DWP told to pay £50,000 to Deaf job-seeker after repeated failure to provide BSL interpreter

A tribunal has told the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to pay nearly £50,000 in damages to a Deaf man after repeatedly failing to provide him with the interpreters he needed for job-related interviews.

Paul Rimmer said he believed his local jobcentre failed to provide the support he needed because they found it “too difficult and too expensive”.

The jobcentre repeatedly failed to arrange the British Sign Language (BSL) interpretation that he needed over six years, and even when it did provide interpretation it was sometimes not of a high enough standard.

The employment tribunal has now told DWP to pay Rimmer £49,880 in damages and interest payments for the years of discriminatory behaviour.

It came as work and pensions secretary Mel Stride declared this week that his government was “leaving no stone unturned to get people back to work”.

The tribunal refers three times in its judgement to how Rimmer’s experience of repeated failures by the Leeds jobcentre to provide an interpreter must have felt like a “groundhog day”, and it describes how he felt he was “constantly fighting for things other people take for granted”.

Every time he faced discrimination, the tribunal concluded, it damaged his “mental wellbeing, whether by frustration or upset or depression or isolation”, and the “cumulative effect was considerable”, while it was “further depressing and despairing with each repeating occurrence against the background of some years”.

Despite a series of complaints to DWP, the tribunal found, there was no documented response or investigation findings from any of them, which led to the tribunal awarding Rimmer an extra £5,000 in damages.

The compensation also includes £10,000 in “exemplary damages” imposed due to a “victimising” and “oppressive” internal email sent in August 2022 by a DWP disability equality advisor (DEA) who referred to Rimmer making “multiple” complaints.

Despite a colleague describing Rimmer as “suitable” for an intensive job support programme and “keen to get support”, the DEA said he had a “history of complaints about treatment”.

The DEA then suggested, in the August email, that Rimmer did not want to work, that his lack of hearing was not his main barrier to a job, and that he needed “firm work coaching”, suggesting that he needed to be sanctioned.

The tribunal judge said the DEA had delivered an “assassination of the claimant’s character” and had taken a “victimising” approach when referring to complaints Rimmer had made, and added: “This is the sort of email or conduct which anyone in receipt of services from a job centre would fear, that if job coaches or others are challenged, there will be reprisals.”

The existence of the email only emerged during the legal case taken by Rimmer against the work and pensions secretary.

The tribunal’s judgment (PDF) was released less than a month after prime minister Rishi Sunak was accused of demonising and scapegoating claimants of disability benefits in a speech in which he spoke of a “sick note culture” and said there should be “higher expectations” of claimants in return for receiving benefits.

The tribunal’s judgment is likely to raise fresh questions about the employment support provided by DWP and the attitude of some staff, despite the repeated scapegoating of disabled claimants by ministers.

Rimmer had moved to Leeds in 2013, in his 30s, and started attending Park Place, the largest jobcentre in the north of England.

Between 2017 and 2023, the tribunal heard that Park Place repeatedly failed to provide him with BSL interpreters, although interpreters were sometimes provided.

In 2017, he was sanctioned and had his jobseeker’s allowance stopped after he ended a jobcentre meeting because he had been provided with a poorly-qualified BSL interpreter.

During much of the pandemic, the tribunal had heard, the jobcentre failed to provide the services he needed, even though other claimants were being supported, and he was not offered BSL interpretation via video relay, even though that should have been available from January 2021.

At one point, he had no contact with his work coach for a year.

The tribunal concluded that the Park Place work coaches at the time had “little equalities training… and none had had deaf awareness training”.

As well as the damages, the tribunal said staff providing employment support at Park Place jobcentre in Leeds must carry out training on disability discrimination and deaf awareness.

Rimmer, who is profoundly Deaf and whose first language is BSL, has no spoken English and only very basic reading and writing skills, and he had told the tribunal that most DWP staff “do not understand the difficulties facing me as a profoundly Deaf person”.

He told Disability News Service this week: “I am shocked about the barriers and discrimination that I have had to go through.

“I was shocked about the lack of training [DWP/Jobcentre] staff have had, lack of deaf awareness and how I have been stuck in a system and unable to move on.

“I was shocked by what I have heard in evidence from DWP staff.

“I am proud of what I have achieved and hope that it helps other people as well as myself.”

He added: “I know that the same thing happens at other jobcentres and I hope things will change more widely.

“I hope it doesn’t just change at Leeds but that the DWP look more widely at the training of staff across the country.”

Rimmer said he still feels “a bit angry about the wasted years, but pleased that the truth has finally come out.

“I have been telling the DWP about the difficulties I have faced for years and finally someone has believed me.”

Nick Whittingham, chief executive at Kirklees Citizens Advice and Law Centre, which supported Rimmer with his case, said: “This case shines a light on the way that disabled benefits claimants are treated by the DWP, and is particularly important in light of current political rhetoric.

“The indications are that failings are systemic and that provision for supporting deaf and other disabled people is limited both by funding constraints and by an institutional failure to understand, or even attempt to understand, their needs.”

John Horan, a leading disabled barrister specialising in discrimination and employment cases, who represented Rimmer at the tribunal, said: “In light of the prime minister’s recent comments that all disabled jobseekers should find a job within a year, this should be a wake-up call to ministers responsible for the jobseeker’s programme.

“In an Orwellian ‘1984’ scenario, a disability employment advisor, who should be there to assist disabled claimants, has been shown to have been actively targeting disabled people and attempting to block access to assistance programmes and even to the benefit itself, because the claimant had raised legitimate complaints.”

A DWP spokesperson said in a statement yesterday (Wednesday): “We are considering this judgment.

“We are committed to providing accessible services to ensure customers who need extra assistance can access our help.”

Picture: Paul Rimmer, and Park Place jobcentre. Picture of the jobcentre by Google

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