Labour’s DWP team ‘split’ over universal credit safety

Labour’s work and pensions team appears to be split over whether the party should pledge to act on serious concerns about the safety of the universal credit working-age benefits system.

The party’s shadow minister for disabled people, Vicky Foxcroft, told Disability News Service (DNS) this week that she was concerned about three recent deaths of disabled people linked to universal credit, and promised that Labour would “learn lessons from them”.

But she told DNS to ask her boss, shadow work and pensions secretary Liz Kendall, for a detailed response on the safety issues relating to universal credit.

But despite DNS first approaching Kendall’s office last Friday with a request to comment on the serious safety concerns around universal credit, and making repeated further attempts to secure a detailed comment, she had failed to produce one by noon today (Thursday).

Labour’s failure to take the safety issues seriously was highlighted last week when Foxcroft failed to address these concerns in a statement, despite the suicides of two disabled people that were each linked to universal credit by coroners in prevention of future deaths (PFD) reports sent to the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).

It appears likely that party figures senior to Foxcroft prevented her mentioning universal credit in the statement Labour released in her name last week.

The first PFD report was written by a coroner who warned work and pensions secretary Mel Stride in November that he needed to act to prevent flaws in universal credit leading to further deaths, following the suicide of Kevin Gale, from Penrith, Cumbria, who had become overwhelmed by the application process.

Last month, another coroner linked DWP and universal credit with a suicide, this time following the death of Nazerine Anderson, from Melton Mowbray, with the PFD highlighting how DWP missed six opportunities to record her “vulnerability” on its IT system while it was reviewing her universal credit claim, including failing to act on the mental distress she displayed in phone calls.

DNS has also alerted Kendall to a series of other cases of significant harm associated with universal credit, including another suicide for which an inquest has yet to be held.

Kendall has also failed to express any concern about a Prime Minister’s Implementation Unit report that ministers kept hidden for four years and which revealed significant flaws at the heart of universal credit and how DWP supported “vulnerable” claimants.

Her refusal to speak out came as disabled activists prepared to travel to Geneva to try to hold the UK government – and particularly DWP – to account over its lack of progress since being found guilty of grave and systematic violations of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in 2016 (see separate story).

A member of Kendall’s staff told DNS last night (Wednesday): “The response is that it is not true that we ignore these issues. And it is not true that we don’t care about them.”

He had failed to comment further by noon today.

Picture: Vicky Foxcroft (left) and Liz Kendall

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