the country's only news agency specialising in disability issues
“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 […]
The body that oversees the UK’s health and care regulators is considering taking action over their failure to punish nurses, paramedics and physiotherapists who write dishonest benefit assessment reports. The Professional Standards Authority (PSA) is to look next month at whether […]
The minister for disabled people has refused to approve two key recommendations made by the independent reviewer of its new disability benefit, which would have made it easier for claimants to protect themselves against dishonest assessment reports. Among the recommendations made […]
“Staggering” new figures show that the proportion of people claiming the main out-of-work disability benefit who have attempted suicide doubled between 2007 and 2014. The new analysis of NHS statistics, being published for the first time by Disability News Service (DNS), […]
The Department of Health (DH) has refused to say why it failed to warn NHS bodies and other local services that claimants of out-of-work disability benefits are at a hugely-increased risk of attempting to take their own lives. DH published the […]
Campaigners have taken part in a vigil outside the Royal Courts of Justice, as the high court was hearing claims by a disabled woman that new benefit rules are “unfair and discriminatory”. Regulations that came into force in March mean that […]
The two outsourcing companies paid hundreds of millions of pounds to carry out disability benefit assessments have never met contractual quality standards on the reports their staff write for the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), they have told MPs. Capita […]