The families of two disabled people whose deaths were caused by Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) failings say they want the chance to confront ministers in parliament, so they can describe to them the damage their actions have caused.
The families of Philippa Day and Errol Graham spoke out this week after confirming that they would each be taking legal action against DWP.
Both families hope their legal actions will force improvements that will save the lives of other claimants of disability benefits.
The family of Philippa Day, whose death was blamed by a coroner on flaws in the disability benefits system, have begun a legal claim against DWP – and its private sector contractor Capita – for breaches of human rights and negligence.
It is likely to be a difficult case for both DWP and Capita to defend as coroner Gordon Clow highlighted 28 separate “problems” with the administration of the personal independence payment system that helped cause her death, at the end of a nine-day inquest in January.
Meanwhile, the family of Errol Graham are seeking permission to take their case to the court of appeal, after the high court ruled in March that DWP had not acted unlawfully in October 2017 by wrongly cutting off his employment and support allowance, a decision that led to him starving to death months later.
Both families are represented by solicitors Leigh Day.
They each spoke this week of their wish to give evidence in person to the House of Commons work and pensions committee.
Alison Turner, the fiancée of Errol Graham’s son, told Disability News Service (DNS) that she would like to see the committee invite relatives of those who have died to give evidence, and for that to happen in front of work and pensions secretary Therese Coffey and Justin Tomlinson, the minister for disabled people.
She said she would like to see the families confront Coffey “face to face” and “put that pain across to her”.
She said: “When she’s confronted with the families that she’s sat there and let suffer then it will be harder to ignore.
“They need to see the damage that it has caused.
“They need to feel how we feel, because they are almost emotionless, they are detached, and they need to attach themselves, because they need to understand the severity of this for these families.
“And until they start to understand that, they will never get it right.”
Turner said the deaths of Errol Graham, Jodey Whiting, Philippa Day and Roy Curtis were all linked to DWP’s failures around claimants with mental distress.
She said: “There’s something seriously wrong. There’s a pattern here and that’s what drives me.
“The DWP aren’t making the system work for people like them, and it’s not good enough.
“How many more people with mental health are going to die because they have been disadvantaged, because that reasonable adjustment is not being recognised?”
She added: “DWP see all these deaths and they can’t say they don’t see the link to mental health, they just don’t want to admit that there is a serious problem in the department when it comes to making reasonable adjustments for mental health.
“The more families that stand up to them, the harder it is for the government to ignore.
“The problem with DWP is that it separates itself from the damage it does. It’s almost inhuman. It doesn’t feel the pain, and I think it needs to.
“It needs to stop. It’s just not good enough for the DWP to sit there and say, ‘We didn’t do anything wrong.’ They did.”
Imogen Day, Philippa’s sister, said she would also like to see families of those who have died give evidence to the work and pensions committee, and supported the idea of this happening in front of Coffey and Tomlinson.
She said: “I want to meet them, I want to see them and I want them to explain to me exactly how they allowed this to happen.
“I want to be sat down and given word for word exactly the reasons why my sister had to die.
“That’s the bit I am struggling with. I want to know why it benefited somebody in a political way for the system to have continued for so long.
“I want to know why the benefits outweighed the costs, and those costs being lives.”
She said she believed that if the cases being brought by families against DWP “takes enough of a financial toll” it will eventually be forced to act to make the system safe.
She stressed that any compensation the family secures will be put aside to ensure that Philippa’s young son is well cared for as he grows up.
Day said that it felt as if there was now momentum in the battle to secure justice and change within DWP, with their cases and a high court case being brought by the family of Jodey Whiting, who are trying to secure a second inquest into her death.
She said: “I want them to be scared. I hope [Iain Duncan Smith] goes to bed at night thinking about all these families.
“I want him to be afraid, because we were scared, we spent months before Pip died knowing this was coming and that we couldn’t do anything about it, and feeling that fear.”
She said: “DWP needs to be over-hauled and an independent inquiry is needed to evaluate why all of this happened and why it was allowed to happen, what failsafe failed for so many people to die.
“It is just so stressful that we as families are having to do this.
“I can’t just move on with my grief. I am having to politically argue for her, which is fine, I will do it to the end of my days, but it’s not my job.”
Both Imogen Day and Alison Turner backed the idea of an independent inquiry into the years of deaths linked to DWP, after Labour’s Debbie Abrahams repeated her call for an inquiry this week.
In 2019, more than 55,000 people signed the Justice for Jodey Whiting parliamentary petition, which included a call for an inquiry.
Imogen Day told DNS: “I will not rest until there is one, a full independent inquiry.”
Abrahams has led parliamentary efforts to hold DWP to account for the deaths, including pushing the Equality and Human Rights Commission to hold its own inquiry.
Last month, DNS reported how the watchdog appears to have backed away from holding a wide-ranging statutory inquiry into links between DWP and the deaths of claimants.
Leigh Day’s Merry Varney, who represents Philippa Day’s family, said that, although the coroner “reached a damning conclusion about the role of DWP and Capita in causing Philippa’s death, if the matter is unresolved, the high court will look itself at the circumstances of Philippa’s death and the lawfulness of the acts and omissions by the DWP and Capita”.
Her colleague Tessa Gregory, who represents the family of Errol Graham, said: “Our client is appealing the high court’s judgment because she considers that the judge was wrong to hold that DWP safeguarding policies are lawful.”
She said that Turner “wants to ensure that the system is fit for purpose” and takes proper account of the difficulties faced by people in mental distress in engaging with DWP.
A DWP spokesperson said: “Our sincere condolences remain with both Miss Day’s and Mr Graham’s family. It would be inappropriate for us to comment further at this time.”
A spokesperson for Capita said: “We are very sorry for the mistakes we made in processing Philippa’s personal independence payment claim and the additional stress this caused her.
“In partnership with the DWP, we have considered and reviewed the coroner’s report and we are implementing all the recommendations that are relevant to us.
“Following this incident, we have strengthened our processes and we are working to continuously improve and deliver a professional, efficient and kind service for every PIP applicant we assess.
“As legal action is ongoing, we will not be commenting further.”
Meanwhile, DWP continues to refuse to release recommendations made by its own secret reviews into the deaths of benefit claimants over the course of nearly two years.
DNS first reported last December that DWP had admitted to carrying out 82 separate investigations into deaths and other serious incidents linked to its actions between January 2016 and March 2019, in addition to 60 earlier reviews carried out between 2012 and 2015.
Despite an information rights tribunal ruling in 2016 that the recommendations made by such reviews should be released, DWP argued last year that releasing recommendations from reviews carried out after March 2019 could interfere with the development of government policy.
There are now likely to have been about 200 secret DWP reviews into deaths and other serious incidents since 2012.
A DWP spokesperson refused to explain why the latest IPRs continued to be withheld, but he did not dispute the estimated number of IPRs carried out since 2012.
He said in a statement: “We support millions of people a year and our priority is they get the benefits to which they are entitled promptly and receive a supportive and compassionate service.
“In the vast majority of cases this happens but when, sadly, there is a tragic case we take it very seriously.
“In those circumstances it’s absolutely right we carry out an internal review to check if the correct processes were followed and identify any lessons learned to inform future policy and service.”
Picture: Philippa Day and Errol Graham
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