Last Tory minister for disabled people dodges questions on fatal flaws in universal credit

The last Conservative minister for disabled people has dodged questions on whether her government failed to address flaws in the universal credit system that led to the deaths of disabled claimants.

There have been increasing concerns about universal credit, including by coroners following two deaths of claimants that were both linked to flaws in the system, and particularly the pressure it puts on people in mental distress and those with mental ill-health.

Although the PCS union has described it as a “dangerously flawed system” in which “the most vulnerable continue to slip through its cracks”, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) began to roll out universal credit to claimants of income-related employment and support allowance last month.

Mims Davies – whose title in government was minister for disabled people, health and work – was asked about these concerns by Disability News Service (DNS), days after Labour’s new social security and disability minister Sir Stephen Timms said there were “problematic” features of the universal credit system that “need to be fixed”.

Davies is now the Conservative shadow minister for women and equalities, and its shadow disability minister.

She said there was now a “chance for many people who criticise universal credit and others to go and have a forensic look at it”.

Asked if she believed there should be such a “forensic look” at universal credit, she said: “Well, they’re in government now, so I’ll be looking at what they get up to.

“The reality is that I’m not a minister there anymore, I haven’t got any further details, but I know that some of the people who have either been shadowing and looking at the department or indeed were there may years ago are now back in charge, so I think these are probably questions you will need to address to them.”

She insisted that she was “never the minister in charge of universal credit” and claimed that “safeguarding and supporting people was always my focus”.

She also pointed to comments she made to the Commons work and pensions committee in March (PDF), when she said the “narrative around DWP’s treatment of vulnerable people has been incredibly unhelpful” and was “not roundly correct”, although “we recognise that in some areas improvements can be made”.

She said this week: “All I can say is that DWP is a learning department, 80,000 civil servants across all different communities, with very many different needs… sometimes with hidden needs, and you can only work and act on what people share with you.

“I know that we boosted the visiting officers and the outreach… in my time there it was very much about tailored individual needs, and understanding the challenges.”

After DNS told her that documents from the National Archives linked DWP and its predecessor, the Department of Social Security (DSS), to the deaths of claimants as far back as 1996*, and in early 1997, in the last months of the Conservative government – therefore casting into doubt whether DWP was a “learning organisation” – she said that Sir Stephen was a social security minister “not long after that”.

He was a DSS minister from July 1998 to July 1999 before returning to DWP in 2005 for a year, and again for another nine months in 2008.

Davies was minister for disabled people, health and work for the last six months of the Conservative government, until July’s election, but had been a work and pensions minister between July 2019 and July 2022, and again from October 2022.

*These documents are described in The Department: How a Violent Government Bureaucracy Killed Hundreds and Hid the Evidence, by DNS editor John Pring, published by Pluto Press

Picture: Mims Davies with Girlguiding advocates Katie and Erin, who were at the conference to speak to decision-makers about tackling issues impacting the lives of girls and young women, and to share findings from Girlguiding’s Girls’ Attitudes Survey. Picture by Girlguiding

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