the country's only news agency specialising in disability issues
Several senior ministers who will play key roles in disability policy over the next few months have kept their jobs under new prime minister Andy Burnham. Burnham’s decision to keep Pat McFadden in post as work and pensions secretary caused particular […]
The Labour chair of the Commons committee that is supposed to hold the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to account has refused to criticise ministers who misled parliament about a cut to the Access to Work scheme. Disability News Service […]
Ministers have dumped plans for a major white paper containing a swathe of further cuts and reforms to disability benefits, following months of activism by disabled people and allies that forced the government into a major U-turn this summer. Work and […]
Disabled activists have reacted angrily to “horrific” government plans that could see work coaches being sent into mental health hospitals to help push people in severe mental distress off benefits and into work. Liz Kendall made the comments in an interview […]
The Labour-run Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has blocked the release of information that would show how often the “fitness for work” test has been linked to suicides and other deaths and harm over the last five years. It is […]
Labour has called for an urgent government investigation into a “devastating” dossier of evidence that suggests the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is “in a state of crisis” and faces a “near collapse” of its benefits system. Evidence submitted to […]
A committee of MPs has called for any further cost-of-living payments made by the government to disabled people to be increased in proportion to the extra disability-related costs they face. The Commons work and pensions committee concluded in its new report […]
The government has failed to include any proposals to address the inequality faced by disabled people in its list of legislation that it plans to introduce over the next year. In what is likely to be the last king’s speech before […]
The civil servant who leads the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has misled MPs about its failure to implement a plan drawn up to prevent suicides and learn lessons from the deaths of benefit claimants. Peter Schofield, DWP’s permanent secretary, […]
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has been forced to abandon an investigation into claims that its contractors were carrying out covert attempts to trick benefit claimants, after the Tory MP who sparked the probe failed to co-operate. Dr Ben […]