Government must set up independent panel to probe DWP deaths, says disabled researcher

Disabled campaigners have called on the government to set up a “genuinely independent” panel that would investigate deaths linked to the actions and failings of the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).

They say that such a panel would expose the “systemic failures” that continue to put disabled people’s lives at risk.

The call for a new independent panel is being led by Mo Stewart, who has spent 16 years researching the consequences of private sector influence on UK social security reform, through her Preventable Harm Project.

Now she has secured the support of Disability Rights UK (DR UK) and the independent MP John McDonnell, who was Labour’s shadow chancellor under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn and has supported the disabled people’s anti-cuts movement since 2010.

Stewart said the panel would “identify the preventable harm endured by those in greatest need”.

She told Disability News Service (DNS): “For too long the chronically ill and disabled community have lived in fear of the DWP, whose culture of intimidation and cruelty knows no limits.

“The DWP would finally be held to account for the public health crisis they have created when adopting social policies based on a fiscal priority and disregarding health and wellbeing.”

Kamran Mallick, DR UK’s chief executive, said he “strongly” supported the call for an “independent, transparent, and robust oversight mechanism”, which was “long overdue” and “a moral imperative”.

He said: “The evidence is overwhelming: Disabled people and those with long-term health conditions have been systematically harmed by a welfare system that prioritises cost-cutting over care, suspicion over support, and bureaucracy over basic human dignity.

“For years, we have seen the devastating consequences of punitive policies, most notably the work capability assessment and the wider benefits system, which have forced people into impossible situations – pushing many into poverty, mental distress, and, tragically, even to their deaths.

“Reports have repeatedly exposed the failures of the Department for Work and Pensions in safeguarding disabled people’s lives, yet accountability remains absent, and lessons are not being learned.

“Instead, we see the same hostile rhetoric and damaging policies being recycled by successive governments, ignoring the real-life consequences for those most in need of support.”

He added: “The DWP cannot be left to mark its own homework, especially when the stakes are so high.

“Disabled people should not have to live in fear of the very system designed to support us.

“We need a panel that will ensure that every preventable death is acknowledged, that those responsible are held accountable, and that concrete actions are taken to prevent further harm.”

McDonnell told MPs earlier this month, during a debate on the government’s proposed public authorities (fraud, error and recovery) bill, that DWP’s existing serious case panel – which is not independent of the department – was “not working”.

He said the new panel suggested by Stewart could mirror the Independent Advisory Panel on Deaths in Custody, which has the “central aim of preventing deaths in custody” and would “reassure people out there that we really are looking after their interests”.

Public calls for an independent watchdog to investigate the deaths of claimants appear to have first come 10 years ago, in a report by the Commons work and pensions committee.

The committee called then for a new organisation, similar to the Independent Police Complaints Commission, that would carry out reviews of deaths linked to DWP’s actions “at the request of relatives, or automatically where no living relative remains”.

DWP had failed to comment by noon today (Thursday).

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