that this was happening to many more people through emails to dpac mail. Unlike some organisations we attempt to challenge these instances and reject the rhetoric that there is more ‘choice and control’ for disabled people.

At the end of June DPAC with UKUNCUT, and Occupy carry out a daring occupation of Westminster Abbey , after months of planning to highlight the #saveilf campaign. There were 3 police to every protester , and while we had no support from the dear old church , messages of support and publicity poured in

July We publish a joint statement in response to the Work and Pensions Committee on the WCA from DPAC, Black Triangle, the Mental Health Resistance Network, Pats petition, Wow and New Approach in which we again say the WCA should be scrapped.

An ILF user makes a plea to Disability Rights UK (DRUK) on ILF after he was denied the right to speak at their independent living conference. DRUK did not feel the need to offer any response. In Disability Rights UK : independent Living or new visions in Neo-Liberalism we ask why the DRUK ‘independent living ‘ conference was sponsored by an organisation running institutions, segregated schooling and ‘hospitals for those with mental health issues. We also launched a highly successful twitter campaign asking the same questions, again DRUK did not feel they owed disabled people any response to this outrage.

DPAC highlights more chaos at the DWP on appeals and sanctions. John McDonnell launches an Early Day Motion to #saveilf. Positive updates and actions on the WCA court case regarding mental health claimants by the Mental Health Resistance Network. We ask that people write to IDS to raise issues happening regarding mental health.

August Rethink calls people with mental health issues a ‘disease burden’ Mental Health Resistance Network respond to the outrage. We call for a stop to discrimination for those transferring from DLA to PIP who do not get backdated payments. DPAC continues to support anti-fracking protests with Reclaim the power.

We republish the excellent Nick Dilworth’s piece on how the media are ignoring what’s happening to disabled people https://dpac.uk.net/2014/08/a-national-scandal-4-million-people-face-chaos-in-this-country-and-are-ignored-by-the-media/

ILF user John Kelly speaks to BBC on the impacts of the potential loss of ILF. We ask what happens when ILF funds are not ring fenced to local authorities

September sees a national day of Protest against sanctions, bedroom tax and benefit caps.

The fantastic Brian Hilton produces a set of pics for party conference season on #saveilf. DPAC crash the Tory Party Conference via a successful tweet attack and in person. We do the same to Labour.

We publish The Great Farago: UKIP sleight of hand and receive more abuse from Kippers, Richard Howitt Labour MEP quotes the piece and receives even more abuse.

New short film launched with the Daily Mirror on ILF.

The first inkling that the DWP are wrongly asking those in the ESA support group to attend work focused interviews comes to our notice.

DPAC is threatened with legal action for supporting Anthony Kletzander and publicising the abuse of his human rights in Ireland, our response is to publish an interview with Anthony’s parents on the injustice Anthony and his family have endured.

October We reblog the excellent Johnny Void piece on the boss of Maximus https://dpac.uk.net/2014/10/meet-richard-a-montoni-the-five-million-dollar-maximus-boss-here-to-fleece-the-uks-benefits-system/.

We publish an open letter to Freud who declared that disabled people can work for less than minimum wage. DPAC and Occupy pay another visit to the DWP Caxton House building for ‘Freud must go!’ protest

In Secrets and Lies :maximus the new leader of the inhumans we ask why Disability Rights UK have agreed to a) be part of the Maximus testing process on the WCA and b) why they’ve teamed up with Unum and other insurance companies to develop a TV program showing how much better off disabled people will be if they take out private insurance- with user-led disability organisations like these we dont need enemies.

ILF users return to court to challenge the DWP on ILF. A successful #saveilf vigil happens with road blocks, many messages of support and some great pics.

Welfare assistance fund is next under threat of closure. Campaign to save it is launched.

November The Final Litchfield Review shows that the WCA should be scrapped.

One of our favourite reports of the year : IDS is chased around a building to drown out shouts of murderer at Ipswich- congratulations to the local dpac group for that one!

We ask people to come forward to launch a legal challenge on cuts to the disabled student allowance

£86 million goes missing from Pudsley’s children in need account BBC to blame for mislaying -complainants are actually advised to write to Pudsley via his BBC email

DWP increase attacks on disabled benefit recipients with claims they can harress them off benefits. We put out an urgent call-out https://dpac.uk.net/2014/11/urgent-people-awaiting-wca-assessments-particularly-in-birmingham-please-read/

Work Providers A4E are exposed again in relation to ESA and workfare. The Rev Paul Nicolson wins in court against council tax. Class War’s continuing protests against ‘poor doors’ get to the authorities who make arrests- and Boris is burnt. Meanwhile DPAC discovers Motability’s sneaky backdoor changes to individuals needing to be in work to qualify for support https://dpac.uk.net/2014/11/motability-and-the-deserving-and-undeserving-charity-not-rights/

December ILF users lose court case on ILF but its not over.

DPAC launches an Open letter to Ed, Kate and Rachel on ILF– we’re still waiting for a response

Hammersmith and Fulham abolish home ‘care’ charges, showing it can be done. Congratulations for a great campaign to the excellent Kevin Caulfield and Debbie Domb and all at Hammersmith and Fulham Coalition against Cuts

Esther McVey is named scrooge of the year, which we though was a little too kind to the creature

Unsurprisingly the Work and Pensions report slammed the Government ‘mismanagament of Access to Work – the stop the changes to Access to Work campaign continues.

Questions are asked on the Government costs in fighting against disabled peoples’equality

The link between the DWP and the Mail propaganda is finally nailed and exposed as the DWP is caught out https://dpac.uk.net/2014/12/dwp-caught-giving-disability-propaganda-to-daily-mail/

Stop Sanctions : 11th Sept Day of Action

Action, All Posts, Bedroom tax, Benefits, Disability Activism, DWP, ESA, sanctions, WCA, welfare cuts, workfare 1 Response »

Aug 162014

(Report from workshop at national meeting of Anti Bedroom Tax and Benefit Justice federation)

Fighting Benefit Sanctions

The government has a policy of increasing sanctions to force people off benefits.

More than 800,000 people have been sanctioned in the last year. Referrals to food banks are mainly due to claimants being sanctioned.

Martin Cavanagh is the PCS Group Exec member for civil servants working in the DWP. The PCS union resolved at their recent conference to oppose both Workfare and Benefit Sanctions. He explained the three central reasons behind the Tories policy of increasing sanctions; Further demonisation of the poor, financial savings for the government, and driving a wedge between claimants and workers.

A PCS survey of members working in the DWP revealed that 82% of members felt ‘pressured’ into sanctioning claimants, and 62% said they had made ‘inappropriate’ sanctions decisions.

The Kirklees Axe The Tax group have used a banner : No Sanction for Claimants! No Targets for Staff! This attracted claimants and some staff to their stall outside a job centre.

Roger Lewis speaking for DPAC said that ‘more needed to be done by the PCS.’ But, he insisted, ‘we will not allow the government to divide us. Those working for the DWP alongside claimants have a common interest, we are locked together in a common fight against the Tories.’

‘More will be done from our union the PCS over the sanctions,’ explained Martin.

‘Advice for claimants on how to challenge sanction decisions has now been agreed between our union, the PCS, Unite the Union Community branches, and campaigners against sanctions. That advice will be issued shortly.’

Research has shown that only 1 in 50 claimants who are sanctioned appeal the decision. Of those 90% win their appeal. Forthcoming advice will explain to claimants how they can appeal.

To launch the joint advice and joint campaign, we agreed a day of action against benefit sanctions for Thursday 11th September.

Protests will be organised in every region outside key DWP headquarters or similar high profile government offices.

Fighting Workfare

Public campaigns work!

With just a few protesters the Boycott Workfare actions have ‘shamed’ many employers into withdrawing from the Workfare scheme. Companies and businesses don’t want to be exposed as employing ‘slave’ labour. Only when a company signs up to the Boycott Workfare pledge are they removed for the Boycott Workfare website listing.

Protests outside flagship venues of those companies still in the scheme will continue until the schemes are scrapped.

Reblogged with thanks from https://antibedroomtax.org.uk/2013-05-29-04-42-41/latest-news/110-stop-sanctions-11th-sept-day-of-action

Stop Discrimination by DWP Towards People Transferring from DLA to PIP

Action, All Posts, Disability Rights, DLA, News, PIP, Politics 1 Response »

Aug 162014

Responsible department: Department for Work and Pensions

We are asking for the inequality in the way Personal Independent Payment (PIP) claims are handled to be stopped and for those making transfers from Disability Living Allowance (DLA) to PIP to be treated in the same way as fresh claims for PIP.

