Government quietly releases multiple disability research reports on the same day… eight days too late for MPs

The government has quietly published 12 detailed research reports, nearly all related to disability employment, disability poverty and the benefits system, all on the same day, just eight days after MPs voted to impose £2 billion-a-year cuts to disability benefits.

The mass information dump includes at least six research reports which would have provided crucial information for MPs voting on the universal credit bill, which they approved on 9 July.

At least five of the reports, all published on 17 July by either the government’s Disability Unit or the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), appear to have been sitting in government files for more than a year.

Disability News Service has established that two of the reports were delivered to the Conservative government in April last year, three months before July’s general election.

The reports were all published – with zero publicity – just five days before Tuesday’s debate on the bill in the House of Lords (see separate story), the final parliamentary stage before next year’s cuts to universal credit become law.

It is just the latest example of government departments sitting for months, or even years, on vital research relating to disabled people and the substantial barriers they face in society.

One of the reports (see separate story) shows the impact of the cost-of-living crisis on disabled people in the UK, and reveals that the proportion of disabled people surveyed who said their financial situation was quite difficult or very difficult had risen from 18 per cent in December 2021 to 27 per cent in March 2023 and 39 per cent in October 2023.

In the year up to October 2023, three-fifths (61 per cent) of disabled people said they could not maintain a comfortable temperature needed for their impairment or health condition, while four-fifths (78 per cent) agreed or strongly agreed that their independence had reduced because of the rising cost of living.

Another report published on 17 July concluded that the barriers to work faced by disabled people “arise more from barriers in society than from people and their impairments”, with by far the biggest role played by “systemic discrimination” such as “economic conditions, government policy, ideological factors, and legal issues”.

One of the most important reports – with work and pensions ministers apparently already implementing significant cuts to the Access to Work (AtW) disability employment scheme –  shows the “positive impact” of a pilot scheme that provided enhanced AtW support for disabled people with “significant in-work needs” (see separate story).

Another report examines the barriers faced by people on so-called legacy benefits during their “migration” onto universal credit, and the distress the process and new system has caused many of the disabled people affected.

DWP also published the final version of a report that says a survey of 3,401 claimants of disability benefits suggests a link between the increase in the number of disability benefit claimants and “challenges in the healthcare system”.

Interim findings were published in February, but the final version reveals more details from the survey, and it concludes that it is “essential that all [DWP] support is personalised and tailored to the individual” and that “even the relatively more confident groups of customers were worried that employers would not employ them due to their health conditions”.

Another of the reports contains long-awaited information the department has been hiding from the public for more than 18 months about secret reviews from 2022-23 into the department’s “learning” from deaths or other “serious harm” linked to DWP’s actions (see separate story).

The universal credit bill will see cuts to spending for new claimants of the universal credit health element of more than £2 billion-a-year by 2029-30.

By 2029-30, this will mean 750,000 universal credit claimants who cannot work for disability-related reasons seeing their health element addition frozen at £50 a week, compared to the £97-a-week that existing claimants currently receive.

Just 80,000 new claimants – less than 10 per cent of this group – will be protected from this cut because they are terminally-ill or qualify for Labour’s new “severe conditions” group.

The government did not make a statement on the delays in publication, but it said that the reports were published in line with its social research protocol, and that, where appropriate, it grouped publication of reports on similar issues together.

In respect of the secret reviews, it claimed it had published more information on its most serious cases than ever before, which it claimed emphasised its commitment to transparency.

Meanwhile, the government has promised to develop and publish a Plan for Disability, which will set out a “clear vision to break down barriers to opportunity”, and “support departments to consider how and where they can better work together to boost opportunity, and ensure the views and voices of Deaf and disabled people are at the heart of everything we do”.

Sir Stephen Timms, the minister for social security and disability, said the plan would be “a key step forward in ensuring that regardless of your background, disability is never a barrier to success”.

The government also launched five-year plans to improve the use of British Sign Language (BSL) in individual government departments, alongside the third annual report on the use of BSL in government communications.

*The research reports published by DWP and the Disability Unit on 17 July were:

Menopause in the workplace literature review

Fairness assessment including statistical analysis of the Universal Credit advances machine learning model

The impact of the rising cost of living on disabled people in the UK

The lived experience of disabled people in the UK: a review of evidence

Accessibility of private sector products and services for disabled people in the UK

Disabled people’s employment in the UK: a thematic review of the literature

Disability, loneliness and relationships: a thematic report

Advanced Customer Support: Learning and improving from serious cases

Evaluation of Access to Work Plus

Move to Universal Credit DWP Legacy Benefit Customer Qualitative Research

Understanding PIP applicant experiences: the experience of applicants with anxiety

Work aspirations and support needs of health and disability customers

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