Secrecy of DWP’s board of experts set up to examine ‘economic inactivity’ and long-term sickness

The government has refused to explain why it has failed to publish any minutes from a board of experts set up 17 months ago to examine “economic inactivity” and particularly to focus on people not working due to “long-term sickness”.

The Labour Market Advisory Board had its first meeting in September 2024, but no information has been published on its web page since then by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).

DWP also breached freedom of information (FoI) laws by refusing to even acknowledge a request from Disability News Service (DNS) to see minutes of the board’s meetings.

The board was criticised at the time of its launch for failing to include any representatives of disabled people’s organisations (DPOs) among its eight members.

Its work is particularly controversial and important because both politicians and right-wing media repeatedly claim that increasing levels of economic inactivity – particularly among disabled people – are harming the economy.

One DPO told MPs in November that the government’s frequent use of the term “economically inactive” to describe disabled people who were not in paid work wrongly implied that they were “not contributing to the economy” and were “an economic burden to the rest of us in society who are working”.

Professor Paul Gregg, the retired academic who has been chairing the board since its launch, told DNS this week that he viewed the board as being “not that formal” and so it only had “basic minutes – when, who attended, topics discussed etc”.

He said: “I don’t want this to be that bureaucratic – so I didn’t and don’t want minutes, published papers etc etc.

“If it goes down that road I’m out. I’m disabled and retired – it has to be simple.”

He said he believed the board had met with ministers five times, and with “DWP policy teams or similar” about 15 times, although on most occasions the whole board were not present.

And he said the board had met on its own possibly three times in 17 months.

He said the issue of updates and minutes appearing on the website was likely to be discussed at the board’s next meeting.

But after DNS expressed concern about the level of secrecy surrounding the board’s activities, he did not respond further.

A DWP spokesperson said in a statement: “We acknowledge that we have not responded to your FoI request… seeking minutes of the Labour Market Advisory Board, within the statutory timeframe.

“We are processing your request and we will respond in due course.”

Asked why DWP had initially not responded to the freedom of information request, and why there had been no updates on the board’s web page in 17 months, the department had not responded further by noon today (Thursday).

When it launched the board in September 2024, DWP claimed levels of economic inactivity were “spiralling”, with work and pensions secretary Liz Kendall claiming it was “the greatest employment challenge for a generation” and particularly blaming the number of people out of work due to “long-term sickness” following the pandemic.

But Office for National Statistics figures showed in January that the proportion of people aged 16 to 64 who were economically inactive was at about the same rate as at the start of the pandemic (20.7 per cent between January and March 2020, compared with 20.8 per cent between September and November 2025).

But the percentage of this group who were long-term sick had risen from 25.9 per cent to 31.2 per cent and from 2.232 million to 2.811 million, with the pandemic likely to have played a significant role in that increase.

Different government figures, published last September, suggested that the proportion of working-age disabled people in England who were “economically inactive” was not “spiralling” and may even have fallen over the previous nine years.

*Economically inactive people are those aged 16 to 64 without a job who have not looked for work in the last month or are not available to start a job in the next fortnight. This can be because they are long-term sick or disabled, carers, students, or have taken early retirement