Currently those making claims for PIP have their payments backdated to date of claim. However those receiving DLA do not get their claim backdated even if a change of circumstance means they are entitled to a higher rate of payment.

Payments are made from date of decision, meaning current delays, which the DWP admit to, mean claimants losing out on several weeks payments, depending on the length of delay and time to process a claim.

This goes against what the DWP themselves have said in response to questions from Susan Elan Jones MP i.e. ‘…the benefit is backdated so NO ONE is left out of pocket’. The current system is in no way equitable and victimises long term disabled people.

There is a petition at https://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/66447

Also let us know if this has happened to you by emailing : mail@dpac.uk.net

What happens when Central Funds to Local Authorities are not ringfenced? #ILF #bedroomtax

Action, All Posts, Bedroom tax, DPAC Research, DWP, ILF, Independent Living Fund ILF, local authority cuts No Responses »

Aug 092014

Disabled people have been expressing their disquiet at the news that the Independent Living Fund (ILF) will cease to exist in 2015, and that the money will be transferred to Local Authorities. To date, out of the 153 surveyed Local Authorities and from 106 responses, only 10 Local Authorities have said they will ringfence the transferred funds to ILF recipients, which means that in all other areas, ILF recipients face a potential reduction of their care packages. How is it likely to happen?

An interesting article was published this morning by Joe Halewood (@SpeyeJoe): https://speye.wordpress.com/2014/08/09/dhp-dubious-hoodwinking-practices-or-how-ids-pulled-the-woolsack-over-the-courts-eyes/

which shows that 16% (UK average) of Discretionary Housing Payments (DHPs) allocated by the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) to Local Authorities to mitigate the impacts of welfare reforms, and specifically of the infamous bedroom tax have been awards unrelated to welfare reforms. See Table 5 and 6 here: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/322455/use-of-discretionary-housing-payments-june-2014.pdf

It would be interesting to know what the money was spent on, but more to the point, DWP has twice relied on the DHP argument to win a legal case against claimants challenging the bedroom tax policy, and although DWP’s spokesperson said that the government has put in £345m to mitigate the bedroom tax, the figures shown in the Table 5 and 6 not only disprove this but also show that out of the money disbursed, 16% of the allocated funds have been used for awards totally unrelated to welfare reforms. This shows that disabled people are right to be worried about the future of the transferred ILF funds and about the willingness or unwillingness of Local Authorities to allocate these funds to disabled people who have been assessed as having the greatest needs. The ILF should be retained until assurance is given that these people will not see a reduction in their care packages.

Appeals and sanctions. More chaos at the DWP

News, WCA No Responses »

Jul 082014

Twice over the past quarter it has been publicly announced by 2 different ministers that the huge reduction in the appeal intake was due to more accurate ESA decisions, first by Mike Penning, the Minister for Disabled People on the Daily Politics Show on April the 13th and then by Steve Webb, the Minister of State for Pensions, during the debate about DWP chaos. It is essential to put the record straight as DWP continues taking credit for what it describes as an improvement of the WCA process, leading to more disabled people being entitled to ESA. Far from being improved, the WCA process has become unmanageable and is described by Judge Martin, the recently retired President of the Social Entitlement Chamber, dealing with benefits tribunals, as being in a state of virtual collapse. This state of virtual collapse has led to the publishing of astonishing figures.

First there has been an 89% reduction in the number of appeals compared with the same period in 2013 . Then the number of new claimants being found fit for work: 27%. Last year, for the same period, the percentage of new claimants found fit for work was 48%, almost double.
But perhaps the most astonishing figure is the percentage of new claimants assigned to the Support Group: 57%. This is unprecedented, and difficult to explain in the absence of further data from the DWP.
But a publication by Judge Martin, which he ironically called Dark Matters, throws some light on these figures, especially Dark Matters 1. (and see also Dark Matters 2 )

Chronologically:
In July 2013, DWP started to express concerns about the quality of Atos written reports. All Atos healthcare professionals were to be retrained and re-evaluated.
The consequences seem to have been a reduction by half in the number of assessments completed by Atos, from 200,000 per month to 100,000.
HMCTS (Tribunals) was informed that the effect was likely to be a reduction of 9,500 appeals per month from September to December 2013.
In January 2014, DWP stopped making ‘repeat referrals’ to Atos. From what Judge Martin is saying, there is anecdotal evidence that an increasing proportion of ESA claimants, both on new claims and IB-ESA reassessments, were simply being assigned to the Support Group without a face to face assessment.
Judge Martin’s conclusions that the ‘virtual collapse of the WCA process is the biggest single factor in the decline of the appeals intake’ is therefore supported by the evidence:

A reduction by half in the number of assessments
More claimants assigned to the Support Group without a face to face assessment.
Repeat assessments being paused

These 3 factors combined would have drastically reduced the number of assessments and therefore the number of likely appeals, especially with more claimants assigned to the Support Group who would not have a decision to appeal against. Additionally the introduction of Mandatory Reconsiderations will have had an impact, but compared with the other factors, it appears to be marginal, although at this stage the impact is unknown.

To add to the picture of the virtual collapse of the WCA, there is now a backlog of 712,000 claimants waiting to be assessed . The waiting times reported by CAB are regularly between six and eight months. Although the UK government is blaming the backlog on the previous government, the figures do not support this as shown by Nick Dilworth in his excellent blog. From the figures available, it can be calculated that the total number of cases which were subject to assessment but had not been assessed (the backlog) as of May 2010 was 28,300.
Far from being an improved system, the WCA process has descended into chaos. Although more claimants are entitled to ESA and are being assigned to the Support Group, the notion that it is an independent process which can be replicated anywhere and produce consistent results is undermined by the level of influence applied by DWP, whose intervention seems to bypass the descriptors which are enshrined in law, if more claimants are assigned to the Support Group for reasons of convenience.

Another sign of this chaos is the increase in the number of sanctions. Sanctions, which are primarily aimed at claimants on the work programme who have mental health conditions or learning difficulties, have quadrupled from 1,102 a month in December 2012 to 4,789 a month in December 2013 ,

Employment Support Allowance Sanction Decisions, by Month

even though referrals to the programme have fallen from 41,360 in the second year of the work programme to 20,300 in the third year for new ESA customers.

Referrals, Attachments, Job Outcome payments and Sustainment payments for the new ESA customer

This massive increase cannot therefore be explained by an increase of referrals to the work programme or a sudden surge in the number of claimants in the WRAG. As seen previously, because the number of claimants assigned to the Support Group has massively increased, the number of claimants assigned to the WRAG has consequently decreased by the same proportion. The implication is, in the absence of additional data from DWP, that sanctions are being exceedingly applied to an ever decreasing number of claimants. And 9 out of 10 ESA or JSA claimants who appeal the decision have their decision overturned by a tribunal according to the ‘Fulfilling potential? ESA and the fate of the work-related activity group report released by Mind.
Interestingly enough, the National Audit Office published today (2nd of July 2014) its report on the work programme. Among its findings: Performance for harder-to-help groups is still below expectations and
about the same as previous programmes, but the Department expects further improvements.
To spell it out more clearly, the Work Programme is not performing better than previous programmes but it is driving more claimants into destitution by sanctioning them. Incompetence, complacency and total obliviousness to the consequences will be the DWP’s legacy of this government.

by Anita Bellows

This text can be viewed and downloaded as a research paper from here

Well over half a million sickness benefits appeals have succeeded – why has the DWP kept this quiet?

Action, All Posts, Atos, ESA, WCA, welfare cuts No Responses »

Jun 172014

DWP ministers said only 9% of ESA decisions were wrong. Our research reveals the DWP have been quoting from figures which state 151,800 appeals have succeeded. Our evidence shows the true figure to be at least 567,634 – casting serious doubt over 43% of 1,302,200 ‘fit for work’ decisions.

ilegal Press Release – 16th June 2013

DWP’s internal figures reveal a much higher number of successful ESA appeals than have been made publicly available.

A DWP reply on 13 June 2014 to a Freedom of Information Act request made as part of an investigation in to DWP figures relating to the controversial Work Capability Assessment by ilegal.org.uk has revealed that of 1,287,323 ESA appeals, at least 567,634 claimants have had the original DWP decision overturned in their favour.

