New minister’s commitment to transparency under spotlight after regulator orders DWP to release deaths info

A new Labour minister’s commitment to transparency about the safety of universal credit has immediately been placed under the spotlight, after his department was ordered by a regulator to release vital information from secret reports into claimant deaths.

As chair of the Commons work and pensions committee, Sir Stephen Timms repeatedly clashed with work and pensions ministers over their failure to release critical information to the public.

But now, just three days after his appointment as the new minister of state for social security and disability – in effect, the new minister for disabled people – the information commissioner has ordered his department to release information from internal process reviews (IPRs) over the last four years.

The documents will show how many IPRs – internal investigations into deaths and other serious cases linked to DWP’s actions – have been carried out into the deaths of universal credit claimants, and what recommendations they made for improvements.

Sir Stephen frequently attempted to hold the previous government to account when he chaired the work and pensions committee over the lack of transparency within the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) and its failure to release crucial reports.

Two years ago, he wrote to work and pensions secretary Therese Coffey (PDF) to tell her his committee was concerned that her department’s “lack of transparency” could undermine public trust in DWP’s work.

Among nine examples of this lack of transparency, he pointed to the failure to publish information from IPRs, and a report on support for “vulnerable claimants” of universal credit.

He had earlier used his committee’s parliamentary powers to force the publication of a DWP report that found disabled benefit claimants had widespread “unmet needs”.

Among his new responsibilities will be universal credit and the serious case panel, which was set up to examine “serious cases” and “serious systemic issues” and considers sources of information such as IPRs.

Disability News Service (DNS) has been trying since last November to secure the universal credit IPR information.

DWP has previously insisted that it intends to publish the information “at a future date”.

But it has also argued that the “ad hoc release of the requested information into the public domain could engender public distrust in the DWP” because “the information may become disassociated from the circumstances around which it relates”.

It has suggested that this could “prevent vulnerable people from approaching the Department at a time when they need its help the most”.

And it has said that releasing the information in the way requested by DNS would “only serve to increase” the “misconceptions” and “incorrect views” held by the “general public”.

DNS complained to the Information Commissioner’s Office about DWP’s refusal to release the information, and warned there were “significant and ongoing flaws within the system, which have already been highlighted by at least two suicides”.

DNS argued that DWP had never previously published information on how many IPRs contained recommendations for improving universal credit and suggested that it had no intention of doing so now.

DNS also pointed out that, although DWP has published figures showing how many IPRs mentioned universal credit in 2022-23, it has not done so for previous years, so it was impossible to see how deaths linked to universal credit were either increasing or decreasing.

The information commissioner, John Edwards, has now ruled that DWP must release the information DNS has requested by 10 August.

He said that DWP had provided a “representative sample of the information it intended to publish” and having reviewed this information, and DWP’s submissions, he was “not persuaded that there was an intention to publish the requested information” and had concluded that “the information that will be published is not the information that has been requested” by DNS.

Despite repeated concerns being raised in recent months about safeguarding and the safety of the administration of universal credit, none of the main political parties mentioned the issue in their election manifestos.

Earlier this month, DNS described how repeated failures by DWP led to the death of a disabled woman, Nazerine Anderson, after her case was randomly selected for a “performance measurement review” of her universal credit claim.

Last November, another coroner wrote to the department after the death of Kevin Gale, to warn DWP that it needed to act to prevent flaws in the universal credit system leading to further deaths, after Gale took his own life after becoming overwhelmed by the universal credit application process.

And in November 2022, DNS reported how a disabled woman left traumatised by the daily demands of universal credit took her own life just four days after being told she would need to attend a face-to-face meeting with a work coach. Her inquest has yet to take place.

In May, DNS reported how two-thirds of DWP staff still do not have enough time to deal with safeguarding concerns “carefully” and “correctly”, despite years of deaths of benefit claimants linked to DWP’s failings.

And last December, a dossier of evidence submitted by the PCS union to DWP showed the department to be a failing organisation in a “state of crisis” and facing a “near collapse” of its benefits systems, with staff accusing DWP of “deliberate neglect” and revealing that claimants in vulnerable situations were “falling through the gaps” in the system.

The rollout of universal credit to the remaining hundreds of thousands of disabled people still receiving income-related employment and support allowance will begin in September.

A DWP spokesperson said: “We are considering our next steps.”

*The Department, DNS editor John Pring’s book on DWP and how its actions led to countless deaths of disabled people in the post-2010 era, will be published by Pluto Press on 20 August. Visit TheDepartmentBook.com before publication for a 50 per cent discount 

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