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New government research has exposed misleading calls by leading Conservative and Reform UK figures who have repeatedly claimed that assessments carried out remotely are more likely to lead to a successful claim for disability benefits. Politicians such as Helen Whately, for […]
Disabled activists have expressed alarm at the decision by prime-minister-in-waiting Andy Burnham to appoint former work and pensions secretary James Purnell as his new chief of staff. Purnell, who was Labour’s work and pensions secretary for 16 months, from January 2008 […]
Three new pieces of research published by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) have cast fresh doubt on whether ministers will be able to move more disabled people into work by providing them with more intensive employment support. The reports […]
Government documents prove that the “right to try” reforms at the centre of Labour’s “landmark” plans to push more sick and disabled people into employment are “worthless” and “a disgrace”, disabled critics have concluded. Labour pledged in its 2024 manifesto that it would […]
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is refusing to explain which disabled people it expects to lose out from nearly £2 billion in new cuts to disability benefits, six weeks after the “savings” were quietly revealed in budget documents. Despite […]
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 […]
The boss of the health and safety watchdog has been asked by a disabled MP why her organisation has never investigated the government’s “fitness for work” test, even though it was linked to nearly 600 suicides in less than three years. […]
Senior civil servants and ministers spent more than a decade covering up evidence that links the actions of a government department with hundreds, and probably thousands, of deaths of disabled people who relied on the social security system. Documents secured through […]
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has stopped sending key records from a crucial period in the history of disability benefit reform to The National Archives so they can be viewed by researchers. Under the Public Records Act, government departments […]
The new Labour government’s policy on social security reform is in chaos after it issued contrasting statements and briefings on budget day about whether – and how – it would press ahead with planned Conservative cuts to spending on out-of-work disability […]