Government’s key defence of the assessments has been that around 9% of all decisions are incorrect. The most controversial of which are those where a claimant is found fit for work. DWP figures (for new claims) show that betweenOctober 2008 and September 2013 a total of 1,306,200 fit for work decisions have been made.

It is with considerable disappointment noted that the DWP’s latest publicly available statistics confirm that only 151,800 successful appeals have been recorded out of a total of 410,400 appeals (for new claimants only). Our investigations reveal evidence of three times as many appeals being ‘internally recorded’ of which
567,634 have been successful. The DWP have revealed to us figures which show nearly quarter of a million internal reconsiderations have led to decisions on new ESA claims being overturned in favour of the claimant; we have added these to figures from HMCTS tribunals which provides us with a much higher figure than the DWP seems to be prepared to admit to in their publicly available figures.

Our intensive research into the assessment of claimants for the DWP’s Employment & Support Allowance (ESA) has, following a freedom of information request to the DWP, provided one of the final pieces of the jigsaw needed to unpick the Department’s overly complicated statistics. We now have the final clue which has enabled us to identify that no less than 567,634 ESA claimants have in fact had their initial ESA refusals overturned in their favour.

It is a startling revelation that the government department has apparently been keeping a lid on a set of statistics that clearly shows between May 2010 and June 2013 no less than 820,356 decisions were looked at again by the DWP after claimants had been assessed by the controversial private contractors Atos Healthcare. These ‘internal’ statistics show that a very substantial 232,782 (28.5%) decisions were then subsequently overturned in the claimant’s favour.

What makes this all the worse is that these reconsideration statistics come on top of separate figures that show us that of those claimants who did not have the decisions overturned in their favour by the DWP, 817,102 went on to appeal to tribunals arranged by Her Majesties’ Courts & Tribunals Service where a further 332,607 were then overturned in the claimant’s favour by the tribunal.

These figures completely negate all of the DWP’s claims that it is getting the majority of its decisions right

These figures completely negate all of the DWP’s claims that it is getting the majority of its decisions right. Government ministers in conjunction with the DWP’s Press office have been telling us that a million claimants have been found fit for work whereas these figures show that in reality this is only a small part of the true story and that huge numbers have gone on to successfully appeal decisions which were wrong.

These new figures highlight the dubious practice of using the unchallenged assessment results, which only encourage media sensationalisation, with headlines such as those appearing in the Daily Express in July 2011 stating that ‘75% on sickness benefits were faking’. The same article goes on to say that out of ‘…2.6 million on the sick, 1.9 million could work’ before receiving an endorsement from the Prime Minister with an assurance that his government was “producing a much better system where we put people through their paces and say that if you can work, you should work”.

DWP and Ministers know the truth, they just aren’t telling anyone

These figures have been available to the DWP and its ministers since April 2010 from their ‘Decision Making & Appeals Case Recorder (DMACR) – ESA Management Information Statistics’. The DWP confirms this to be unpublished information which is for internal department information only, yet our research notes that the Right Hon Chris Grayling was using the same information in answer to Parliamentary questions on the 10th January 2012.

We question then why the DWP has consistently ‘over promoted’ only the results of Work Capability Assessments relating to ‘initial’ decisions (including the opinions of Atos Healthcare in the absence of a statutory DWP decision) when it could instead have come clean and declared how hundreds of thousands of their incorrect decisions have since been overturned in favour of the person appealing.

These revelations seriously undermine the DWP’s contention that the initial Work Capability Assessment outcomes are a valid measure of the claimant’s ability to work. The DWP has consistently defended its assessments by giving an impression that only a relatively low number of decisions have been overturned whereas the reality is that well over half a million have resulted in a successful outcome for the claimant.

And this DOES NOT include the 712,000 people awaiting assessments BEFORE they can appeal

This news must have come as cause for grave concern when considered in the light of a recent revelation by DWP Minister Mike Penning which revealed that in addition to the figures we have highlighted, a further 712,000 Employment & Support Allowance claimants are awaiting assessments without which they cannot yet appeal.

This hugely unacceptable backlog of cases means people with disabling medical conditions are left hanging for months and months on a basic allowance way below what they are entitled to. This is leaving hundreds of thousands deprived of the support they require and means having to scrape by on money which is wholly insufficient to meet their needs due to disability and illness. It also means many claimants affected by severe and complex mental health conditions are facing prolonged torment as they wait month upon month for their decision to be overturned before they can even lodge an appeal.

Face up to reality: it doesn’t work. Scrap the WCA

These findings add considerably to the pleas of disabled groups all over the country to scrap the Work Capability Assessment (WCA) and to find a better way to assess their needs.

It is simply appalling that the DWP, along with Ministers and other government spokespeople appear to be feeding the media with misleading statistics that are unrepresentative of the real story and instead encourage headlines vilifying the disabled and the genuinely ill. These figures clearly show the DWP has evidence in their possession which shows how in far too many cases the decisions it is making are dead wrong and they know they’re dead wrong.

Editorial notes

Please contact the author of this article Nick Dilworth for verification of any of the figures quoted. We welcome sharing our findings on social media and allow this information to be produced providing credit is given to the
i-legal website with links to the article produced.

We apologise for the slight delay in publishing this release. This was due to a need to align the figures to ones recently produced by the DWP in their Work Capability Assessment figures released on the 12th June 2014 which relate to the most recent statistics up to September 2013.

A full supporting explanatory memorandum will be published very shortly.

The Reconsideration statistics relate to new ESA claimants only (excluding incapacity benefit to ESA conversion cases) whereas HMCTS figures refer to all ESA claimants. It is our contention that had the DWP supplied all of the information we had requested, the figures for reconsiderations would have been considerably higher.

We acknowledge that not all appeals will be against fit for work findings for new claimants but given the DWP’s emphasis on this claimant cohort and the lack of information to the contrary we are of the contention that other appeals relating to claimants being moved from the Work Related Activity Group to Support Group are likely to be of a much lower volume and more likely to be contained within the cohort relating to incapacity benefit/ESA assessment.

We would like to express our thanks to Anita Bellows an i-legal member for her cooperation and for making the freedom of information request upon our guidance and our thanks extend to the DPAC organisation with whom Anita is also a member.

https://ilegal.org.uk/thread/8640/release-staggering-numbers-overturned-secrecy?page=1&scrollTo=21759

with thanks as ever to Nick @Mylegalforum

Join the #Save ILF Protest, Monday May 12th: London DWP

Action, All Posts, Independent Living, Independent Living Fund ILF, Reclaiming our Futures No Responses »

May 012014

Save the Independent Living Fund
“Nursing Homes Stink, They’re Worse than You Think.
We’d Rather Go to Jail Than Die in a Nursing Home”

Join us to protest against the closure of ILF on Monday, May 12th 3pm-5pm outside DWP head quarters, Caxton House, Tothill Street, SW1H 9WA.

Nearest accessible tube –Westminster.

Click for Face Book Event Page

Bring things to make lots of noise. We have asked Mike Penning Minister for disabled people to join us but in case he doesn’t we need to make sure he knows we’re there.
————————————————————————————-
Dear Mike Penning,
We understand that you have stated publicly that you feel closure of the Independent Living Fund (ILF) will not have any adverse effect on the ability of disabled people to live independently in the community, to be able to access education or to continue to be employed.

Disabled people who are ILF recipients do not agree with your view and are gathering to voice their fears for their futures on May 12th from 3-5pm outside Caxton House.

They would very much appreciate the opportunity to speak to you about their very valid concerns so although we know you must be a very busy person we hope you can join us to hear what disabled people are saying.

In the meantime we are attaching a small selection of case studies for your attention.

On behalf of DPAC ILF recipient support group
————————————————————————————————————————————-
What is the Independent Living Fund?
The Independent Living Fund (ILF) is a ring-fenced pot of funding to provide funding to help 18,000 disabled people with high support needs live an independent life in the community rather than in residential care.

Closure of ILF: In March 2014 government decided to close the ILF in June 2015 in spite of a court ruling that said their previous decision to close ILF was in breach of the Equality Act. As usual DWP blatantly ignored the court.

Recommendations: Deaf and disabled people’s organisations and disabled people believe the ILF should be kept open and re-opened to new applicants for two key reasons:
– The ILF is a cost effective model of funding that successfully supports the independent living of those with the highest support needs.
– In stark contrast many Local Authorities only provide funding for basic a clean and feed model of care which ends independent living and inclusion in the community. This will leave many ILF users with a choice between inadequate care at home or an inactive, isolated life in a residential home.

