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The information commissioner has ordered the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to release documents that are likely to expose the widespread failings of two of its disability benefit assessment contractors. DWP has been attempting to prevent the documents being released […]
Campaigners have reacted furiously to the decision to appoint Esther McVey as the new secretary of state for work and pensions, calling it a “heartsink moment” and a “terrible insult” to disabled people. McVey (pictured), who served as both minister for […]
Nine MPs on a Commons committee are refusing to explain why they failed to ask the minister for disabled people about shocking figures that suggest attempted suicides among people claiming out-of-work disability benefits doubled between 2007 and 2014. The work and […]
Local authorities in England are refusing to use their own suicide prevention plans to highlight “shocking” figures that show claimants of out-of-work disability benefits are at a hugely-increased risk of attempting to take their own lives. The figures, published in September […]
A nurse carrying out a disability benefit assessment fired questions at a disabled man’s wife while her husband was in the middle of a severe and prolonged series of epileptic seizures just a few feet away. Daniel Marshall, from Dorset, had […]
More than one in eight of all decisions to reject claims for personal independence payment (PIP) are eventually being overturned, new figures obtained by Disability News Service (DNS) have revealed. The figures* show that, of all the PIP claims rejected by […]
“Furious” disabled campaigners have attacked MPs on a Commons committee for refusing to ask the minister for disabled people about figures showing attempted suicides among people claiming out-of-work disability benefits doubled between 2007 and 2014. The new figures, showing how suicide […]
The occupational health expert chosen by the government to review its much-criticised “fitness for work” test appears to have suggested that the assessment should be scrapped and replaced with a radically different process. Dr Paul Litchfield, who led the fourth and […]
A court has ruled that a disabled woman should be awarded £5,000 compensation by the government contractor Atos, after a dishonest report by one of its assessors led to her being awarded the wrong level of benefits. Vanessa Haley, from Huddersfield, […]
A mental health charity has refused to criticise the government for failing to warn local services that claimants of out-of-work disability benefits are at a hugely-increased risk of attempting to take their own lives. Samaritans – the leading charity working on […]