DWP can’t find report on universal credit safety that PM’s unit told it to write

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) and the Cabinet Office have both been unable to find a report that was supposed to describe how DWP supported “vulnerable” people who rely on the universal credit benefit system.

DWP was told to produce the report five or six years ago by a civil service unit set up by David Cameron and deputy prime minister Nick Clegg in 2012.

But neither DWP nor the Cabinet Office have been able to find the report, despite separate freedom of information requests from Disability News Service (DNS).

The failure to find the report comes as DWP has faced a series of coroners’ reports and concerns raised by its own staff about the safety of universal credit and its failure to ensure the working-age benefit system is safe for claimants in vulnerable situations.

Previous freedom of information requests showed that the Prime Minister’s Implementation Unit (PMIU) had produced a report – Experience of Claimants and Vulnerable Groups – that described the “additional difficulties” faced by vulnerable claimants of universal credit.

The Cabinet Office had initially claimed it could not find this document.

When it finally found the report and provided a copy to DNS, it showed that the document had warned that the “experience of many groups of vulnerable claimants on UC is not currently understood”, while there was a “lack of evidence” on whether the range of support for these groups is “delivered consistently and delivering the desired outcomes with efficacy”.

The report included a recommendation by PMIU for DWP to draw up a “single and coherent” document that described its approach to vulnerable claimants.

The aim was to “demonstrate the support and adjustments” DWP had developed and help those working in the department to share information about this support and “ensure greater consistency” in how it was applied.

This report was supposed to be produced “internally” and then shared with PMIU.

But when DNS submitted fresh freedom of information requests to DWP and the Cabinet Office, neither of them were able to find the “single and coherent” document.

DWP told DNS: “We have carried out a detailed search for the information you have requested and can confirm, DWP does not hold this information.”

The Cabinet Office responded to a separate request: “We are writing to advise you that following a search of our paper and electronic records, we have established that the information you requested is not held by the Cabinet Office.”

This could mean that DWP and the Cabinet Office have lost the report, destroyed it, are refusing to release it, or that DWP ignored the recommendation to write it.

What happened to the report is important because, five or so years after Experience of Claimants and Vulnerable Groups is believed to have been written, DWP is facing increasing concerns about safeguarding claimants of universal credit and other benefits.

Only last week, DNS reported how two-thirds of DWP staff still do not have enough time to deal with safeguarding concerns “carefully” and “correctly”, despite years of deaths of benefit claimants linked with DWP’s failings.

The survey, completed by more than 1,700 DWP staff for the Commons work and pensions committee, also showed that more than two-fifths (42 per cent) of staff with direct contact with claimants did not believe they received adequate safeguarding training, while a similar number said the safeguarding guidance for frontline staff was not clear, comprehensive and easy to access.

More than a third (36 per cent) did not feel confident about how to handle a safeguarding concern.

Last December, a dossier of evidence submitted by the PCS union to DWP showed the department to be a failing organisation in a “state of crisis” and facing a “near collapse” of its benefits systems, with staff accusing DWP of “deliberate neglect” and revealing that claimants in vulnerable situations were “falling through the gaps” in the system.

Meanwhile, DNS has reported on three suicides of universal credit claimants that have also raised critical concerns about DWP safeguarding.

In May, DWP admitted missing multiple opportunities to record the “vulnerability” of Nazerine Anderson, whose death was later linked by a coroner to failings at the heart of universal credit.

Last November, another coroner wrote to the department after the death of Kevin Gale, to warn DWP that it needed to act to prevent flaws in the universal credit system leading to further deaths, after Gale took his own life after becoming overwhelmed by the application process.

And in November 2022, DNS reported how a disabled woman left traumatised by the daily demands of universal credit took her own life just four days after being told she would need to attend a face-to-face meeting with a work coach. Her inquest has yet to take place.

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