Disabled people in Norwich Forced to make 88 mile trip because of Atos

Action, All Posts, Atos, DWP, WCA No Responses »

May 012014

Disabled people in Norwich are being forced to make 88 mile trips for their Atos assessment-why? Because the centre in Norwich is not accessible for wheelchair users.

If that wasn’t bad enough, the taxpayer is footing another additional bill because of private companies and DWP combined inefficiency, yet again.

EDP24 reports: Taxpayers are footing the bill to ferry disabled people on an 88-mile round trip to Ipswich or King’s Lynn by taxi to decide if they are fit to work because the Norwich centre has no wheelchair access.
In an uncompromising letter, welfare minister Mike Penning has told MPs there are no plans to introduce a new assessment centre in Norwich and the inadequate St Mary’s House, on Duke Street, will continue to be used for the work capability assessments. It comes as Norwich MP Simon Wright highlighted the case of a constituent who had been sent to Ipswich by taxi, with other MPs also citing similar stories.

One Norwich woman who is unable to use stairs easily, who did not want to be named, was sent by taxi to King’s Lynn weeks after her appointment was cancelled because of the fire risk.
She said it had made an already stressful situation even more difficult.
It has emerged under a Freedom of Information request that the DWP has no direct control over the lease on St Mary’s House.
It is managed by the private firm Telereal Trillium as part of a 20 year private finance initiative contract, which ends in March 2018.
Telereal Trillium would not provide details of the terms of its leave citing it as “commercially sensitive”.
Mark Harrison, chief executive of Equal Lives, said: “How can this coalition government lease buildings that are not fit for purpose and have no control over the access requirements for disabled customers?”
He said the centre was yet another example of the government putting the needs of private sector companies and their profits before the welfare of its disabled citizens.

Read the story in full here

Some Info on Mandatory Reconsideration Routes for ESA

Action, All Posts, Benefits, DWP, ESA, WCA, welfare cuts No Responses »

Mar 122014

1. Job Seekers Allowance (JSA) has not been claimed during Mandatory Reconsideration (MR) period:-

You receive a letter from Department for Works and Pensions (DWP) to inform you that the MR has not been found in your favour, this letter will give details of how to proceed to formal appeal, ie submitting the appeal form to HM Courts and Tribunal Services (HMCTS) When this appeal form is received by DWP from HMCTS, your ESA will automatically be reinstated; you do not have to do anything else. When the form is received by the Dispute Resolution Teams, they will inform the appropriate Benefit Centre immediately that ESA should be reinstated. The BC will probably contact you to ask for evidence/Fit Notes etc.

-2. JSA has been claimed during Mandatory Reconsideration period:-

You receive a letter from DWP to inform that the MR has not been found in your favour, this letter will give details of how to proceed to formal appeal, ie submitting the appeal form to HMCTS. For those who have claimed JSA, they must make it clear on the appeal form that they wish to have ESA reinstated. This information should be put in Section 5 of the form, ‘About Your Appeal’. When HMCTS have notified DWP that you wish to progress to formal appeal, ie the form is received, ESA will be reinstated. DWP will contact the appropriate Benefit Centre immediately. You will be contacted for Fit Notes/medical evidence to support the claim & it’s important that throughout their JSA claim, you adhere to the conditionality of that benefit, even after DWP has been informed that they would like ESA to be reinstated & until ESA has been reinstated.

This infomation is doing the rounds of Disabled Peoples’ Organisations. It has come direct from the DWP. DPAC are just passing the information on, and cannot be held responsible for any errors – but if your route doesn’t progress as laid out here please let us know….

Another DWP statistics debacle: The latest appeal outcome figure published by DWP and used in Policy Exchange report is ….wrong!!

Action, All Posts, sanctions, welfare cuts No Responses »

Mar 042014

Policy Exchange published its report on sanctions yesterday. Apart from the mantra that a sanction regime is an integral part of welfare, when evidence shows that sanctions are good at driving people off benefits, but useless at helping them finding a job, a lot of attention has been focused on the number of wrongly sanctioned claimants. This number, around 70,000 people, is the number of people with a low level sanction and 1^st offence, who had their sanction decisions overturned through appeal or reconsideration. Box 4.1 page 31 of the report elaborates on this.

It would have been a lot more informative to consider all overturned sanction decisions, whether at low, intermediate or high level, and to differentiate between overturned sanction decisions through appeals and through reconsiderations.

Unfortunately, it is not presently possible to make these calculations as it seems that DWP, which is using a new statistical tool, Stat-Xplore, to allow extraction of different combination of statistics, had to remove all the data related to appeal outcomes because of ‘issues’. While the number of people who appeal a sanction decision is very small (10,362) compared to the total number of people sanctioned, it is the percentage of overturned sanction decisions through appeals compared to the total number of appealed sanction decisions which is above all indicative of the quality of decisions.

The same weight cannot be given to the outcome of a reconsideration as to the outcome of an appeal. Appeals are dealt with by independent tribunals while reconsiderations are done by DWP, and as David Webster, the Glasgow University researcher says: DWP decision makers are’mere agents of the Secretary of State and have had no independent responsibility to apply the law reasonably’.

It is interesting to note that Policy Exchange did not try to disaggregate the appeal and reconsideration figures for analysis. By doing so, the report confers undeserved credibility to the number of wrongly sanctioned claimants.

So if the reconsideration figures have to be taken with a pinch of salt (a big pinch) and if the appeal outcomes are wrong, where does that leave us?

https://www.policyexchange.org.uk/images/publications/smarter%20sanctions.pdf

https://paulspicker.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/sanctions-stats-briefing-d-webster-19-feb-2014-1.pdf

To ATOS and/or OH Assist & DWP: a plea for logic, any kind of bloody logic!

Action, All Posts, Atos, disability hate crime, Disability Rights, DLA, DWP, ESA, PIP, welfare cuts 9 Responses »

Mar 042014

We’ve stopped asking for basic humanity from you. We’ve stopped asking for fairness -it all falls by the wayside. You don’t care. Now we ask for logic …………well John does, but he is not alone, he is supported by DPAC and thousands of disabled people and those with long-term health issues. We hear that you ATOS/OH Assist want to pull out of the WCA, but want to keep the PIP contract despite a serious backlog and people being left for up to a year without any cash to support them. We all look forward to the day when these barbaric tests are scrapped, if you want to blame the DWP, fine, but several millions in public money paid to you suggests you also have something to do with it all too. By the way this message must not be construed as a death threat to your staff in any way- It’s a plea for logic, any kind of bloody logic, as feelings are clearly not your strong point or those of the DWP.

Below is the email DPAC received from John. John also emailed other disability charities, so I am sure they will be publishing something too unless they’re too tied up in Government funds to say a word, of course.

Below the copy of the email is a piece on the illogical questionnaire that is sent out to everyone having to endure this abuse by ATOS/OH Assist/DWP , or any future private company out to make a few million at the expense of peoples’ lives.

Hi,

Please do not think that this is an attempt to influence my own case in any way or enlist support – although the latter would certainly be welcome (head gets sore from banging against Atos’ brick walled- ignorance). As I am sure you are aware, there is a tendency for those of us unfortunate enough to be disabled – seriously or otherwise – to become isolated. I believe that it is important that we raise awareness and share information even on individual cases – hence this e-mail.

I am aware of many people who have suffered and still are suffering at the hands of Atos & the DWP, but I thought that you might like to hear of my experiences – and I have yet to even have a Work Capability Assessment!

I was first called to attend an assessment on 17^th June 2013 and could not believe the asinine ‘questionnaire’! For Pete’s sake: “Do you have trouble remaining conscious while awake?’!!!; Picking up and moving things: What ‘things’? How heavy? What shape? If cardboard, is it standard or thick cardboard? Move them from where to where?. How large is a ‘large’ cardboard box? Does the claimant move by hand, or does s/he use aids? Is there anything in the damn box? Those are just two examples.

In addition to other disabilities, I cannot write for more than a minute or two without my hand painfully ‘cramping up’ and my writing becoming illegible. Therefore, I intended to make notes in the only way open to me – using a voice recorder. Atos – despite agreeing to record the assessment, denied this and refused to proceed with the assessment. Given that anything I dictated would also be recorded on their equipment, this is not only illogical, but blatantly discriminatory. Also, at the risk of sounding like a conspiracy theorist, it suggests that the equipment will – shock! horror! fail, particularly should it show Atos in a bad light (see e.g. https://dpac.uk.net/2012/07/having-your-wca-recorded/ and https://www.theguardian.com/society/2012/dec/13/disabled-man-government-court-benefit-test).

