DWP ‘shamefully’ failed to track its response to secret advice on cutting suicides

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has “shamefully” failed to keep a record of how it responded to a secret report that called for it to reduce suicides of benefit claimants and other “very bad cases”.

The report was written by Conservative peer Baroness [Lucy] Neville-Rolfe, who made 11 key recommendations for DWP on how it could “minimise bad cases” and cut the number of suicides.

Among her recommendations was a new register of “very bad cases”; a review of the department’s safeguarding system, including an analysis of its effectiveness in reducing suicides; and a review of the internal process review system.

Disability News Service (DNS) was only able to obtain the nine-page report following pressure from the Information Commissioner’s Office, after DWP’s freedom of information (FoI) team initially refused to even acknowledge a request to see the document.

But when DNS submitted a follow-up request to ask which of the 11 recommendations it implemented, DWP said such a check would take one of its civil servants more than three-and-a-half working days, which would exceed the cost limit laid out in FoI regulations.

This proved that DWP had failed to keep a record of what actions it took in response to the recommendations made by Baroness Neville-Rolfe in her Complaints, Suicides and Other Matters report.

DWP’s FoI team also told DNS: “Under Section 16 of the FoI Act we should help you narrow your request so that it may fall beneath the cost limit.

“However, as the request is so broad in scope and the age of the material involved, alongside that fact the lead officials involved no longer work for DWP, presents significant difficulties in tracing relevant information owners to determine answers to the questions asked.

“We are therefore unable to provide more specific advice under Section 16 of the FoI Act.”

Asked how the department justified commissioning a review on such a serious issue, but then failing to keep track of how its recommendations were implemented, a DWP spokesperson declined to comment and referred DNS back to its FoI response.

This is not the first time DWP has failed to keep track of its response to recommendations for improvements in how it prevents deaths of disabled benefit claimants.

In 2020, DWP admitted to the National Audit Office that it had been failing to track recommendations made by its own secret reviews into benefit-related deaths.

But DNS revealed at the time that DWP had made the same admission three years earlier to the information commissioner when it claimed it had corrected those failings.

Paula Peters, a member of the national steering group of Disabled People Against Cuts, said this week: “Yet again the DWP is shamefully failing to keep track of recommendations made in its own reports on how to improve its safeguarding system and reduce suicides of benefit claimants.

“This is another stain on the DWP’s appalling reputation and it must be held to account.”

The Complaints, Suicides and Other Matters report was commissioned in February 2020 by Tory work and pensions secretary Therese Coffey, who made it clear at the time that its findings would never be published.

Baroness Neville-Rolfe is a former civil servant, a member of the Prime Minister’s Policy Unit under John Major, and a former non-executive director of Tesco.

But DNS reported last month that at the time she was commissioned to write the report, she was also a non-executive director of Capita, a company closely connected to one of the “very bad cases”, the death of Philippa Day.

The Department: How a Violent Government Bureaucracy Killed Hundreds and Hid the Evidence, DNS editor John Pring’s book on the years of deaths linked to DWP’s actions and failings, is published by Pluto Press

Picture: Baroness Coffey (left) and Baroness Neville-Rolfe

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