McFadden admits ministers are working on ‘key areas for improvement’ after years of DWP deaths

The work and pensions secretary has admitted to MPs that his department has identified “key areas for improvement” in how it protects benefit claimants from harm, following years of deaths linked to its actions and failings.

In a letter to the Commons work and pensions committee, sent this week, Pat McFadden says that a “comprehensive review” of safeguarding within the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) had compared its approach with other organisations, such as those in health and education, and “identified key areas for improvement”.

He says DWP has now developed a “high-level strategy to prioritise short, medium, and long-term actions” to improve its approach, with a detailed plan of action to be released “in due course”.

The letter follows the committee’s inquiry on “safeguarding vulnerable claimants”, which reported in May and called on DWP to introduce a new legal duty for it to safeguard such claimants, after decades of deaths and other harm linked to its policies and procedures.

In his letter, McFadden says the government “remains open” to such a legal duty, which the last Conservative government repeatedly dismissed.

The committee’s report called for a deep-rooted cultural change across the department so it could address its current “deficient” approach to safeguarding.

McFadden says in the letter that the immediate steps it is taking on safeguarding include action to improve “leadership and accountability”; safeguarding training to be “offered” to all staff; improving how DWP works with other agencies; and improving the safety of how it recruits healthcare professionals who carry out benefit assessments.

He also says the department is looking at how it can improve the “learning” from deaths and other serious cases that are examined through its secret internal process review (IPR) system.

The committee’s chair, Labour MP Debbie Abrahams, told McFadden yesterday (Wednesday) in his first evidence session before the committee, that the number of IPRs following claimant deaths rose from 40 in 2023-24 to 59 last year, which was “not the trajectory that we would want to see”.

McFadden replied that, although it was “important to have… serious case panels [and IPRs]”, which “do help us learn”, DWP should not “just look at this with a rear-view mirror, learning from what’s gone wrong, but actually have an active process, to try to make sure that we deal with people in the best way that we can”.

He told Abrahams: “I’m not going to sit here and say it’s job done, it’s clearly not, but I think it is something that we take seriously.”

McFadden said one crucial measure it had taken was to offer higher-level training to its healthcare professionals, most of whom carry out benefit assessments for outsourced providers, as it was “important that they get that and they understand their training and their responsibilities”.

The committee’s report had also suggested a new independent body should be set up to investigate cases where claimants had been seriously harmed by DWP’s actions, but McFadden did not mention that recommendation in his letter or in yesterday’s evidence to the committee.

Abrahams later asked McFadden to write to the committee to explain what consideration ministers had given to the safeguarding impact of their decision to cut the health element of universal credit for most new claimants from next April, which will lead to work-related conditions being placed upon this group (see separate story).

She also asked how ministers would address the safeguarding concerns raised by the government’s potential plans – outlined in the Pathways to Work green paper earlier this year – to scrap the health element for sick and disabled people under the age of 22.

She said that many of the young people affected by this cut would have experienced a decade of “living in absolute dire circumstances that has affected their childhood” and would have “gone through significant difficulties”.

She said: “They are now needing some attention in relation to that.

“It’s recognised that cash support is the only way that you can instantly alleviate the poverty that they’ve experienced.”

McFadden said the efficiency of using cash support to alleviate child poverty was a “point well made”.

But he said the government had not yet decided whether to scrap the health element for under-22s.

But he said that “the argument for it would be these benefits are sticky and if we can get more opportunity for people, and less chance of them going through that long-term sickness door and staying on it, that is better for them in the long run”.

He said this was one of the questions that would be examined by the investigation into the rising number of young people who are not in jobs, training or education (NEETs), being led by former Labour health secretary Alan Milburn.

DNS revealed last week that this investigation will exclusively focus on sick and disabled young people.

McFadden said this “whole issue of young people, sickness, unemployment, and work [is] all within the terms of what I’ve asked Alan Milburn to look at in the next few months.

“So it’s in there, and I don’t want to make a decision on it until we’ve looked at things in the round.”

But Abrahams told him it was vital that the government took an evidence-based approach to its decision, and she warned that a “conditionality approach rather than a supportive approach may have not the outcome that we would want to see”.

McFadden replied: “Well, you could argue that the evidence shows if you go on these benefits at a young age, you tend to stay on them, and that’s not very good for your life.

“There’s plenty evidence for that, too.”

The Department: How a Violent Government Bureaucracy Killed Hundreds and Hid the Evidence, DNS editor John Pring’s book on the years of deaths linked to DWP’s actions and failings, is published by Pluto Press

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