Neither Atos or the DWP could legally prevent a more able-bodied person or their escort/carer from making notes by hand, so the decision is, therefore, discriminatory and unlawful. It should not be necessary – as with the recent court decision on Mental health & WCA – to resort to litigation in order to obtain that which one has a right to in any case.

Despite being advised from the outset that my disabilities result in fatigue and the need to sleep by early afternoon, I was sent appointments that disregarded this and it was necessary each time to write to them demanding a new, more suitable appointment.

I have another appointment for 21^st March 2014, although I expect the same things to occur and that Atos will again unlawfully refuse to proceed with the assessment. I have since been met with nothing but malice, discrimination, general illegality and just plain incompetence by the Atos parasites, whose default position seems to be: if in doubt – lie (more on this below) having, apparently, learned their craft at the knee of Josef Goebbels.

When I addressed their ‘response’ to my complaints, the person who supposedly ‘investigated’ them was conveniently (for them) absent and I was passed to another individual whose further investigation was so thorough that it took less than two weeks and not only re-stated Atos/DWP’s unlawful discrimination vis-à-vis my note-taking, but also completely failed to mention at all the lies told by:

a) The Atos receptionist who reported that I stated that I would take the case to the European Court of Human Rights. This was yet another case of Atos shooting itself in the foot as I am a former law lecturer, assisting in a research capacity on a couple of human rights cases and am quite aware that a claimant must first exhaust domestic remedies. In fact, I stated that I was prepared to make a formal complaint to the Commission for Equality & Human Rights.

b) The lies told by the person who (supposedly) first investigated my complaints. Namely that disabled parking was available on the street immediately outside the assessment centre. This was a blatant lie and I provided photographic proof of this. In fact, not only does there not appear to be any disabled parking available in the building’s car park that I could see, but there is no disabled parking available within at least a hundred yards of the building! This person had also related – in respect to my complaint “when you entered the assessment room” when I never left the reception area until I left the building!

I have provided Jobcentre Plus/DWP with copies of correspondence at every stage and yet they have not even had the common courtesy to acknowledge the correspondence, let alone respond. I have also made a formal complaint to the Equalities Office – who have also failed to acknowledge or respond.

I am in the process of submitting evidence to the House of Commons Work and Pensions Committee. Will they listen? Doubtful, but we live in hope. My MP has also been completely useless on this – in fact that isn’t surprising given that he’s a Lib-Dem and therefore part of this odious coalition.

I have attached for your information my response to Atos’ ‘investigation’ of my complaints and my initial assessment of the questionnaire. I apologise for the occasionally facetious tone of the latter, but I simply could not believe that they were prepared to use such a blatantly incompetent document as the basis from which to destroy so many lives.

Regards,

John Lockett

Questionnaire

Page 1

Page 1/3

Title of the form

Poorly chosen – or perhaps deliberately chosen? By definition, except for the minority of frauds –Incapacity Payment Benefit claimants are incapable of work.

About you

Personal details: Unnecessary. After all, they sent me the damn form and, therefore, already have this information

They knew I was male and that I could not, therefore, be pregnant!

Face-to-face assessment

The idiocy of asking anyone, let alone someone extremely poor health to nominate dates in the next THREE MONTHS when they are unavailable is plain.

Help needed for face-to-face assessment: How is a claimant to answer this adequately –even if sufficient space were provided on the form – without knowing where the assessment is to take place?

Apart from the fact that it is NONE of their damn business, how, exactly, does the date of a claimant’s last GP visit relate to or affect in any way, their capability – or otherwise –for work?

The names and details of any specialist care professionals are relevant only if they are prepared to call the claimant a liar or a fraud, which would possibly create liability for both the decision-maker and Atos/the DWP in defamation.

The date of the claimant’s last visit to such a professional is also none of their damn business and may be irrelevant in any case. A claimant may not have seen a particular consultant in more than a year. This does not mean, however, that their condition has miraculously disappeared. Other specialists/consultants may have only been visited once after referral from other professionals and in order to either aid diagnosis or to eliminate possible causative factors.

About your illness or disabilities

This is such an openly-worded question as to be largely useless. The space provided for response is also inadequate for those with multiple and/or variable conditions to respond adequately.

About your medication

Eavesdropping in any pharmacy will reveal that a great many people do not even know the names of the drugs they take – merely the quantity and the time they are to be taken. I continue to take a different ant-histamine, which frequently causes drowsiness/tiredness over and above that caused by my various conditions.

Page 2

Page 2/3

Drugs, alcohol or other substances

This could be seen as an attempt to re-write the Disability Discrimination Act by stealth, given that some relevant conditions under this heading can be considered disabilities. It may also be seen as a deceptive attempt to induce a claimant to inadvertently admit that their inability to work is of their own making and thereby deny their claim. Either case is despicable.

Part 1: Physical functions

Part of this may be seen as a ‘trick’ question. As many claimants for Incapacity Benefit also claim Disability Living Allowance, this can be seen as a deliberately deceptive attempt to induce the claimant to give different answers to claims for each benefit.

3. Reaching: Inadequate space to answer the question properly. This criteria is variable and will depend on the state of variable conditions at any given time.

4. Picking up and moving things: This question is worded, apparently, by a six-year-old. What ‘things’? How heavy? What shape? Is it standard or thick cardboard? Move them from where to where?. How ‘large’ is a ‘large’ cardboard box? Does the claimant move by hand, or does s/he use aids?

5. Manual dexterity: Another poorly-worded question with proposed tasks apparently selected (!) at random from an episode of Mr. Bean. Most people rarely read a traditional book now, preferring an electronic version. As regards picking up a £1 coin, I would probably not attempt do so, but scoop it from the surface with one hand into the other.

6. Communicating with people: Communicate how? Semaphore, Morse code? Martian?

7. Other people communicating with you: Yet another poorly-worded question. What if the person attempting communication with the claimant has an unfamiliar accent? What if the other person is a poor communicator? The same applies to simple (printed) messages from other people.

8. Getting around safely: Define ‘safely’. What road? A dual carriageway? A single track road? A one-way street? How does a claimant know whether they can get around an unfamiliar place without knowing what the place is?

9. Controlling your bowels and bladder and using a collecting device: A piggy bank could be classified as a ‘collecting device’!

10. Staying conscious when awake: Another idiotic question! By definition, if one is conscious, one is awake.

11. Learning how to do tasks: How can a claimant truthfully and reliably answer this question without knowing what task? One may have no difficulty in learning how to remove an engine’s cylinder head, although physically doing so may be impossible. However, learning to programme computer code may be beyond them. The form asks about setting an alarm clock, but what sort?

Page 3

Page 3/3

The mechanical sort with two bells on top, or that contained on my mobile ‘phone? What if one had a different mobile ‘phone on which key operation was more difficult?

13. Starting and finishing tasks: What tasks? Under what conditions? For example, someone who possesses a dishwasher would find it far easier to complete the washing up than someone with only a bowl and sink. Starting and finishing any task may be dependent on the effect various and variable medical conditions on a given day.

14. Coping with changes: What changes? What constitutes a ‘small’ change? A claimant may be able to cope with a small change in one aspect of their life but not another. For example, a claimant with a hospital appointment may have re-organised their schedule and arranged transport to cope with the appointment but should the taxi not arrive or the appointment be changed at short notice, some may be stoic, regarding it as a small change while others may react extremely angrily, regarding it as a major disruption in their routine. The same applies equally to the second part of this question (unexpected changes). A ‘small’ change – whether expected or not – can be a major disruption in the life of a disabled person.

15. Going out: This is essentially the same question as question 8 ‘Getting around safely’.

16. Coping with social situations: This question is completely asinine. What constitutes a ‘social situation’? The qualification of the question is inadequate. To some, this may be visiting family, while to others it may be a family wedding/christening/funeral or an evening at the pub!

17. Behaving appropriately: Yet another extremely poorly-worded question. Firstly, how would it affect a claimant’s capability for work? And what work? In what situation? What is appropriate to one person may be extremely objectionable to another. Furthermore, unless someone speaks out, how would the claimant know that their behaviour upsets other people? The same applies to the second part of the question.

