Disabled benefit tribunal member says DWP drove her repeatedly to brink of suicide 

A disabled woman who sits on a social security tribunal has described how the incompetence and abusive actions of the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) have driven her repeatedly to the brink of suicide. 

Katherine*, who continues to sit on the tribunal, is now terrified that the department is investigating her for benefit fraud, even though she says she has done nothing wrong and is very careful to stay within the rules. 

With a general election now just six weeks away, she says the department’s actions prove again that DWP is not fit for purpose, puts the lives of claimants with mental distress at risk, and needs top-to-bottom reform under the next government. 

She has repeatedly told DWP of her history of suicidal ideation and suicide attempts, as well as her diagnosis of PTSD as a result of domestic violence, but she says this has had no impact on what she believes is a campaign of harassment. 

She says DWP keeps making mistakes over the complex rules that relate to benefit claimants who sit on tribunals, despite her informing them repeatedly that she is “actively suicidal” and that its letters are having a very damaging effect on her mental health. 

Its behaviour even led to her telling her two adult children on Christmas Day that she wanted to die, and that DWP was partly to blame. 

She told Disability News Service (DNS) this week: “I am in real fear because I think they are going to turn up and send the police for fraud.  

“Every day I think, will it be today, the day the letter arrives with the postman? If I get a letter like that it is quite likely I will kill myself.  

“They don’t seem to give a damn if people are suicidal or killing themselves.” 

Katherine, who has a law degree and has passed the legal practice course, was a justice of the peace (a lay magistrate) for 15 years and applied for a position as a disability qualified member of the social security tribunal in 2017. 

Since 2014, she has been in the support group of employment and support allowance (ESA), which places a strict limit on how much she can earn every week under its permitted work rules. 

But she wrote to DWP before she started working with the tribunal to check if the part-time tribunal role was allowed under permitted work and what impact it would have on her ESA if she took it up. 

She said in the August 2018 letter that she was “terrified that I will end up in another suicidal crisis”, and added: “Please would you confirm that there would be no consequences from DWP [and its assessment company] that will be detrimental to my health if I were to undertake this role?” 

But she never heard back from DWP in response to her letter.  

Katherine, who lives in the south-west of England, started working as a disability qualified panel member of the first-tier tribunal in December 2018, sitting on a panel with a judge and a medical member and hearing benefit appeals. 

She was soon told by her judicial mentor about a DWP regulation that allowed ESA claimants working as tribunal members to work a maximum of one full day or two half days a week, and still receive their full ESA entitlement. 

Ever since, she has kept strictly under that limit. 

But within weeks, DWP was sending her letters telling her that she had exceeded the permitted work limits – which appear to be based on a fundamental misunderstanding of their own rules – and deducting money from her ESA. It eventually fined her £50. 

In a period of just over a year, she was sent 15 different entitlement, overpayment and civil penalty decisions by DWP. 

All but one of these decisions were later conceded by DWP or set aside by the first-tier tribunal, she says. 

At one point, during the pandemic, DWP sent her a letter telling her that her ESA had been stopped completely, a letter she received the day she returned home from hospital after a suicide attempt. 

She appealed against DWP’s decision on her permitted work but eventually lost on one overpayment decision two years later. 

But Katherine realised the tribunal had made legal errors, and appealed the ruling. 

Just days before the upper tribunal was set to hear her case, in December 2022, DWP – which had instructed a barrister – capitulated and agreed that she had not been told clearly enough before she started working as a tribunal member how many days she would be able to work every week. 

The tribunal ruled that money deducted from her benefits would have to be repaid. 

But, she says, DWP never repaid it, nor the hundreds of pounds in arrears owed to her for just over five years. 

And last year, DWP began to harass her again, despite her repeatedly informing the department that this harassment was making her suicidal and the tribunal having made it clear that it was misapplying the law. 

Late last year, DWP sent her a “very threatening” letter warning that her ESA could be stopped a few days before Christmas, if she didn’t provide particular information before a certain date. 

She told DNS: “I knew they were going to make the same errors again. I rang them in great distress and drew their attention to the upper tribunal judgement.” 

The letter led to her telling both her adult children on Christmas Day how much she wanted to die and that DWP’s actions were the last straw. 

She told DWP in a letter she sent days later: “Why DWP would send such correspondence to an isolated and vulnerable adult in Christmas week – threatening to cut off their benefit – is a question only they could answer.” 

She fears DWP will now claim she owes it thousands of pounds, despite strictly following the rules and providing the department with all her tribunal pay slips. 

Some letters she receives from DWP say she is within the legal limits for permitted work, but some appear to show DWP has ignored or forgotten her tribunal exemption. 

Now she is terrified that she will be arrested and prosecuted as a benefit cheat, when she has always followed DWP’s rules. 

She has been waiting for another two mandatory reconsiderations – the first stage in the appeal process – over what DWP claims was her non-entitlement to ESA during lengthy periods, and a decision that confirmed she was entitled to ESA from December 2023 but which was again made applying the incorrect legislation. 

She told DNS: “I was a justice of the peace for 15 years, but I have never been able to get justice. I can’t get benefits and I can’t get justice. 

“They have now caused so much damage, I don’t think I will ever be able to return to work again full-time.” 

A DWP spokesperson said last night (Wednesday): “We have reimbursed the customer for the money previously recovered and apologise for any distress.  

“This case is currently being reviewed.” 

Katherine told DNS that the DWP statement was not accurate and that it still owed her hundreds of pounds. 

*She has asked to remain anonymous 

A note from the editor:

Please consider making a voluntary financial contribution to support the work of DNS and allow it to continue producing independent, carefully-researched news stories that focus on the lives and rights of disabled people and their user-led organisations.

Please do not contribute if you cannot afford to do so, and please note that DNS is not a charity. It is run and owned by disabled journalist John Pring and has been from its launch in April 2009. 

Thank you for anything you can do to support the work of DNS…