• Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary menu
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • About DNS
  • Subscribe to DNS
  • Advertise with DNS
  • Support DNS
  • Contact DNS

Disability News Service

the country's only news agency specialising in disability issues

  • Home
  • Independent Living
    • Arts, Culture and Sport
    • Crime
    • Education
    • Employment
    • Housing
    • Transport
  • Activism & Campaigning
  • Benefits & Poverty
  • Politics
  • Human Rights
You are here: Home / Benefits and Poverty / MPs who refused to quiz minister on benefit deaths ‘have failed disabled people’
Members of the work and pensions committee and others sit around a horseshoe shaped table in a Commons committee room

MPs who refused to quiz minister on benefit deaths ‘have failed disabled people’

By John Pring on 21st July 2022 Category: Benefits and Poverty

Listen

MPs have refused to quiz the disability minister about new research that brings together more than 30 years of evidence linking her department with the deaths of countless disabled benefit claimants.

The draft version of the Deaths by Welfare timeline features more than 300 pages of evidence linking the systemic failings of the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) with hundreds, if not thousands, of deaths.

Members of the Commons work and pensions committee – which is trusted to hold DWP to account – had the chance to question Chloe Smith about those links yesterday (Wednesday) when she gave evidence on the department’s disability benefits assessment system.

She was questioned for nearly two hours (pictured), but none of the committee members even mentioned the research, which was published on 4 July.

Each of them had been alerted to the timeline by Disability News Service (DNS), although they should already have been aware of its existence.

The committee’s chair, Labour’s Stephen Timms, had suggested that DNS contact each member individually, after DNS emailed him about the research.

Timms also suggested that the research would be circulated to committee members ahead of the meeting.

The committee’s failure to mention the timeline comes days after both Labour and the Liberal Democrats offered only half-hearted support for the research last week.

Although the most damning evidence is linked to decisions made by post-2010 Conservative-led governments, the timeline shows how both Labour and the Liberal Democrats are also implicated in many of DWP’s failings.

Disabled activist Rick Burgess, who played a key role in preparing the timeline, said the committee “simply does not deserve the confidence of disabled people until it raises this issue forcefully, not just with the minister but with the secretary of state and whoever the prime minister turns out to be”.

He added: “When human rights defenders in the UK clearly evidence a link between government policy and a great many deaths, you can judge the health of our democracy by how the oversight systems of parliament bring this evidence to government and take them to task.

“What this tells us is we are in a failing state. This leaves disabled people at great risk of ongoing, massive state-sponsored harm.”

He said the committee’s actions demonstrated how disabled people were “increasingly isolated and adrift of help” and illustrated the community’s need to organise “for its own defence”.

He called on disabled people to join their nearest disabled people’s organisation or even start one themselves.

Timms had failed to comment by noon today (Thursday) on the committee’s refusal to question the minister about the timeline.

The draft timeline is based on more than a decade of investigations by disabled people’s grassroots groups, journalists, academics and other organisations and campaigners, and has taken 18 months to put together.

The evidence includes government reports, academic research, disabled people’s activism, letters to DWP from coroners, media reports of deaths linked to DWP’s failings, freedom of information responses and political speeches.

It shows how years of warning signs of the harm to come were ignored, while it also demonstrates systemic negligence by DWP, a culture of cover-up and denial, and a refusal to accept that the department has a duty of care to those disabled people claiming support through the social security system.

The timeline is part of the Deaths by Welfare project, headed by Dr China Mills and supported by Healing Justice Ldn, which works with marginalised and oppressed communities.

Mills has led the work on the timeline alongside DNS editor John Pring, with key input from Burgess, disabled activist Ellen Clifford, author of The War On Disabled People, welfare rights expert and researcher Nick Dilworth, and disabled artist-activist Dolly Sen.

*To provide feedback or suggest additions to the timeline, visit the Deaths by Welfare timeline home page

 

A note from the editor:

Please consider making a voluntary financial contribution to support the work of DNS and allow it to continue producing independent, carefully-researched news stories that focus on the lives and rights of disabled people and their user-led organisations.

Please do not contribute if you cannot afford to do so, and please note that DNS is not a charity. It is run and owned by disabled journalist John Pring and has been from its launch in April 2009.

Thank you for anything you can do to support the work of DNS…

Share this post:

Share on TwitterShare on FacebookShare on WhatsAppShare on Reddit

Tags: benefit deaths Chloe Smith Conservatives Deaths by Welfare DWP Labour Liberal Democrats Rick Burgess Stephen Timms work and pensions committee

Related

DWP hands hundreds of millions more to firms linked to claimant deaths… but not Atos
1st June 2023
Disabled mum took her own life after actions of DWP and Capita ‘magnified’ anxiety
25th May 2023
MPs raise concerns over DWP death evidence ‘cover-up’
25th May 2023

Primary Sidebar

Chichester Festival Theatre, Everyone’s Welcome

Access

Latest Stories

DWP hands hundreds of millions more to firms linked to claimant deaths… but not Atos

Review finds multiple agencies failed over Whorlton Hall abuse scandal

Regulator tells government’s access advisers to act on unlawful secrecy

Government breaks pledge to consult on improvements to housing adaptations

Broadcaster’s silence over ‘rabblerouser’ tweet on disability benefits

Met’s mental health emergency warning ‘risks creating serious harm’

Call for direct action protests to build support for ‘radical’ social care reform

Disabled mum took her own life after actions of DWP and Capita ‘magnified’ anxiety

Public inquiry on inaccessible footbridge will be ‘line in the sand’, say activists

Thousands of disabled people tell MPs: Cost-of-living crisis is affecting our health

Advice and Information

Readspeaker

Footer

The International Standard Serial Number for Disability News Service is: ISSN 2398-8924

  • Accessibility Statement
  • Privacy Policy
  • Site map
  • Facebook
  • Twitter

Copyright © 2023 Disability News Service

Site development by A Bright Clear Web