18. Eating and drinking: How on earth does this question – in ANY way – relate to a claimant’s ability to work. I doubt there are many vacancies for wine-tasters, or cookery competition judges

Sanctions: IDS behaving unlawfully on a large scale: Almost 9 out of 10 of sanction appeals against DWP are upheld by independent tribunals

Action, All Posts, DWP, ESA, News, sanctions, welfare cuts 5 Responses »

Feb 242014

This article draws unashamedly on David Webster’s excellent briefing following the release in February 2014 of sanction statistics for JSA and ESA claimants by DWP. David Webster, who is Honorary Senior Research Fellow at Glasgow University, also presented very strong and documented evidence to inform the enquiry of the Work and Pension Committee into sanctions in March and November 2013. https://paulspicker.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/david-webster-evidence-to-hc-work-and-pensions-committee-20-nov.pdf

The briefing on which this article is based can be found here: https://paulspicker.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/sanctions-stats-briefing-d-webster-19-feb-2014-1.pdf

It explains in great detail the trends in sanctions, in reasons for sanctions, in appeals etc. since 1997 which, for David Webster, is evidence that Iain Duncan Smith is behaving unlawfully on a large scale.

Number of sanctions: The latest figures released by DWP through its new software (Stat-Xplore) show that the number of sanctions for JSA and ESA claimants has reached unprecedented levels. Between 22/10/2012 and 30/09/2013 (49 weeks) 527,574 JSA claimants received a sanction. The figure for ESA claimants over a complete year is 22,840, also a record number. Although the rate of sanctions for ESA claimants is much lower, it is rising and stands almost at 0.,5% per month (compared to 6% for JSA claimants in the 3 months to 30/09/2013).

Length of sanctions: What has also changed is the length of sanctions. Although ministers claimed that hardly anyone would be subject to the new 3-year sanctions, the number of JSA claimants who had received a 3-year sanction rose to 962 by 30 September 2013, up from 700 by 30 June 2013. Claimants’ ‘failures’ such as not attending or being late for advisory interviews, non-availability for employment, which used to attract 1 or 2 week sanction, are now penalised with a 4 week sanction

Reasons for sanctions: The main reasons for JSA sanctions are failure to participate in training/employment schemes and not ‘actively seeking work’ while the majority of ESA claimants are being sanctioned for not participating in work-related activity (75%), and the remainder for missing or being late for an interview.

Work Programme: The Work Programme continues to fail JSA claimants, as contractors have been responsible for twice as many sanctions on the people referred to them as they have produced job outcomes: 394,759 sanctions and 198,750 job outcomes. There is also evidence of maladministration of referral forms which has lead to a huge increase of cancelled referrals. What it means is Work Programme contractors are making mistakes in their paperwork on a big scale.

Appeals and reconsiderations: The success rate of appeals taken to an independent tribunal is quoted as being 58%, even by the Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary. This figure represents an average over 12 months, which fails to reflect the strong and clear upward trend of successful appeals. Tribunals are now upholding almost 9 out of 10 of appeals against DWP. This confirms the evidence that sanctions are applied unreasonably.

Unfortunately, only about one in 50 sanctioned claimants appeals to a Tribunal – 2.44% in the latest 3 months. The vast majority of claimants find the process too difficult.

To conclude, a note added by David Webster to his briefing regarding the role of sanctions in creating destitution:

‘There is clearly a lot of confusion about the role of sanctions in creating destitution. The current regime under which sanctioned claimants lose all their benefits and, unless in an arbitrarily defined ‘vulnerable’ group, are not allowed even to apply for discretionary ‘hardship payments’ for the first two weeks, has been in force since October 1996. What has changed dramatically in recent years is the number and length of sanctions. Prior to the Jobseekers Act 1995, sanctioned claimants were entitled to a reduced rate of Income Support or Supplementary Benefit as of right from the start, assessed on the normal rules’.

All Repeat WCA medicals to be stopped

Action, All Posts, Atos, Benefits, Disability Rights, DWP, ESA, WCA, welfare cuts No Responses »

Feb 242014

In an urgent memo obtained by Benefits and Work, the DWP have told staff that due to a growing backlog at Atos all current employment and support allowance (ESA) claimants will be left on the benefit, without further medical checks, until another company can be found to do repeat work capability assessments (WCAs). The memo, dated 20 January, goes on to say that this will reduce the number of claimants moving off ESA, but that there are no plans to inform claimants or MPs about the change.

Benefits and Work obtained the memo from the DWP via a Freedom of Information request. It is headed: ‘FOR URGENT CASCADE. Control of the Referral of Repeat work Capability Assessments’.

The memo explains that back in July a ministerial statement announced that:

“in the drive to continually improve the Work Capability Assessment process and bring down waiting times for claimants, DWP had decided to seek additional capacity to deliver Work Capability Assessments.

“We are working towards having new provision in place – it will of course take some time for that to become fully operational.”

However, the memo goes on to explain that:

“The number of cases currently with Atos Healthcare has grown. A decision has therefore been taken to control the referral of repeat work capability assessments. Therefore, with effect from 20 January 2014, further routine repeat assessments referrals to Atos will be deferred until further notice.

“Controlling the volume of repeat Work Capability Assessments should help us to reduce delays for new claimants and those that have already been referred.”

The memo goes on to say that staff must still refer claimants for reassessment where there has been a reported change in condition, giving the example of a claimant placed in the Work Related Activity Group whose condition worsens and who might be expected to move into the Support Group.

Aside from this, however, reassessment of existing claimants is to end until further notice, with no new cases being referred to Atos from 20^th January.

The memo is keen to point out that the decision to stop repeat assessments by Atos is not ‘linked to the quality issues outlined in July 2013’ which the DWP ‘has been working closely with Atos to resolve’. It also reassures readers that the change will have no impact on Atos’ ability to carry out personal independence payment assessments.

It does, however, admit that the result of the change is that the number of people coming off ESA each month will reduce because:

“the Work Capability Assessment is the main trigger for off-flows from the Employment and Support Allowance load. We will continue to assess the potential for alternative interventions on those whose repeat Work Capability Assessments are deferred to seek to manage this consequence.”

No details of what those ‘alternative interventions’ might be is given.

It is clear, however, that the DWP is not keen for people to be aware of the ever more disastrous state of medical assessments for benefits by Atos. The memo explains that claimants who enquire about when their next WCA will be, should only be told that:

“Although the Department will periodically review a person’s Limited Capability for Work, there is no set date for this to happen.

“The timing of this review is at the discretion of the Decision Maker acting on behalf of the Secretary of State and is influenced by the evidence available to them, which can mean on occasion longer periods between face to face assessments. “

In addition, the memo explains that as this is simply an ‘operational decision’ and not a ‘policy change’ there are no plans to notify ‘external stakeholders such as claimants, claimant representative groups, Members of Parliament, etc.’

It is hard to imagine that IDS and his fellow DWP ministers believed that they could keep this further Atos-related failure secret for long: you can’t stop reassessing thousands of claimants a week without anyone noticing. If, however, they could have kept it secret at least until they found a new company to take on the repeat assessments, it would have been easier to explain away and not added to the ever mounting pressure for a complete overhaul of the WCA.

“Yes, there was briefly a problem” IDS could have said “But we now have a new provider and it is no longer an issue.”

As it is, this news is simply further proof that the WCA is not fit for purpose, because as soon as the DWP attempts to impose proper quality controls a massive backlog results. It is, we hope, another nail in the coffin of a completely discredited system.

And, for all those claimants with static or degenerative conditions who continue to be forced to undergo repeat assessments, often followed by repeat appeals, on an annual basis, the news will come as a welcome respite.

Reposted from Benefits and Work website with thanks

https://www.benefitsandwork.co.uk/news/2645-all-repeat-wca-medicals-to-be-stopped

Are the DWP Falling Apart at Every Level? PIP and the Cap

All Posts, DWP, welfare cuts 2 Responses »

Jan 252014

This month DPAC ran two articles , one on PIP being sanctionable evidenced through a DWP Freedom of Information request (FOI) response https://dpac.uk.net/2014/01/how-can-pip-be-sanctionable/ (we put our own FOI in on this on the day) and the other on DWP information of cuts to the benefit cap for couples without children https://dpac.uk.net/2014/01/dwp-cuts-by-stealth-benefit-cap-for-couples-without-children-from-26000-to-18000/

The PIP being sanctionable issue had a lot of attention – how could they possibly do this? Kate Green responded to DPAC on Twitter, after asking questions and obtaining info and documents from the Parliament library to say PIP wasn’t sanctionable, other MPs said they would raise questions on this. John Pring of DNS News also contacted the DWP and their view was PIP wasn’t sanctionable. But we were all confused, none more so than the DWP, it seems. On 23^rd January the DWP issued an apology ( yes really: an apology) and said they had made a mistake: PIP is not sanctionable https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/192913/response/474265/attach/html/3/WDTK%20FOI%20194%20correction.pdf.html

We are still not entirely clear how PIP fits in with ‘withdrawal of benefits’, linked benefits to PIP and other puzzles set up by minsters and the DWP which it appears that the DWP themselves cannot properly follow either.

