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One of the three outsourcing giants that assesses people for their eligibility for disability benefits is facing calls for it to be stripped of its contract, after revelations in a Channel 4 documentary. The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is […]
The equality watchdog is facing concerns over links between the government and two of its leading figures as it prepares to investigate whether Tory welfare reforms have breached the human rights of disabled people. Last week, Disability News Service (DNS) revealed […]
There are still “serious failings” with the disability assessments contracted out by the government, even though it is paying outsourcing giants half a billion pounds a year to carry them out, according to a new report by MPs. The Commons public […]
The government has abandoned plans to tighten eligibility for its new disability benefit, but has refused to reconsider cuts to out-of-work disability benefits that were approved by parliament earlier this month. The announcement that the government was withdrawing plans to cut […]
Labour’s former work and pensions secretary has attacked Tory ministers for failing to order an urgent review of the “fitness for work” test after a coroner warned that it had triggered a disabled man’s suicide. Yvette Cooper has told Disability News […]
Civil servants and ministers dismissed a coroner’s concerns about the safety of the government’s “fitness for work” test, according to a draft response that apparently lay in Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) files for six years. Coroner Tom Osborne wrote […]
Ministers are to push ahead with plans to tighten eligibility for their new disability benefit, ignoring the views of the overwhelming majority of disabled people and organisations who took part in a consultation on the changes. The changes, which will apply […]
A tribunal judge has hinted that he may order the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to release vital information from 49 secret reviews it carried out into the deaths of benefit claimants. Judge Andrew Bartlett QC was chairing a three-person […]
Civil servants have refused to release information that would show how many secret reviews the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has carried out into benefit-related suicides in the last 15 months. The refusal emerged in a response to a freedom […]
Work and pensions ministers have been accused of another attempt to avoid improving the safety of its “fitness for work” test for benefit claimants with mental health conditions. A year after ministers told a tribunal – following a lengthy judicial review […]