Minister told it is ‘not too late’ to change direction and stop favouring big charities

The new disability minister has been told it is “not too late to change course”, after government figures showed he has prioritised meetings with the big disability charities over engagement with disabled people’s organisations (DPOs).

The figures, obtained by Disability News Service under the Freedom of Information Act, show that Labour’s Sir Stephen Timms had just 10 meetings with organisations run and controlled by disabled people in the first five months after he was appointed.

This compares with 17 meetings with charities that are not run and controlled by disabled people, including big disability charities such as Mind, Sense, MS Society, Scope, Mencap and RNID*.

There are likely to have been further meetings with charity representatives at Labour’s annual party conference in Liverpool in late September**.

The figures came just weeks after it emerged that DPO Forum England and Disability Rights UK had accused non-disabled-led charities of seizing their language on empowerment but failing to share their access to ministers and other decision-makers.

In a response to the government’s consultation on developing a new relationship with civil society, they said the government should prioritise the “authentic” views of DPOs and ensure that “those directly impacted by these issues have real authority in the decision-making process”, while those organisations not led by disabled people were “actively harmful to DPOs and the Disabled people’s movement”.

While Labour was in opposition – particularly under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn and chancellor John McDonnell – there were frequent pledges that the party would put disabled people’s voices at the heart of government if it was elected.

There were hopes among DPOs that the election of a new Labour government would mark this kind of transformation in engagement, following years in which they were sidelined by successive Conservative-led governments.

In July 2023, the Conservative minister for disabled people, Tom Pursglove, was criticised by Tory MP and former minister Jackie Doyle-Price for failing to consult properly with DPOs over his forthcoming disability action plan.

One of his predecessors, Justin Tomlinson, was repeatedly criticised for his lack of engagement with DPOs during the early months of the pandemic.

And in January 2021, DPOs across the country said they were “shocked and dismayed” at the government’s failure to engage with them as it prepared its long-awaited disability strategy.

When Sir Stephen was appointed in mid-July 2024 as Labour’s new minister for social security and disability, he promised to “ensure disabled people’s views and voices are at the heart of all we do”.

He then said he looked forward “to meeting with disability organisations this week”.

But the freedom of information response from the Department for Work and Pensions shows that that week’s meetings were all with charities that were not led by disabled people, although a representative of one DPO was present at a virtual meeting with representatives of the Disability Benefits Consortium.

By this time, Sir Stephen had already had an in-person meeting with representatives of two disability charities – Scope and Mind – on 11 July, just three days after his appointment.

He did not have his first meeting with DPOs until more than two months after his appointment, when he had a virtual meeting on 10 September with the DPO Forum England, whose members are all DPOs.

Mark Harrison, a member of the Reclaiming Our Futures Alliance (ROFA) steering group, said this week: “All we are asking of the Labour government is to implement the UN convention on the rights of disabled people.

“This very clearly states that engagement needs to be with disabled people and their representative organisations.

“When the [last Labour government] signed and ratified the [convention] they committed to progressive realisation – this means making things better for disabled people and progressing against all the articles.

“Unfortunately, the evidence from the first six months in office suggests policy is regressing – going in the opposite direction.

“As yet there has been no strategic engagement or dialogue with DPOs on how to repair 14 years of Tory austerity cuts and culture wars.

“We haven’t been invited to coproduce a policy like Improving the Life Chances of Disabled People or Equality 2025 – which the Conservatives and Lib Dems derailed.

“It is not too late to change course.

“Alarmingly, from the current government discourse around disabled people and the adoption of Tory cuts to disability benefits, Timms and colleagues in government are on a collision course with DPOs and the UN disability committee.”

*These figures exclude meetings of the government’s own disability networks and advisers. They also exclude meetings with representatives of Disability Benefits Consortium, where DPOs are vastly outnumbered by non-user-led charities

**DPOs are rarely well-funded enough to send representatives to party conferences, and any meetings at conference would not have been included in the DWP figures as they will have been viewed as political meetings

Picture: Mark Harrison (above, left) and Sir Stephen Timms

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