The second story on the benefit cap information and its cut was also clarified by DWP –they didn’t apologise this time, but again they got it wrong! The cap wont be cut, at the moment anyway. https://nationalhousingfederation.newsweaver.com/update/15j1xj9pu8q?utm_source=hootsuite&utm_campaign=hootsuite

We are all trawling through these cuts they call reform, and its difficult enough, given 2 cock ups in 3 weeks by the DWP, plus all those emails that DPAC gets through its mail box from people whose lives are affected by DWP incompetency-we ask: are the DWP falling apart at every level? If so UNUM will be pleased

How can PIP be sanctionable?

Action, All Posts, Atos, DLA, welfare cuts, Welfare reforms, Write to your MP 9 Responses »

Jan 212014

Personal Independence Payment (PIP) is the new benefit which replaces Disability Living Allowance (DLA).

DLA was introduced in the UK in 1992, and its main purpose was to compensate for the extra costs associated with disability and it was therefore not means tested, non contributory and not taxable. Although the majority of people claiming DLA had mobility issues, some disabled people would also choose to claim it to cover their personal care costs. Many were awarded DLA for life in recognition that their impairment/health issue would be with them for life. DLA was for those both in and out of work for the extra costs associated with disability. The Government presented PIP as a ‘like for like’ payment to replace DLA.

PIP was introduced in 2012 to replace DLA, the government arguing that the increasing number of claimants made DLA unsustainable. PIP is therefore more restrictive and will lead not only to a reduced number of claimants but also to a reduced number of claimants entitled to the enhanced rate of the mobility component. https://disabilitynewsservice.com/2014/01/shocking-pip-figure-raises-new-motability-concerns/

PIP has also been riddled in controversy because of Atos, the firm contracted by the government to undertake the PIP and the Work Capability Assessments, which has led to 1 million disabled people appealing in court, with 43% of them succeeding in having their fit for work decision overturned. https://dpac.uk.net/2012/11/esa-appeals-increase-by-40-what-the-newspapers-wont-print/

Therefore it really came as a surprise to discover that in 2012 PIP had become a sanctionable benefit.

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/192913/response/472770/attach/3/8.194%20Clarification%20letter%20Jones%20WDTK..pdf

https://legislation.data.gov.uk/ukpga/2012/5/schedule/9/crossheading/social-security-fraud-act-2001-c-11/data.htm?wrap=true

However aborrhent sanctions are, there is a kind of twisted logic behind them. JSA and ESA claimants have to sign a contract (under duress, meaning threat of sanctions) and have to comply with the terms of this ‘contract’ (again under threat of sanctions). If they don’t, they will lose some of their benefits and many JSA and ESA claimants have been sanctioned, some 120 disabled people up to three years https://www.cpag.org.uk/content/3-year-benefit-ban-hits-120-disabled-people-under-new-sanctions-regime

But with PIP, there is no contract, no Jobseeker’s agreement, no Claimant Commitment and it still remains a recognition that life for disabled people is more expensive, if they have to buy appliances or care that non disabled people don’t need in order to live a decent and dignified life or to work.

So what does it take to have your PIP sanctioned? Is there somebody in the twittersphere or reading this article who can answer this question? Because making PIP sanctionable does not make any sense, unless the DWP or IDS have a cunning plan. And they might.

Victory against WCA

All Posts, legal challenges, welfare cuts 1 Response »

Dec 042013

The Mental Health Resistance Network (MHRN) who instigated the case against the WCA celebrate another victory. MHRN a grassroots group were later joined by the charities, but without MHRN the case would not have been brought. Full press release below…

Government appeal against Work Capability Assessment discrimination ruling is rejected

The Court of Appeal today (4 December 2013) rejected the Government’s appeal against a landmark ruling by the Upper Tribunal that the Work Capability Assessment discriminates against people with mental health problems.

During a four day hearing in January 2013, the Upper Tribunal heard evidence from the 2 disabled claimants, from mental health charities, Mind, Rethink Mental Illness and the National Autistic Society, as well as from the Government about the operation of the Work Capability Assessment[1], and the experience of people with mental health problems going through the process. In May 2013, having weighed the evidence, the tribunal concluded[2] that the process substantially disadvantaged those with mental health problems[3]. This was for two main reasons: first because the application process and the face to face interview can be particularly distressing and confusing for those with mental health problems; and second because of the great difficulty that many with mental health problems have in explaining their condition, which increases the risk that the benefit will be wrongly refused.

To remedy this disadvantage, the claimants, supported by the mental health charities and by the Equality and Human Rights Commission, argued that where ESA applicants have mental health problems, the DWP should consider obtaining medical evidence from the claimant’s doctor or psychiatric team at every stage of the process, and if a decision was taken by Atos or the DWP not to ask for medical evidence, this would have to be justified at each stage. This approach followed a recommendation made in November 2012 by Professor Malcolm Harrington, an independent reviewer of the process appointed by the Government.

The Government refused to implement this adjustment because it argued that the system did not discriminate against people with mental health problems. As stated above, the tribunal disagreed. It ruled that the adjustment to the process recommended by Professor Harrington might be a reasonable response to the “substantial disadvantage” it had found, and urged the Government to carry out a trial to see if obtaining further medical evidence earlier in the process would make the process better for people with mental health problems. Once the new process was trialled, the tribunal asked the Government to return to court for a hearing about whether – in light of the trial – the adjustment was reasonably necessary.

Instead of accepting the tribunal’s findings, and conducting an urgent trial, the Government appealed to the Court of Appeal against the tribunal’s finding of “substantial disadvantage”. It also argued that the two claimants did not have the right to bring the case because they themselves had not been adversely affected. Today the Court of Appeal rejected the Government’s arguments on both these points. In giving the main judgment of the court, Lord Justice Elias stated that:

“the Tribunal identified various ways in which [Further Medical Evidence] would assist [people] with a range of mental disabilities, and in my judgment there was sufficient evidence to justify the conclusion that [mental health patients] were placed, as a group, at more than a trivial disadvantage”.

The claimants solicitor, Ravi Low-Beer of the Public Law Project, stated:

“It is regrettable that the Government chose to appeal against the tribunal’s finding that people with mental health problems are disadvantaged by the current system, rather than take the steps necessary to improve it. Now that the Court of Appeal has upheld the tribunal’s finding, we sincerely hope that the Government will take immediate steps to improve the system. Disabled people, charities and many others are only asking the Government to implement the recommendation of the independent expert the Government itself appointed. This has been delayed since May 2013 while the Government appealed. It should not be delayed further.”

For further information contact Ravi Low-Beer on r.lowbeer@publiclawproject.org.uk or 020 7843 1264.

[1] The WCA is a face to face interview conducted by healthcare professionals employed by a private company, Atos Healthcare to assess eligibility for Employment and Support Allowance. Approximately 28,000 ESA claims (some 11,000 from existing Incapacity Benefit claimants, and some 17,000 from new ESA claimants) are made each week, around 40% of them by applicants who suffer from mental health problems. The speed and quality of the Work Capability Assessment interviews and the decisions resulting from them have been consistently criticised by disabled people.

[2]https://www.publiclawproject.org.uk/news/7/press-release-work-capability-assessment-discriminates-against-claimants-with-a-mental-health-disabi

[3]https://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKUT/AAC/2013/259.html

DWP tactics: ask Litchfield designer of the WCA to review it! Anita Bellows

All Posts, Atos, Disability Rights, welfare cuts 3 Responses »

Nov 132013

Dr Paul Litchfield, who has been asked by DWP to carry out the 4^th Independent Review of the WCA is not as independent as he seems.

He was part of the Mental Health Technical Working Group commissioned by DWP in 2006, with, among others, Sue Godby from the College of Occupational Therapists and Unum Provident, and Dr Angela Graham from Atos Origin, to develop ‘proposals from transforming the Personal Capability Assessment (the forerunner to the WCA), from an incapacity-based tool for determining entitlment to Incapacity Benefit to a more positive assessment incorporating assessment of capability and of health related interventions which would contribute to overcoming health-related barriers preventing people with disabilities from engaging with work’.

