Caxton House cover-up: How DWP destroyed files and prevented investigation into claimant’s suicide

Official documents link two former Conservative work and pensions ministers – including would-be party leader Penny Mordaunt – to a government cover-up of how a disabled man took his own life after being wrongly found fit for work.

The email and letter are part of a huge quantity of documents relating to the death of Michael O’Sullivan that have been drawn together over the last decade by his family.

They show that senior civil servants at the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) destroyed vital documents about his case – in breach of the department’s own rules – months after a coroner linked his death with DWP’s “fitness for work” test.

The decision, taken some time in 2014 – probably 14 months after his suicide in September 2013 – meant DWP was not able to carry out an in-depth investigation into the circumstances around his death, known at the time as a peer review.

Most of his records were destroyed even though a coroner had concluded earlier that year – in a ground-breaking ruling that later received significant media coverage – that the “intense anxiety” that triggered his suicide had been caused by his being found fit for work by DWP following a work capability assessment (WCA).

The coroner, Mary Hassell, had sent a prevention of future deaths (PFD) report (PDF) to the department on 13 January 2014, warning that “action should be taken to prevent future deaths” following his suicide.

DWP guidance at the time said that all records relating to a claimant suicide should be kept for six years, but the department later told the family that most of the paperwork connected to his various benefit claims was instead destroyed in 2014.

Disability News Service (DNS) has established through freedom of information requests to the department that this guidance was in place from April 2013 all the way through until at least December 2016.

An internal DWP email obtained by the O’Sullivan family, which was sent on 5 February 2014, shows that the minister for disabled people at the time, Mike Penning, was told about the coroner’s PFD report.

This email was sent by DWP’s then head of assessment policy to Penning, as well as to two DWP press officers and two DWP lawyers.

But despite DWP being sent the coroner’s PFD report, and Penning being informed about the inquest’s findings, civil servants later claimed they had destroyed many of the records relating to Michael O’Sullivan’s case at some point in 2014.

This would have been a clear breach of the department’s guidance on retaining records relating to a claimant who had taken their own life.

Penning has told DNS he knew nothing about the records being destroyed. DWP has refused to comment.

Three years after the internal email was sent, in March 2017, the then minister for disabled people, Penny Mordaunt – now leader of the House of Commons – told the O’Sullivan family in a letter that a peer review into the death had not been carried out because “much of the documentation” had “been destroyed” in accordance with DWP’s “records management policy”.

She said that this policy stated that “most benefit records are destroyed fourteen months after a claimant’s death”.

But Mordaunt failed to tell the family that DWP’s Benefits Document and Data Retention Guide, in place at the time Michael O’Sullivan died, stated that documents relating to claimant suicides should be kept for at least six years.

A copy of this guidance was provided to the family the following year by Mordaunt’s successor as minister for disabled people, Sarah Newton.

The guidance stated: “All documents relating to suicide and self-harm should be retained for 6 years following the date on which the incident occurred or the declaration of intention was made.”

Peer reviews – later renamed internal process reviews – were internal investigations into deaths and other serious cases linked to DWP’s actions, and were never published or even shared with families, but departmental guidance stated at the time: “Where suicide is associated with DWP activity, a Peer Review must be undertaken.”

Mordaunt, a leading contender to be the next leader of the Conservative party, told the family that the team that “prepared the Department’s response to the Coroner” had been “unaware” of the peer review procedure.

She wrote in the letter: “By the time the relevant team was made aware, much of the documentation relating to your father’s claim had been destroyed in accordance with the Department’s records management policy…

“As a result, the Department was therefore unable to carry out [a peer review].”

But the internal DWP email that was sent on 5 February 2014 shows that the response to the coroner’s PFD report was prepared by DWP’s work capability assessment policy team.

This key policy team should have been aware of the peer review procedure because previous DNS investigations have shown that at least seven peer reviews that mentioned the WCA were carried out during 2012 and there were certain to have been others during 2013 and 2014.

Mordaunt has so far failed to comment on the letter and the destruction of Michael O’Sullivan’s records.

DNS has previously established that DWP failed to pass the PFD report to Paul Litchfield, who in 2014 was carrying out the fifth and final independent review of the WCA for the department.

DWP published Litchfield’s review in November 2014, but it made no mention of the coroner’s letter, or the peer reviews into claimant deaths that had mentioned the WCA.

Following intervention from the Information Commissioner’s Office, DWP finally admitted in 2019 that the peer reviews and two PFDs written by coroners, including the report written following Michael O’Sullivan’s death, were not shared with Litchfield.

DNS has also established that the other PFD, and the earlier peer reviews, were not shared with Professor Malcolm Harrington, who carried out the first three reviews of the WCA in 2010, 2011 and 2012.

