DWP faces questions over commitment to claimant safety after replacing senior adviser

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is facing questions over its commitment to the safety of benefit claimants after replacing its chief medical adviser with an expert in medicine for older adults.

Disability News Service (DNS) understands that Dr Gail Allsopp is stepping down from her post as chief medical adviser (CMA) after it became clear that DWP was not planning to reappoint her for a further three-year contract.

Although Dr Allsopp (pictured) had some concerning public moments during her time as CMA, she has spent time building relationships with disabled people and disabled-led organisations – including DNS – in a bid to build a clearer picture of their concerns and evidence.

This included inviting several leading disabled activists to provide evidence on safeguarding as part of a DWP review.

She had been appointed in the autumn of 2023, after more than a decade of mounting concerns about links between DWP and deaths and other serious harm caused to disabled benefit claimants.

In the years leading to her appointment, a series of high-profile deaths were closely linked to DWP’s actions and failures, including those of Errol Graham, Roy Curtis, James Oliver, Philippa Day, Christian Wilcox, Philip Pakree, Ker Featherstone, and Kevin Gale, who took his own life on 4 March 2022 after he became overwhelmed by the universal credit application process.

DWP had also secretly abandoned work on a £106 million plan that was supposed to prevent suicides and other deaths of benefit claimants, learn from its mistakes, and deliver reform “for the most vulnerable in society”.

During her three years in post, government publications – including this year’s clinical governance annual report – show she has carried out widespread changes and improvements to safeguarding across the department.

She has reviewed clinical governance across the department and aligned it with best practice in the NHS; appointed a safeguarding lead in DWP; set up a cross-government safeguarding group; and set up quarterly cross-departmental safeguarding meetings.

Dr Allsopp also introduced mandatory level three safeguarding training for more than 5,000 clinicians across DWP for the first time; created new level three safeguarding training for those working with benefit claimants; and co-led the department’s safeguarding work, outlined in the work and pensions secretary’s statement to MPs last December.

She also strengthened “escalation routes” to ensure disabled people being assessed for benefits are referred to their GP or to the NHS via 999/111 if there are health-related concerns, which now occurs in about four per cent of assessments.

Before Dr Allsopp took over the role, DWP staff were banned from even using the word “safeguarding”, a rule introduced by Tory work and pensions secretary Therese Coffey in February 2021.

The reappearance of the term across DWP seems to align with Dr Allsopp’s arrival at the department in 2023.

DNS has been contacted by a DWP staff member who has expressed significant concerns about the decision not to renew Dr Allsopp’s contract.

They said they feared the decision to replace Dr Allsopp was part of a plan to “water down safeguarding” within the department.

And they said the move to replace Dr Allsopp had caused “significant concern, as she has been central to leading and strengthening safeguarding work across the department”, with some staff reacting with “shock and confusion”, and many questioning the potential impact on safeguarding reforms.

They said: “There is a sense that this decision could undermine progress in an area the department has publicly committed to improving.”

They also raised concerns about the appointment of Professor David Strain, an associate professor of cardiometabolic health at the University of Exeter Medical School, as her replacement.

Professor Strain is head of the university’s academic department for healthcare for older adults and chair of the British Medical Association’s board of science, and is medical adviser to the charity Action for ME, while his main research focus is the health of older adults with diabetes.

A DWP spokesperson said: “We do not comment on individual staffing matters.

“The department has taken significant and lasting action to improve its safeguarding processes – including introducing a safeguarding strategy team, and ensuring health assessors completed a higher level of safeguarding training.”

The University of Exeter had not commented by 10am today (Thursday).