Jodey Whiting: Mum to demand truth from DWP in face-to-face meeting

The mother of a disabled woman who took her own life after repeated safeguarding failings by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is to demand the truth about her daughter’s death in a meeting with a senior civil servant.

Emma Haddad, DWP’s director general for service excellence, will travel to Teesside on Monday (10 June) to apologise in person to Joy Dove for the government’s failings in the case of her daughter, Jodey Whiting (pictured).

The meeting, which will also be attended by Colin Stewart, DWP’s work and health director for the north of England, will take place in the offices of Dove’s MP, Dr Paul Williams.

Haddad said, in a letter confirming the meeting, that they wanted to hear “personally” from Dove and explain “what happened with Jodey’s claim and changes we have put in place as a result of the lessons we have learned”.

Dove said: “They say they want to speak to me, to hear what I think about it all.

“It will never bring my daughter back. I don’t want apologies, I just want the truth.

“It’s their fault she’s in the ground and they shouldn’t have done that to her.”

She said she hoped the meeting would help “change the system for good”.

The number of people who have signed a petition in her daughter’s name, calling for an independent inquiry into deaths linked to DWP failings, and for evidence of criminal misconduct by civil servants or government ministers to be passed to the police, has passed 41,000.

But that is less than halfway to the target of 100,000 needed to secure a House of Commons debate on the petition.

The petition also calls for recognition that DWP is institutionally disablist and not fit for purpose, and for urgent changes by DWP to make the safety of all social security claimants a priority.

Dove is hoping to ask Haddad at the meeting about DWP’s admission that it failed to pass documents linking the work capability assessment (WCA) with the deaths of benefit claimants from the expert ministers commissioned to review the test (see separate story).

Following intervention from the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), DWP has admitted that two letters written by coroners – and a series of secret “peer reviews” into the deaths of claimants who went through the assessment – were hidden from the team set up to review the WCA in 2013 and 2014.

Dove’s legal team are also planning to push for a second inquest, which they hope would force a public examination of the DWP failings that contributed to Jodey Whiting taking her own life in February 2017.

None of these failings were discussed at the original inquest, although the Independent Case Examiner later concluded that DWP was guilty of “multiple” and “significant” failings in handling her case, and failed five times to follow its own safeguarding rules in the weeks leading to her suicide.

To sign the Justice for Jodey Whiting petition, click on this link. If you sign the petition, please note that you will need to confirm your signature by clicking on an email you will be sent automatically by the House of Commons petitions committee