DNS has approached Penning, Mordaunt and DWP about the department’s claims that the records were destroyed, although the O’Sullivan family still believes DWP has kept copies of all the documents.

In a letter sent to DNS, Penning, who is standing down as an MP at this election, said: “You are asking about the destruction of records relating to a Mr Michael O’Sullivan which, apparently, happened when I was a Minister at the Department for Work and Pensions.

“As you will appreciate, I do not know anything about this as Ministers are not involved in the day-to-day operational running of their Department or individual case management.

“I have passed your message to the Permanent Secretary of the Department for Works and Pensions.”

DNS asked Penning if he remembered the Michael O’Sullivan case, the inquest and the PFD report, but he had not responded further by 11am today (Thursday).

DNS first approached Mordaunt’s office about the allegations late last month.

For nearly two weeks, Mordaunt’s spokesperson – former Conservative councillor Alistair Thompson, who runs PR company Team Britannia PR – repeatedly told DNS that he would speak to her about the claims, but then failed to produce a comment.

He eventually claimed on Tuesday this week that he had “been unable to speak to Penny about this matter”.

DWP has been shown the email that was sent to Penning in 2014 and the letter from Mordaunt in 2017, and copies of its own guidance on destroying records.

After six days, a spokesperson replied: “Thanks for giving us the opportunity for right of reply. We won’t be commenting on this at this time.”

It declined to explain why the records were destroyed in breach of its own guidance, why the WCA policy team was – according to Penny Mordaunt – not aware of the existence of the peer review process in early 2014, and why Mordaunt told the O’Sullivan family that the records had been destroyed in line with departmental guidance, when that was not correct.

DWP also declined to comment on Penning’s actions.

DNS reported earlier this year how the O’Sullivans had concluded beyond any doubt – following their decade-long investigation – that DWP was responsible for their father’s death.

They told the Commons work and pensions committee – which had to abandon its inquiry into how DWP safeguards “vulnerable” benefit claimants when the general election was called by Rishi Sunak – that the government must impose a “clear and defined” statutory duty of care on the department.

They believe this is the only way to protect the lives of claimants in vulnerable situations, such as their father.

But they also want to see an independent inquiry into how the actions and failings of DWP can be linked to Michael O’Sullivan’s suicide and countless other deaths of disabled people.

They believe that their evidence of how DWP breached its own guidance by destroying their father’s documents – if that is what happened – adds significant weight to calls for an inquiry.

The proof that DWP admitted destroying vital documents relating to Michael O’Sullivan’s death, despite this breaching its own guidance, adds to years of evidence of systemic negligence by the department, a culture of cover-up and denial, and a refusal to accept that it has a duty of care to those disabled people claiming support through the social security system.

The abandoned inquiry by the Commons work and pensions select committee into DWP safeguarding had been examining whether there should be such a duty of care.

It is now more than 10 years since Mary Hassell concluded that the “intense anxiety” that triggered Michael O’Sullivan’s suicide had been caused by his being found fit for work by DWP following a WCA.

She found that both DWP and its private sector contractor Atos had failed to seek medical evidence about his mental health from his doctor, his psychiatrist and his clinical psychologist.

He was found fit for work, despite a suicide attempt months earlier when he had been forced into work-related activity after an earlier WCA that lasted just 12 minutes.

His case was twice mentioned at prime minister’s questions in 2015, after the PFD report was unearthed by DNS.

The family have now spent more than a decade fighting for justice and to discover the truth about Michael O’Sullivan’s death.

A spokesperson for the family said: “Ten years ago, the O’Sullivan family decided to bring about a forensic and detailed complaint to the DWP to demonstrate what had gone so tragically wrong in their father’s case so real lessons could be learned.

“They did this to prevent future harm and to prevent other families having to endure the severe trauma they have sadly experienced.

“Their complaint was originally delivered to then prime minister Theresa May, who assigned the DWP with responding on her behalf to the significant grounds of complaint.

“Ten years on, many of the issues raised with the DWP go unanswered.

“The family has faced hostility and obfuscation, yet they remain resolute in their determination to get the department to accept their wrongs, which has come at great expense to the family in every respect.

“It is devastating for the O’Sullivan family to conclude that the DWP have always known exactly what their systemic failures were in regard to their assessment process but rather than engaging with the family in safely evaluating the WCA it appears those in authority have engaged in a cover up which has caused great harm to the most vulnerable in our society and to their father, who paid the ultimate price.”

*The Department, DNS editor John Pring’s book on DWP and how its actions led to countless deaths of disabled people in the post-2010 era, will be published by Pluto Press on 20 August. Visit the DNS website before publication for a 50 per cent discount 

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