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One in five staff employed by contractors who carry out disability benefit assessments on the government’s behalf have not had vital safeguarding training, MPs have been told, despite years of deaths and serious harm linked to the tests. Members of the […]
A nurse who carried out benefit assessments on behalf of the government obtained a medical report belonging to his disabled neighbour and then used it to launch a campaign of bullying and harassment that left him suicidal. Carlo* has told Disability […]
Work and pensions secretary Liz Kendall has ignored a question on why she shared a platform at her party’s annual conference with an outsourcing giant linked to the deaths of disabled benefit claimants. Kendall was speaking at the fringe event on […]
Key details reveal how four private sector providers have been told to carry out health and disability benefit assessments over the next five years, after being awarded £2.8 billion-worth of contracts by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). The contracts […]
A disabled man who swallowed poison in a jobcentre in an attempt to take his own life, after becoming “overwhelmed” by the harmful actions of the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), has pleaded guilty to possessing a chemical weapon. David […]
Two disabled campaigners whose brothers’ deaths were closely linked to the actions of the outsourcing company Atos have welcomed the announcement that its 20 years of carrying out disability assessments for the government will end next year. From September next year, […]
The government has awarded five-year disability assessment contracts worth more than £560 million to the outsourcing giant Capita, on the same day that a safeguarding review linked the company to the death of a young disabled mum. Last week, the safeguarding […]
Systemic safeguarding flaws across the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) have been linked by its own civil servants to the deaths of multiple benefit claimants between 2018 and 2020, secret reports have revealed. Several of the 30 reports show continuing […]
MPs are calling for an urgent government investigation into the use of “covert surveillance” of disabled people by the private sector companies paid to assess eligibility for disability benefits. It comes in a report by the Commons work and pensions committee, […]
Contractors likely to be bidding for new five-year contracts to test eligibility for disability benefits are still producing a “shockingly high” number of sub-standard assessment reports, nine years after they first won contracts to carry them out. An audit of assessment […]