With new emphasis on what disabled people were able to do rather than on their limitations or on the social barriers they may encounter, the new test was what effectively became the WCA, adopting the biopsychosocial model promoted by Unum.

The new descriptors are a mirror image of the old ones, which recognised that some actitives could not be performed at all by a disabled person, while the new ones only recognise different levels of ‘difficulties’ for the same activity.

But this new version of PCA also makes a clear break from the old one as its intention is not only to explore disabled people’s residual functional ability but also ‘their approach and attitude to returning to work’ which is one of the main feature of the biopsychosocial model, which sees disability or sickness as a ’state of mind’.

Ultimately there is a very clear conflict of interest: Dr Paul Litchfield will have to assess the effectiveness of the WCA, in particular ‘the way that mental health conditions are considered in the WCA’ and to consider the ‘biopsychosocial factors that influence capability for work’ as part of his review.

As part of the evidence one can speculate that he will certainly also receive, like Dr Harrington, strong calls for the WCA to be scrapped.

And as Dr Harrington did, he will certainly respond that the Independent Reviewer has not seen or heard any compelling arguments or evidence that the whole system should be scrapped.

How could he not say that about the WCA? After all, he designed it.

See the following document which now only seems to exist on the website WhyWaitforEver or as a hardcopy in the Parliament Deposited Papers: Transformation of the Personal Capability Assessment

Vigil for WCA case; support Mental Health Resistance Network 21st October

Action, All Posts, Atos, legal challenges, News 1 Response »

Oct 202013

As many of you know the DWP are appealing against the decision that the WCA is detrimental to those with mental health issues. DPAC wants to be there to support the Mental Health Resistance Network who originally won the case

The vigil will happen outside the front entrance, Royal Courts of Justice (The Strand, London, WC2A 2LL) on Monday 21st October at 12 noon until 2 pm.

The appeal will be heard in courtroom 72 Royal Courts of Justice, the case starts at 10.30 am.

The WCA is detrimental to everyone, but the obvious added stress, anxiety and lack of Atos professionalism in gaining supporting evidence is particularly severe for those with mental health issues.

This system is breaking and we must keep up the pressure for the inhumane WCA to be scrapped completely, as DPAC has always argued.

Please check www.tfl.gov.uk for more travel information

Accessible toilets around the royal courts:

– There is an accessible toilet outside Embankment tube station and inside Charing Cross station.

– There are toilets opposite the Royal Courts but these are not accessible

– There are also accessible toilets inside the Royal Courts themselves – see page 10 of this booklet: https://www.justice.gov.uk/downloads/courts/rcj/facilities-and-access/Facilitiesservicesleaflet2011.pdf

10K Cuts and Counting Video

Action, All Posts, Atos, Speeches, welfare cuts 7 Responses »

Sep 292013

Video from Reel News – they will have a regular film night at The Grosvenor pub in Stockwell on the third Thrusday of every month…this month it’s on October 17th, the evening of the teachers strike, so they’d be doing an anti-cuts special and show films from the various strikes going on and the DPAC actions – and have a discussion about how we can do more to link struggles together. “Obviously DPAC are at the forefront of all this, so would a few of you fancy coming down to take part? It’s relatively informal, but we usually get at least 20-30 people and often more, and stuff does get sorted out over a pint – it’s also wheelchair accessible.”

(there is a caption and transcript option (next to the clock icon) on the video)

ATOS Healthcare carries out disability assessments on behalf of the Cameron government’s Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). Currently, ATOS is being investigated by the National Audit Office (NAO) in a in a a major “value for money study”. Meanwhile, since the inception of the Work Capability Assessment (WCA), 10,600 people have died within six weeks of being deemed ‘fit for work’ by ATOS healthcare professionals.

Human Cost documents ‘10,000 Cuts & Counting’, held on the 28th of September, 2013 at Parliament Square, a ceremony of remembrance and solidarity for those who have had their lives devastated by Cameron’s austerity programmes

Human Cost – #10kCuts #Atos from You and I Films on Vimeo.

Stay in touch with the campaign at https://www.10kcuts.org

Wow Petition https://wowpetition.com

Follow our work on Twitter @youandifilms

Please help support our work by donating to Our Vimeo Tip Jar.

ILF and MHRN court appeals: DPAC vigils planned for October

Action, All Posts, Atos, Disability Rights, Events, ILF, Independent Living, Independent Living Fund ILF, legal challenges, News, Reclaiming our Futures, welfare cuts 1 Response »

Sep 172013

On the 14^th October, five ILF users will appeal against the previous court decision that the ILF consultation was carried out fairly at the Royal Courts of Justice. DPAC will be there again and, again have a vigil outside the courts to show support-we will update with further details as they become available.

The initial court case showed that the funds for ILF when transferred to local authorities will cover just one year, something that local authorities did not appear to be made aware of by this Government. A write up from those documents can be found here: https://dpac.uk.net/2013/03/summary-of-secret-correspondence-from-the-dwp-to-mcvey-on-the-ilf-closure/

In the meantime you might like to see some of the stories from those at risk of losing the support to independent living at https://dpac.uk.net/independent-living-fund/

As many of you know the Mental Health Resistance Network are appealing against the DWP that the WCA is detrimental to those with mental health issues. DPAC wants to be there to support them. The appeal will be heard on Monday 21st October to Tuesday 22nd October 2013. The vigil will happen outside the royal courts of justice on Monday 21st October at 12 noon until 2 pm.

The WCA is detrimental to everyone, but the obvious added stress, anxiety and lack of Atos professionalism in gaining supporting evidence is particularly severe for those with mental health issues. This system is breaking and we must keep up the pressure for the inhumane WCA to be scrapped completely, as DPAC has always argued.

Keep checking the DPAC web or twitter for updates

Older Entries

Contents

Disabled MP who quit government over benefit cuts tells DNS: ‘The consequences will be devastating’

Disabled peers plan to ‘amend, amend, amend, amend, amend’ after assisted dying bill reaches Lords

Minister finally admits that working-age benefits spending is stable, despite months of ‘spiralling’ claims

This bill opens the door to scandal, abuse and injustice, disabled activists say after assisted dying bill vote

Timms says cuts must go ahead, despite being reminded of risk that disabled claimants could die

Absence of disabled people’s voices from assisted dying bill has been ‘astonishing’, says disabled MP

Timms misleads MPs on DWP transparency and cover-ups, as he gives evidence on PIP review

Ministers are considering further extension to disability hate crime laws, after pledge on ‘aggravated’ offences

Making all self-driving pilot schemes accessible would be ‘counter-productive’ and slow us down, says minister

Involve disabled people ‘meaningfully’ from the start when developing digital assistive tech, says report

Other disability-related stories covered by mainstream media this week

Save the date. Protest the disability cuts.

The government is expected to introduce the disability cuts bill on the 18th of June, and vote on it as soon as July 1st.

Disabled People Against Cuts and allies are organising a mass Protest of Parliament on June 30th and a national day of action on July 1st when the second reading of the bill will occur.

Welfare Not Warfare

End Labour’s War on Disabled People

Tax the Rich, Not Crips.

The Government are lying about cuts.

Total planned disability benefit cuts are at least £9 billion and not the £4.8 billion being reported.

Number of households to be plunged into poverty by the PIP cuts alone is at least 350,000 – 4000,000 including 50,000 children.

1.5 million Deaf and Disabled people will be badly impacted by the changes to PIP, not just the 800,000 being reported.

MPs will be forced to vote on the cuts without having all the information and based on the misleading figures that have been reported.

What can I do as a disabled person?

If you’re not already a member – join DPAC!

Set up a DPAC group in your area if one doesn’t exist!

Participate in DPAC Actions to Scrap the Benefit Cuts

Organise locally with other Disabled People to mobilise support for our campaign

Contact unions, trades councils, Labour party branches, and build a broad based movement to reverse these austerity cuts.

For more details of local groups and actions, keep checking this page!

General points

The proposals are ideological and will lead to serious consequences

Thousands of people will be pushed further into deep poverty

Manipulating evidence

Poor employment support

Subjecting Thousands to punitive conditionality regime

Response to specific questions

Disabled People Against Cuts and allies are organising a mass Protest of Parliament on June 30^th and a national day of action on July 1st when the second reading of the bill will occur.