the country's only news agency specialising in disability issues
The government’s highly-politicised programme to reassess every disabled person claiming old-style incapacity benefit (IB) has missed its deadline for completion, Disability News Service (DNS) can reveal. The coalition launched the reassessment programme early in 2011 and insisted that it would be […]
The government’s “bedroom tax” is causing “severe financial hardship and distress” to disabled people who can do nothing to avoid its impact, according to a committee of MPs. The work and pensions select committee said that the bedroom tax – or […]
Claims by Atos Healthcare that it was pulling out of the government’s “fitness for work” contract because of assaults on its staff by disabled benefit claimants appear to have been exposed as lies. The revelation by Disability News Service comes as […]
Disabled activists have accused the doctors’ union of being “complicit” in deaths connected to the work capability assessment (WCA), after a report concluded that a Scottish woman probably killed herself as a result of being found “fit for work”. The Mental […]
A disabled woman almost certainly killed herself because she had been found “fit for work” and stripped of out-of-work disability benefits, according to a mental health watchdog. The Mental Welfare Commission for Scotland concluded that the work capability assessment (WCA) process […]
A controversial budget measure is set to increase even further the number of disabled people living in poverty. The Conservative chancellor, George Osborne, announced last week that a new cap on social security spending would be set at £119.5 billion in […]
A disabled man waited months for the result of his assessment for the government’s new disability benefit, only to discover that the woman who had assessed him had quit her job without ever filing her report. Stanley Kaye’s case was lost […]
MPs have used evidence provided by Disability News Service (DNS) to accuse the outsourcing giant Atos of lying in the document it used to win a £184 million disability assessment contract. Members of the Commons public accounts committee were quizzing senior […]
MPs and charities have publicly shamed the government, and two of its contractors, over the botched implementation of the coalition’s new disability benefit, and its impact on disabled people. Representatives from three charities – DABD (UK), Citizens Advice and Mencap – […]
Government plans to cap the annual amount spent on social security – including key disability benefits – have been criticised by disabled campaigners. The Conservative chancellor, George Osborne, announced in this week’s budget that the spending cap would be set at […]