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The Conservative party has refused to say if controversial proposals to cut the out-of-work disability benefits of people with obesity or addictions if they refuse treatment could also be applied to those with mental health conditions or other impairments. The prime […]
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has refused to publish secret reviews that should reveal whether the government’s welfare reforms were to blame for any of the deaths of 49 benefit claimants. Disability News Service (DNS) has been waiting since […]
A disabled woman has told how she has been forced to wait more than 14 months to be assessed for the government’s new disability benefit just days after a Tory minister praised his own performance in cutting waiting-times. Hannah Wells, from […]
A Labour MP has said she is “shocked” that a senior civil servant will not be examining whether there is evidence that the government was to blame over any of 49 benefit-related deaths. Labour MP Debbie Abrahams spoke out after Disability […]
Short-cuts introduced to reduce the backlog of applications for the government’s new disability benefit have made it easier to reject claims, according to the main union representing Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) staff. The union’s evidence suggests that efforts to […]
A senior civil servant has been asked by an MP to examine whether any of the 49 secret reviews into benefit-related deaths concluded that the government had been partly to blame. The question came as Conservative employment minister Esther McVey was […]
Government ministers have broken their high-profile promise to slash all waiting-times for the new disability benefit to less than four months. The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) refused to comment yesterday (Thursday) on the broken promise that – by the […]
Labour leader Ed Miliband caused chaos this week after he was asked if he would save the Independent Living Fund (ILF) if Labour won power at May’s general election. Miliband told the audience that the government “should not be getting rid […]
Ministers have admitted releasing yet more inaccurate information about their secret inquiries into the deaths of benefit claimants. Last year, the Department for Work and Pensions stated, in a Freedom of Information Act (FoI) response, that it did not hold any […]
One of the two outsourcing giants that won contracts to assess people for the government’s new disability benefit could make a fifth of its assessment staff redundant, months after recruiting them to clear a huge claims backlog. Capita has about 400 […]